UKC

I've just bought a 70m Beal rope, and I've always liked the idea of bi-coloured ropes.

So for the likes of Stanage, I was wondering, if any rope marker would be good enough to mark 35m of my 70 with a strip or two, along half it's length.

I could then use is as a half rope and be able to identify one end from the other as in "slack on Stripy".

I'm used to fat ropes since both my others are over 10.5mm so this, I think 9.6mm would be OK, it's very slick so don't have any issues paying out more rope etc.

Anyone used rope marker?

Do you get plenty?

How long does it last?

Is this the worst idea since, "can I make chalk out of self-raising flour?"

With good rope work I.e not twisting them just call them left and right. 

I think this is probably a bad idea. I got in touch with Mammut to ask them about rope markers a little while ago after those tests which showed that beal rope marker weakened ropes by damaging the sheath. They pointed me towards a big standard permanent marker and I old me just to go easy, eg one small mark. All the way down the sheath just sounds like a bad idea.

Any rope marker makes the rope feel slightly stiffer (at least in the short term) as you know from that brief stiff feel when the middle marker on a newish rope goes through your belay device. So I think marking lots of the rope would be a bad idea. As said earlier by Pedro just calling it left and right is really not a problem if both climber and belayer are suitably switched on. 

Whaaat? I hadn't heard about the beal marker weakening the sheath, I have some Googling to do!

I keep seeing the tendon marker advertised, which is in a marker pen format, but when I try to buy one it's always out of stock

In some ways this is a question similar to "when should I retire my rope?"

Some will say rope marker is fine, others will disagree.

Black Diamond did a test using a non-rope specific Sharpie pen.

https://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en_US/stories/experience-story-qc-lab...

Years ago I contacted Beal and asked about using their marker on other ropes and asked if it was OK for my Tendon ropes. They replied it was OK for Beal ropes but might not be OK for other brand ropes. They did say it was OK for my specific Tendon rope.

Some interesting options in the full discussion below.

https://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/comments/4fflwx/best_way_to_mark_your_rop...

Enjoy the climbing whether marked or unmarked.

I thought the issue with the Beal stuff was that it made the rope stiff so if that particular bit was caught on an edge in a fall it would be weaker?

I use the Beal rope marker, but I have Beal ropes. I found if I marked a large area, i.e. over an inch it did make It difficult to handle and get through the belay plate. Easily solved by making several small marks instead.

I thought solvent based pens were meant to be an absolute  no no?

A lot of the confusion here is that not all rope manufacturers have tested their ropes with all the available markers, and, of course, no-one can say that an untested combination is definitely safe.

Beal make a rope marker.  It's a pain to apply and there's not a vast amount in the bottle, but I imagine you could make little circumferential loops around 35m of rope spaced 50cm apart.  It definitely stiffens the rope a little, so I would not want to have long continuous stripes.

Quite a few manufacturers have tested their ropes with Beal's marker; the biggest name who say it's fine are probably Edelweiss.  Mammut are the only one I know of who explicitly say that it cannot be used because they found a weakening effect.

Edelrid say they've never tested it, but they have tested a specific marker pen, the Edding 3000, and that this is fine for their ropes.  I've used this pen on my Edelrid ropes and it's much nicer than the Beal marker - no stiffening effect and a lot neater.  Edelrid carried out the tests in 2015 but say that their ropes haven't changed, and Edding confirmed to me in 2019 that the formula for the marker also hasn't changed.  If I was going to do this again I would get a fresh confirmation from each company that neither of them have altered the chemistry recently.

Cheers, everyone.

It was just a thought and I probably won't.

It was a Beal rope and I'd probably use the Beal marker if I did it. It's already marked in the middle, and you're right it is stiffer there than elsewhere.

Left and Right is good but we often get mixed up with those, I know we shouldn't we're grown men (and women) but it happens. "Move your left foot up about an inch", "You're other left!!"

I've climbed on a half doubled over before and got in a proper mess asking for slack a few time, either because of my terrific rope-work or confusion elsewhere

In conclusion, I'll probably not bother, but if I do I'll let you know.

As a bit of trivia the founder of Edding, Carl-Wilhelm Edding died a couple of weeks ago.

I hope his passing was suitable marked!

Very good.

I have to say, Edding were really helpful - they didn't seem at all taken aback that I was writing in broken German to ask if they'd changed the formula for some random pen, just because another company they'd never heard of had specified it as compatible with their products years before!