UKC

When did they go metric and when did an 8 foot sling mean it has a 16 foot circumference?

In reply to JIMBO:

A bit of a history lesson here...

The reason the eight foot (circumference) sling AKA a metric 120 cm (in diameter) is called an eight foot sling is that you needed eight foot of rope or tape to knot your own. This was the normal practise until around the mid nineteen eighties when sewn slings started to become more common. The name has stuck in many quarters and in many of the more recent instructional books causing absolute confusion over the years between metric and imperial! This resulted in the production of the sixteen foot sling. So the story goes that a batch of eight foot slings were ordered by an outdoor center but converted into metric at 240 cm by the manufacturer and hence the new sixteen foot sling was produced!!!

Cheers Ron

In reply to Ron Walker: Well confusion remains - a spade is a spade but an 8 foot sling is 16 foot sling!

In reply to JIMBO:

Originally everything was measured by the length of tape or rope needed to make the sling (roughly the circumference) but nowadays with sewn slings in Europe it's the length of the sewn sling that's given (diameter) The orginal 8 foot sling is actually 4 feet in diameter which is roughly the same as the metric 120 cm.... As for America...
In the UK 1 metre (100 cm) is roughly 39 inches which is the same as 3 feet 3 inches or the same as 1 yard 3 inches. In the past we measured the length of material nowadays we measure the length of the sewn sling.
Yes all very confusing!

In reply to JIMBO:

I only have two types: long (over the shoulder twice) and short (over the shoulder once). Plus some random very long thing made of tape for abseils. Much less confusing than worrying about metric.

In reply to JIMBO:

I don't actually see what the imperial/metric conversion has to do with any of this? The confusion is surely over circumference vs clipped-length wheter that's given in feet or centimeters.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

>The confusion is surely over circumference vs clipped-length wheter that's given in feet or centimeters

Yup, I have no idea what to ask for on the web due to being used to length of sling being the norm int' old days.

In reply to sutty:
These days its always the length of the sewn sling, rather than the length of the webbing ie: diameter not circumference. So the equivalent of an 8 foot sling would be 120cm, not 240.

In reply to deepsoup:

Well the ones I was thinking of were the dyneema ones used instead of QDs as I hate them to the point of giving some away I bought in a job lot of unused gear. They stop or reduce the risk of krabs flipping and take up less room and are lighter.

Now I know, you measure this;

(_________________<120>______________)

In reply to sutty: Metric/imperial has nothing much to do with it but wondered really if the circumference to 1/2 circumference (as technically it isn't diameter) occurred at the same time and nobody told me! It is annoying when standard jargon is changed when it was perfectly adequate in the first place. Maybe I'm getting old! Hope they just stick with the new definition now for ever... it isn't make specific is it, i.e. are Wild Country and DMM 120cm slings the same length?

In reply to JIMBO:

It gets worse... off top roping or is it bottom roping or is it a bottom roped top rope

In reply to JIMBO:

as far as i am aware it is,

the understanding i have got used to now is if it is metric it is 1/2 circumfrence and if it is imperial it is circumfrence

i had not noticed any brands doing different

In reply to Ron Walker: no...its a toproped bottom!!