the shizzle > chuffing

Cheap bolts & required quality

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spidermonkey09:

--- Quote from: petejh on August 03, 2023, 01:07:46 pm ---
You never need to grind off a ring:

1 Bolt, 1 maillon & ring.
1 Bolt, 1 maillon & ring.
Slightly offset so as not to twist a loaded rope.

The ring never wears through as it doesn't develop a groove to wear (at least not in a lifetime). The maillon (or ring) can be easily replaced if any corrosion develops or there's a batch fault. Not that it ever should in a lifetime if they're good quality SS.


--- End quote ---

You're right; but I've replaced several belays where for some reason the ring was directly on the bolt without the intermediate maillon. They were probably pretty old though; must have been some sort of prefab set? I think with these I just put a whole new belay in and totally removed the old bolts.

I don't disagree with you though, I don't have a problem with rings as long as there's a way of getting them off in the event you need to. Gluing maillons shut seems to defeat the purpose a bit, I haven't done this either.

jwi:
Tangentially, if the belay consists of two independent rings, and the bolts looks ok and not placed by an idiot, I always lower off just one of them regardless of geometry. Because no matter how you place two rings, the rope will always always always twist if you lower off both. I realise that there is no redundancy and I'm only a badly placed bolt away from death, but I do not like twisted ropes, so that is a trade off my near ones have to live with after I died.

petejh:
I suppose at least your loved one would inherit an untwisted rope.

Vertically or offset vertically-aligned rings wont twist the rope, but not many people place like this.

jwi:
In my experience, they do.

kc:
Exactly what Pete says regarding chains.

I'll often install a pair of naked resin bolts at the belay especially for example if the route is in full public view, low traffic, hard, steep or a combination of the above.
 An 8a+ on the left hand side of the Cornice that's only climbable in drought conditions isn't going to get the same abuse handed out by punters in some popular turd quarry top roping directly through the bolts.
 
Something other than strength to consider when selecting maillons is the diameter. There are some pretty skinny well rated maillon rapides available that are great with a resin bolt but these are going to get gouged out on a plate hanger in no time.

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