UKC

Looking for a bit of advice on gear.

I'm gradually building up my trad rack on a very low budget as don't have much cash to spare for gear unfortunately. 

I've got a load of sport quickdraws and I'm wondering whether I could get away with using them on trad routes? Obviously there is the issue of not being able to extend them but other than that are there any major reasons to avoid or would they do for the time being? 

I don't see why not. The danger comes when the short rigid sport draws may lift wires out of placements in some sitiations. An alternative would be to buy some new quick-draw slings and convert your sport draws to trad draws I think you can pick them up for £3 - £4 each.

Michael

For many people there isn't any real difference between sports draws and trad draws. Just use what you have - you'll be fine. Keep an eye out for shops like Rock and Run or Urban Rock that often have five or ten packs of cheap tapes. If you have shorts ones on your current "sports draws", getting some longer length tapes can be handy for trad, but particularly if you have double ropes (or just double the rope you have on smaller cliffs) it's perhaps not as a big issue as you might expect. Another thing to look out for would be some 60 cm slings. You can either take the krabs of some of your sport draws and make alpine style quickdraws with the sling trippled up, or you can just put them over your shoulder should you need to really extend something.

There may be burring on the karabiner at the bolt-end of the draw. 

If you subsequently clip this to a soft materiel (sling, hex, cam etc) it could do as much damage to this as it would to your rope. Potentially manageable if you only ever clip the draws with burrs to nuts, but not really something you want to be having to think about mid way up a route. 

If they’re all ok (or you can separate out enough burr-free ones), then I’d consider that sport draws are normally stiffer, so you may find they are more likely to alter a trad gear placement (because more of the movement of the rope is transferred) than a similar length “trad” draw. This should be manageable as long as you are aware of it though. 

Fingers crossed you have enough without burrs and can get tradding!

Most people designate one end of each extender as the rope end and the other as the gear end (and if they don't they should).

This will either be straight gate for gear and bent gate for rope or by colour, almost all my extenders have a red for rope krab and a blue for bolt (or wire etc) krab. The few krabs which aren't have some electricians tape in these colours on them.

Any burrs on a blue krab aren't a problem when it's clipped into a wire and to be honest even when it's occasionally used to extend a cam sling as it doesn't rub over it in the way that a rope can be dragged some distance over a krab during a fall.

Don't do it, the universe will implode. 

I’ve assumed the OP knows about which end to use since she says she already has a set of sort draws...

Agree with this...

“Any burrs on a blue krab aren't a problem when it's clipped into a wire...”

I don’t agree with this though...

“...and to be honest even when it's occasionally used to extend a cam sling as it doesn't rub over it in the way that a rope can be dragged some distance over a krab during a fall.”

I understand what you mean about the sling not moving in the same way as a rope, but skinny dyneema slings are fragile (although very strong) and I’d be distinctly uncomfortable clipping my bolt end draws with significant burrs to slings (including on cams & hexes).

Seen significant damage to the inside of sturdy indoor in-situ draw tapes as a result of the maillon rapide rotating and putting the burred end in the draw. Admittedly this is a scenario where the loading is consistently in the same place (and probably sees more continuous use than a personal rack) but even so.

Of course occasional use on the trad rack may not cause a catastrophic failure, but if it does nick a cam or hex sling the OP will spend as much or more on re-slinging than they would on a handful of budget snapgates that could be swapped out with the bolt end karabiners for trad climbs  

As others have said they'll be OK on straight routes, assuming your using a single rope here! Preferably you could get just the sling for the draw, as here DMM 25cm x11mm for £5 https://www.v12outdoor.com/view-by-category/rock-climbing-gear/slings-tape-... and use your crabs from your sport draws, I've done this with some old Camp draws of mine. Also get a couple of 60cm slings and use them as alpine draws. Eventually once you've got everything else you'll want to change those crabs for wire ones, as weight on a trad rack is an issue!

..

If there are burrs, which will be pretty obvious, why not just polish them out with some wet and dry?

I have done this. Takes seconds and is very effective.

I think you are overstating the danger. Burrs large/sharp enough to cause damage are easily spotted and easily removed.

If slings were quite as fragile as that we couldn't put them around sharp spikes or rough rock.