UKC

I've gor a 10mm Tendon smart rope and I'm having real difficulties with the rope constantly twisting as is goes through the belay device cuasing problems when leading. It doesn't seem to make a differnance whether I use a stitch plate or a gri gri and Im pretty sure I take out any twists as I coil the rope. Anyone else had bother? Any advice greatly appreciated.

In reply to nik king:

Bin it
Buy a new one
Uncoil it properly before first use
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58ViRJmU2NI&feature=plcp

In reply to Mr Lopez:

I don't think that video is correct - he pulls off loop after loop that has been coiled (with an inherrent twist) rather than laid (no twist).

Some ropes come coiled, some come laid. The rope he is demonstrating has been coiled. You can see the effect of this as he pulls it through the quickdraw - lots of little pigtails that put a spiral into the rope.

If you reverse coil it (turn the coil of rope round and round, feeding the rope off) then you take all the kinks out and you don't get the pigtails in the rope. One cursory pull through is all it takes to make it good to go.

From then on, NEVER coil it - always lay it alpine style or stack it in a heap on a rope sheet (with both ends tied off to prevent knots)

badly spiralled ropes are more a case of prevention than cure IMO.

In reply to Landy_Dom:

Like the middle section of this Beal video:

youtube.com/watch?v=GkJIrmMj6lM&

Hopefully clearer than my earlier wordy explaination...

In reply to Landy_Dom:
thanks, useful vid.
That voiceover is something else though!

In reply to nik king:
is the rope quite new?
Just flake out the whole thing through your hands 5 or 6 times, from one end to the other and back, smoothing out any kinks as it goes.

In reply to nik king:

After finishing your next few leads, pull the rope through the top anchor rather than pulling it back on the belay end. Take your time and shake out the free hanging ends of the rope. Normally works to get rid of all the kinks.

CB

In reply to nik king: A good shake out of a high window works as well

In reply to Sharp:

Or drag it across a field once or twice.

In reply to nik king:

It is possible to cause long term problems with a rope which leads it to always be twisty no matter what you do. This can happen when you lower-off or top-rope a route using two anchors that are side-by-side and where the threaded rings are at an angle to each other. This causes massive twisting in the rope as you take-in and lower and you can recognise it by the coiled spring that appears when you release the full-body-weight tension on the rope.

In these circumstances I think the outer rope gets twisted on its own core and when that happens the rope will usually always be twisting no matter what you do. I have had this happen to a couple of ropes over the years to an extent - they remained useable but were always a bit of a pain.

This is an observation based on experience instead of a fact proven by experimentation and I'd welcome a more educated account of what might happen here.

The lesson (not that it helps you much in this case) is be very careful when you thread lower-offs that the rope can run smoothly without twisting. If it does twist then stop and sort it out before doing a full weight lower on it.

Alan

In reply to nik king:

I'm sorry I think you've got the wrong guy. I don't own tendon ropes.