In reply to IainWhitehouse:
> Dry treatments on the core or whole rope certainly do improve the internal characteristics of ropes and do change the number of falls they can suffer in UIAA testing.
> But............the abrasion resistance thing is a total urban myth. Circa 1 micron of teflon or similar fluorocarbon will not matter a Gnats chuff to abrasion resistance on rock. If it did, we could all scour our non-stick pans with anything we liked and they would be fine.
Hi Iain,
I am happy to bow to your superior knowledge on this one, however there are certainly a lot of brands which 'claim' increased abrasion resistance following their dry treatments so 'urban' myth it isn't. Also, in our testing of these ropes we found the slicker ropes were less likely to pick up dirt and it is the dirt in the ropes that causes the abrasion. Whether this slickness was due to the dry treatment or (more likely) tighter weave is debatable.
Alan