What's wrong with this picture?

This shit needs to be cleaned up. End of story.

Who wants to help out?

For everyone info Sika is a manufaturer mostly of cementitious patching,waterproofing and sealants. I have been working with their products for 15 years in the commercial sealant industry. I know many people use these products for climbing applications but please know how to use them.

The sikadur line is their 2-part epoxys, some being structural and others for cosmetic patching, some semi-rigid, and other moisture tolerable, with self leveling properties. Usually the best for climbing applications is sikadur 22. These products must be mixed properly to achieve full strengh, you cannot just eyeball it, if the ratio is off by 5-10% your adhesion strengh is suspect. Also with the quick setting propeties of epoxies your bonding is time is minimal so dirt and mosture will greatly impede the adhesion.

now in these pictures, it looks to be Sika's floor underlayment adhesive (one of their cheapest products), designed to glue hardwood floors so they don't squeak. This prduct is latex based (waterbased) and has no UV protection therefor is "bleaching" out as seen. This will chalk out and crumble due to these properties.

SikaFlex is their line of polyurethane sealants which are mainly used for the expansion and contraction of buildings. These products have much longer cure times and come as one or two part. One part being a moisture cure (atmospheric) and two part being a chemical cure.
These products are excellent for exterior applications. Two parts, with their chemical cure will "bite" into your substrate better but you have mixing issues again. Polyurethanes are used for dynamically moving applications and is a rubber, they do not develop full strengh for 14-21 days and always remain flexable.

One other point to make is that epoxies although being strong do not accept any movement. Thermal movement on a south facing climb in porous rock could cause cohesive failure in as little as one season (or less). Sikadur 52 is semi rigid, so they say it can move +- 10% but my field use would suggest other wise. This is the product they use in the joints at Home Depot and Walmart floors. Look at those floors, the product is always seperated. These products as designed to cohesively fail rather than adhesivly fail, meaning, that when movement occurs although the bond from the epoxy to the rock is strong the product is designed split in the middle, therfore protecting the joint edges for which it is designed for.

I know this is probabally a little long and rambling but please know what you using if you're going to do this. One, so it doesn't look like those pictures and two, so its safe.

If this wasn't techy or long winded enough then hit me up to talk more. This is what I do for a living and could BS all day about it!!!!

Have fun,climb hard, be safe

Steve

what a choss pile. wall looks too hard for the bolter so they glued on all the choss. why not just bolt on a few plastic holds, bright green is my favorite gym color. where is all the chalk and tick marks?

Green is nice.

Ya this would be much better.

mikewhite wrote: Ya this would be much better.

Killis and Mike,

I am definitely from the trad/wilderness school of thought on ethics, but I am also in no way an ethics Nazi, i.e. I climb a lot of sport and I am cool with 'cleaning' death blocks/flakes etc. off of sport walls as part of the process of putting up a new route. However, it seems like some of the stuff that appears to go on in Utah and Nevada is just crazy. Do Utah and Nevada really have as much gluing/chipping as it would seem? I feel like over the last year or so I have seen a fair amount of pictures of this stuff posted on MP. I am curious just how pervasive this problem is. Really depressing. You would get your hands cut of if you did this kinda thing on Sierra granite. Is that just because we have old school folks in CA or what?

Best.

There are still a fair amount of people putting up new routes in Nevada with old school ethics. Minimal bolts, no glues or fillers, light cleaning and just the removal of death blocks, and no chipping. It's not all bad here.