UKC

Very interesting report from BD, I notice that WD40 is in there, well worth a read
http://blackdiamondequipment.com/en/qc-lab-acid-harness.html?utm_medium=ema...

In reply to Murd:

Ta.

Strong acids are dangerously harmful to harnesses and whatnot.

Other noxious stuff, like acetone and WD40, hardly does any harm by comparison.

Best line in that article:
"I learned that muriatic acid is a key ingredient when cooking meth. The customer doesn’t cook meth—I asked him and he wasn’t psyched about it."

Interesting piece and a good reminder to look after your soft goods. That climber must have pooped himself on the lower off.

In reply to jwa:
I've recieved climbing items from online shops in the post wrapped in a manner where the I can see the textiles through holes in the packaging, I've also recieved items that contain corrosive liquid from other online shops (most likely against the rules), could the unknow cases of corrosion be linked to this form of contamination. Apparently many of the manufacturers also ship climbing goods to shops only in cardboard with no plastic seal.

Seeing as we are not supposed to buy climbing goods of unknown history / second hand, isn't this form of transit also a form of this?

In reply to Murd:

Curious. Acid fumes/spray from a boiled-up boot mounted up car battery springs to mind and the article does mention a car battery being replaced. Maybe the contamination was slight but since harnesses rarely get washed it remains in the fabric rotting it slowly. It happened to a friend last year and it ruined his climbing kit.

jk

In reply to Murd:

good link.

In reply to CurlyStevo:

I'd be pretty annoyed if they were so poorly packaged. I order a lot online, haven't had any stuff arrive like that. If its a big order I might include a dry bag or stuff sack and get everything jammed in that.

Things going international may also get fumigated.

Time to redesign harness bags?

Most ofthe ones I have seen are basically a mesh bag. A change to a non mesh bag would be a start & then have reactor lines in it that can detect contamination. Even better the detector could be on the harness.

In reply to Murd: I know that DEET isn't very kind to nylon, anyone know if that could have a similar affect?

In reply to Martin1978:
I'm pretty sure deet has been tested on ropes on slings. IIRC in some cases it made them more stretchy but didn't have much effect on strength.

In reply to Richard Wilson:

Sounds very sensible. If the "detector" is just thread that changes colour, then it could probably be used for all the stitching on the harness. I guess they'd need to check that discoloration doesn't also happen with age. They do age detectors on toothbrushes...

In reply to Martin1978: This is an interesting one. DEET is certainly extremely unpleasant to some plastics but I investigated the effect of DEET on nylon and dyneema slings a couple of years ago and there were no significant changes in tensile properties, either when loaded dynamically or with slow-pull testing. I've seen DEET melt through someone's waterproof jacket and through plastic bags, but my experiments indicated it had no effect on slings' tensile properties. Having said that, it might affect handle, though I did not look into this.

"It was super interesting that the contamination appeared to mainly affect the nylon thread, but didn’t affect the polyester waistbelt webbing of the harness."
http://blackdiamondequipment.com/en/qc-lab-acid-harness.html

Assuming there isn't some other reason why nylon is preferred, they could use polyester thread to eliminate this very rare failure.

In reply to CurlyStevo & Mr Fuller:

Thanks guys, I use it but always avoid getting it on my gear as I know it's not good for clothing and plastics. Will stick by that just in case. One to think about if you use DEET, I keep it wrapped in a separate bag in a separate part of the pack.

In reply to elsewhere:
but every plastic is subseptable to some kind of corrosion it just depends what.

In reply to CurlyStevo:
There's probably a good reason to use nylon, but if only polyester was used you'd only have the contamination problems of polyester rather than the contamination problems of polyester PLUS the contamination problems of nylon.

In reply to elsewhere:
a fair point well made