New Cobra vs New Viper

These BD tools appear very similar. I have no way to compare them in person. Does anyone know the real differences between these 2 tools other than price and materials? Is one better suited to dry tooling? What about alpine snow and ice climbing? Any difference in water ice performance? Is chipping of the carbon fiber Cobra a real issue? Thanks for any info anyone can give.

Hey, I've had problems cleaning BD picks too. Apparently this is not just my poor technique -- I've had few to no problems when using a friend's quarks.

Not to hijack the thread, but does anyone have any filing tips that have solved this problem for them?

I bevel the sides of the teeth more than BD does in manufacturing which makes the teeth a little narrower and clean A LOT easier but w/o the feeling the pick will slide out.

I think that Doug seems to have wrapped it up pretty well. I own the new vipers and went with them over the cobras due to price. For me I did like the swing of the cobras and the weight. I was not overly concerned with it though. I already own the petzl nomics and I use those if I am concerned with having a light tool. I also use those for hard mixed climbing. I have however enjoyed climbing mixed with the vipers as well.

As to the picks I would have to agree. I just bevel them into more of a V-shape which helps tremendously.

Thanks for all the info. I've used several friends' tools in the past, including old-style Vipers, Quarks, Aztars, Taa-k-oons, and all the models from Camp. I currently own a pair of Camp Awax that my wife is about to inherit. They are very good for those with small hands, but I never liked the balance of them. There was no weight in the head. I've climbed New Hampshire WI5 with them as well as short sections of 80 degree alpine ice and steep snow in the Sierras. I'm headed to Colorado this winter to see what I can accomplish. Anyway, thanks a bunch.

Carbon fiber rules, and I have an old pair of Cobra's for sale. Any takers?? I an now climbing with the Reactor's and love them as well. Wish Santa would bring me some new Cobra's for Christmas. Peace.

Jay man, how much?

Doug Shepherd wrote:I'll take some pictures of what I did to my picks when I get home...

I'd be interested to see these, as I have some Vipers that seemed a little "sticky"

Doug Shepherd wrote: Vipers=625 g (hammer) Cobras=588 g (hammer)

Wow, I'm surprised that's all of the weight difference. I tried the Cobras at the Ouray Ice fest last year, and they felt like they weighed nothing. The Vipers felt like bricks by comparison.... I bought the Vipers though. I'm not made of money. :-)

Doug Shepherd wrote:I'll take some pictures of what I did to my picks when I get home...

close-ups pleese ~thanks doug..! :)

matt maybe I should bring down my tools so you could show me 'file-technique' this weekend..?

(gadds... I can't believe I said I would take these out already)

New Cobras ROCK! The dampening affect, the lightness and balance are far superior to Vipers IMO. Personally, I prefer Nomiccs to everythihg but the Cobras do have the advantage that they are better suited to alpine mixed climbing than the nomics........

JACK

I climbed Martha in less-than-mixed conditions this summer - it was more rock climbing than ice climbing. I really beat up the shafts of my new Cobras on that climb, the outside scratches fairly easily but I don't doubt the structural integrity of them one bit. Now they finally look broken in. If you are not 100% on ice or snow tape them up if you want to prevent scratches.

Edit: I had the old Vipers before these, I found that the swing of the new Cobras was more like the old Viper swing. I love these tools, though.

Jed Pointer wrote:I've hooked vibrometers, accelerometers, etc, up to CF structures for work in the vast and desperate search for the wonder material that is stiff, strong, light and damped. Ice climbers aren't the only ones looking for such a material. I've tried many, many strains of CF. Such a material just doesn't exist.

But aren't some materials better than others? How does one otherwise explain this?



(The picture is taken from this page. The questions are not rhetorical.)

Jed Pointer wrote:As for swing, you'll get used to whatever tool you buy and perhaps later state the swing on it is superior to anything ever made, because, after all, you just blew 400-800 bucks on it. Best freak'n swing ever. I have 4 sets of tools and can swing any of them fine, although it takes a little after I switch between them before I get good sticks.

Man, do I have to disagree on this one big-time. I went through the whole getting new tools thing early last season to upgrade my older Alp Wings which do not perform well on steep ice. I had come across a pair of Taakoons from a friend who had given up climbing, and tried those out a few times. I felt about as upwardly mobile as a tortoise while swinging those things, not because they sucked as a tool, but because the grips were so large for my small hands which changed the way I swung the tool and how long it took for me to pump out. I then ended up trying out all manner of new leashless tools: Reactors = sloppy and huge grips; Vipers = a little heavy and didn't like the picks; Cobras = lighter but same issue with picks and more of a shoulder swing than a wrist swing. I then tried a pair of Nomics and instantly fell in love. Small grips that fit my hands perfectly, light weight with pick weights that could be added in brittle ice conditions, and a steep entry angle that swings best from the wrist, not the shoulder. I have found the latter difference to be a huge boon when it comes to energy conservation (ie. not getting pumped) on long steep hard pitches. Additionally, such a swing (at least in my one full season's experience with the tool) I find to be less susceptable to large-scale fracturing and more likely to 'stick' on the first swing. Two friends I climbed with all last winter (one owned both the new Cobras and Nomics; the other a pair of new Vipers) and who both lead WI6 and M8 agreed with my impressions. BD tools require a slightly more old-school 'drive' swing than the Nomics wristy swing.

Like pretty much anyone you see who owns a pair, I am a proselytizer when it comes to Nomics. The one and only caveat: they have no hammer or spike. Needless to say this is a dealbreaker when it comes to most alpine routes and is why I still use my Alp Wings in circumstances where I may need to bash pins; though at this point I've been contemplating bringing along a third tool with a hammer (and just dealing with the extra weight) because the Nomics are such a superior tool to my Alp Wings. Anyways, my .02

BTW, I have two Taakoon tools with only four days of use on them and in like-new if anyone is interested.

Thanks brenta, as usual, you are the MechE guru. Another way to think about this is to imagine a carbon fiber (vs. steel or bronze) bell. I don't think that a CF bell would have much of a ring to it (more of a thud in fact) thus, in my gedankenexperiment, it would be more "damp."

Perhaps it's just a problem of using a specialist term in a generalist context?

Certainly there are resins used in carbon fiber compositing which is probably where the damping comes from (sort of a pasticizer). I can also verify from personal experience that CF bike frames transmit much less energy to my body than steel or aluminum.

Anyway, I echo pretty much all of what dps and Jack have said. I used the old Vipers for many years before the new Cobras. The swing is ***very*** different IMHO - the new Cobra's much snappier and more similar to the swing required for Moser tools like the Quark. In my personal experience, it's not any more shoulder than the Nomic - the Nomic is just different (I like 'em too and have had the same thought about carrying a small 3rd tool!).

I had hyooooj problems with sticky placements when I first started using them (new Cobras). Part of the problem was from over-driving due to improper swing for the tool, but more was the crappy Laser picks that BD was shipping last year. Virtually no bevel on the teeth! They used to be plug 'n play but no more (grrrr...) Aggressive filing mostly fixed the problem plus adapting my swing to the tool. Over time, I also "flattened" the angle of the first tooth (more out, less down) which has also helped getting first-swing sticks and thus less prone to over-driving. When BD increased the clearance, I'm not sure they re-examined/matched the pick geometry quite right.

Last nit is that the micro-hammers SUCK-*SS for driving pins. I never imagined there would be any difference at all - boy was I surprised! I tried it ONCE - I think the heel of my hand would have been more effective and faster - then put the old-style hammers on. Yeah they're heavier but if I don't expect to drive pins I might as well use my Nomics!

Doug Shepherd wrote: If you want to give the Cobras a try before buying, let me know when you'll be out here in CO.

Thanks a ton, but I've gotta pick 'em up by the end of November for affordability reasons. I'm coming out there in January probably. My wife and I have a wedding to go to in Aruba (paid for by others =D) in December. Apparently there is sport climbing there on a north facing beach area called the Grapefield, so we're taking a rope.

kirra wrote: close-ups pleese ~thanks doug..! :) matt maybe I should bring down my tools so you could show me 'file-technique' this weekend..? (gadds... I can't believe I said I would take these out already)

I can show you what I have done with my vipers. It's pretty straight forward and easy to do.

I have not had my vipers out since June when I was up in RMNP doing some Alpine stuff but I have been dry tooling with my nomics to stay strong. I can't wait to hit up some mixed stuff here soon.

I have to agree with what people are saying about the nomics being a real wristy swing and the vipers a more full swing. I climb without the weights on my nomics and feel like I can still swing with just a light flick. That has helped me with the vipers and not getting them buried. Even after some good filling if you swing too hard you will get them stuck. It sounds like some of you could use to swing a little softer.

Anyone see the nomic "wings" that were created for the snow mushrooms on the Torre Traverse. Goes to show if you get a little creative you can do anything with those tools. A friend of mine gave me a Petzl cd with some footage of the Traverse which shows the wings on the nomics. Here is the Youtube link.
youtube.com/watch?v=pGlnBaq…

I have climbed on both tools and I like the Viper better on ice and rock. Even a better choice would be the BD Reactors. They climb better than both of the other tools with less of a pump factor and are a fair bit cheaper. I put titan pics on them and they work great on ice and rock. The factory B picks on all three of those tools suck and bend up quickly.

Jed Pointer wrote:Those plots and the link have so little information I'm not sure one can conclude much, certainly not damping. The thing is that the carbon design in this case is likely stiffer, so strain should be near zero - or at least I would certainly hope if they are making a driveshaft out of it. That is what the plot is - strain. CF can't be strained much, it will crack. ie, you are not looking at the classical "ring out" of a displacement vs time plot. So as I said, it's not damping. Even if it was, that isn't a plot of it.

Those plots clearly show two damped oscillations. The one on the left is more damped than the one on the right--given that the timescale is the same. The plots are of strain (which is displacement) versus time. So, why do you say it's not damping? Maybe we need to clarify definitions. Physical oscillators are damped whenever there is dissipation of energy and no forcing term.

For a simple second order system, with a spring and a dashpot in parallel, you write an equation like this:

x'' + 2 lambda x' + mu x = 0 ,

where both lambda and mu are nonnegative. Then damped oscillations occur if lambda > 0 and lambda^2 - mu < 0. Lambda controls the amount of damping. For vibrations in viscoelastic materials, stiffness determines mu and internal viscous friction determines lambda. For higher order, more realistic models things get more complicated--you've got to look at the eigenvalues of 3x3 or larger matrices--but the principles are the same.

I'm sure you know all this and much more. I bring it up to make it clear why I see damping is those plots.

Jed Pointer wrote:A CF bell won't ring not because of damping, but because it doesn't bend and displace like metal, therefore no soundwave propagation.

If the difference were just greater stiffness, wouldn't the bell just ring at a higher frequency?

Jed Pointer wrote:...The thing is that the carbon design in this case is likely stiffer, so strain should be near zero - ... So as I said, it's not damping....

I have to agree with Jed on this one. I run computer analysis simulations of composite structures under dynamic loading for a career. Damping plays a critical role in the survivability of these structures. These analyses are always verified by shake test after we build the parts. I always run into the problem that composites structures have very low damping.

The driveshaft on that website was probably stiffer and lighter than the metal one, giving it a higher natural frequency. Thus it can spin faster before it wobbles. Maybe the website used the word damping to dumb this down for a general audience.

I have never seen a carbon fiber bell but I'll bet you could build one. I have seen a composite parabolic dish ring on the shake table, it gets loud and you cross your fingers. Most of the material I work with is so stiff and thin it will not vibrate like a bell. Try making aluminum foil ring, or tap the bodywork on your car.

mschlocker wrote: The driveshaft on that website was probably stiffer and lighter than the metal one, giving it a higher natural frequency. Thus it can spin faster before it wobbles.

That is very likely, but the timescale is the same in the two plots. The frequency also looks the same for the two vibrations; hence, it may be far from the natural frequency for one of them--presumably the composite. That may explain the difference in damping.