BD's stainless crampons vs. good old chromoly

So the need has arisen to buy some new toys! An excellent excuse to feed the overwhelming hunger to buy new things instilled in me by being raised American. I need a set of mountaineering crampons, and BD's stainless ones pique my curiosity.

Being a welder, and fairly familiar with metals, my first reaction to stainless crampons is that they are probably very pretty. Unfortunately, that's the only advantage I see, at first. Stainless in general is much softer than chromoly steel, although there are certainly some very tough stainless alloys available.

As for the green-ness of stainless, I'm not convinced that mining, smelting, and alloying all the extra Chromium is any less toxic than a few square inches of paint. The weight isn't a swing factor either, the chromoly 'pons I'm looking at are lighter.

-My question to dangle out there in cyberspace is: Does anyone have a full season of use on these things? On mixed terrain including rock?

As negative as I sound, if their toughness compares, I would be pretty excited to try these things out.

I have the BD Cyborg Pros for over a year now, but with limited action (about 10 days). So far no problems with durability, but the toe bail has the tendency to loosen side to side with my La Sportiva Nepal's (which is not a issue with other crampons) and a reason why I am a bit skittish about using them. I am considering replacing the Cyborg toe bails with Grivel's which fit my boots without problems.

The Cyborg's front points are chromolly and the rest of the frame is stainless steel, if that makes a difference...

Dane at Cold Thistle has blogged on this very topic of stainless vs chromoly steel:

coldthistle.blogspot.com/20…

In general I think that the BD Cyborg is a good design, versatile in being able to switch from mono to duo front points and if it wasn't for the front boot-fit, they would be my main crampon. Perhaps with a real full season I will have better indication of durability.

Good luck with your choice.

Two full seasons on my cyborgs so far. The real advantage of stainless is that it is way more resistant to rust. However, two key parts are still standard cromoly: the front points and the bolt holding it on. Doesn't matter much for the points, but the bolt rusts like crazy; likely exacerbated by galvanic corrosion. The crampons don't come with replacement bolts.

shoo wrote:Two full seasons on my cyborgs so far. The real advantage of stainless is that it is way more resistant to rust. However, two key parts are still standard cromoly: the front points and the bolt holding it on. Doesn't matter much for the points, but the bolt rusts like crazy; likely exacerbated by galvanic corrosion. The crampons don't come with replacement bolts.

You can get stainless hardware at McMaster Carr.

That cold thistle article has me wondering: has anyone rockwell tested their crampons? It wouldn't tell us everything, but hardness does roughly correlate with strength. If the stainless models are significantly softer than the previous generation, it would be a good indicator of decreased wear resistance.

I'm not by any means against the use of stainless as a viable alternative to tool steel. I make a lot of knives from Crucible's excellent CPM154 stainless, and I find it's performance to be better than most standard tool steels (at a considerably higher cost). That said, I do know that the vast majority of stainless alloys significantly compromise desirable characteristics in exchange for corrosion resistance and low cost.

Phillip

Ray Pinpillage wrote: You can get stainless hardware at McMaster Carr.

I am aware that I can replace them with standard hardware store parts. It's still irritating that I have to go out to track down a replacement part of something that should have been up to spec in the first place, and if not, should have come with replacements.

That being said, they are a pretty great piece of kit. Been very happy with them overall.

check out Dane Burns blog, coldthistle, he has a pretty good blog post regarding stainless vs. chromoly.

coldthistle.blogspot.com/20…

shoo wrote: I am aware that I can replace them with standard hardware store parts. It's still irritating that I have to go out to track down a replacement part of something that should have been up to spec in the first place, and if not, should have come with replacements. That being said, they are a pretty great piece of kit. Been very happy with them overall.

MCM fasteners are as much "standard hardware store parts" as the fasteners that BD sources.

It all depends on the alloy they use, and if their plant has a good supplier with constant monitoring of what they receive is what they're paying for.

Good stainless, equivalent to CrMo is probably more expensive

what alloy are CrMo crampons anyways?
AISI 4130?

stainless alloy used?
329 410 414 420 431 440?

I have about 30 days use on snow/alpine ice climbs with fairly liberal use on rock as well as 20 or so full pitches of ice on a set of stainless sabretooths. I have about 1200m worth of rock climbing in them as well.

In my experience they have held up very well. Compared to the G14's they replaced, they stay sharp a little longer which I would attribute to thicker metal on the points themselves. Grivel's metal is much harder and more durable, just less thick.

The reality is, most people using non-aluminum crampons will rarely wear out the bottom points unless you get out a LOT more than I do or keep your crampons for more than 2 seasons. The metal on the SS sabretooths is quite thick.

I am 155lbs and climb almost exclusively on limestone or shitty shale. On granite I'd imagine a larger difference in durability with chromoly.

I hadn't seen the Dane's blog post, thanks for the link. He pretty much confirmed most of my thoughts. Also the Grivel link he posted is full of good info.

Grivel mentions it, and it can't be ignored: Stainless steels were developed to solve corrosion issues, not strength issues. Most stainless alloys work harden faster than carbon and cromoly steels. I would imagine this is the cause for the cracked crampons in Dane's article.

Although it's true that under most circumstances stainless doesn't rust, I have seen marine grade stainless corrode catastrophically. To be fair, it was in a marine environment, the materials engineer's worst nightmare.

Chromoly it is for me then. Thanks for everyone's input.

The Cold Thistle blog post is great, but a longish read. Here's the Grivel link mentioned there, and while they are not impartial of course, everything sounds spot-on to me and I think it's a great concise overview:

http://www.grivel.com/company/inox_vs_nicromo

6 year old resolved thread

Auden Alsop wrote:

6 year old resolved thread

How come anytime someone posts on an old thread, some smartass likes to make a snide comment that contributes absolutely nothing of value to anyone? 

You do understand that the purpose of a forum is not just for the OP to have their question answered, but for other people who have the same question or are curious to learn from the thread as well? And you understand that there is a search function, with which one can search on a topic and find relevant information regardless of how old the thread is?

I was searching for information about the pros and cons of stainless steel in crampons, and this was the most relevant thread. I found this thread useful, and the link that was buried in the other link posted here was especially useful to me, and so having that link posted directly seemed useful, because I would have found that useful.

Sheesh, some of you guys act like you're forced to read every thread that gets bumped to the top and if it's an old thread you get offended.. If seeing old threads resurface actually bothers you, perhaps you should spend less time on MP. If you have nothing useful to contribute, keep it to yourself and troll somewhere else.

I stand corrected. I'm just saying, it seems like the OP got his question answered pretty well, and maybe if someone wanted to put up new info they could start a new thread? I don't know, whatever works.

Stainless doesn’t rust as easily but seems like it has to be sharpened more than my petzls. Pick you’re poison I guess