Bolted anchor biner replacement

kennoyce wrote: That seems like a pain to me, my only experience with ramshorns comes from climbing in Germany, and at least there, I only ever saw a single ramshorn with seems sufficient for lowering off to me. Using double just seems like it would be awkward to use. Calling Jim Titt, any good reason for using double ramshorns?

Only if you´re dealing with existing bolts installed horizontally, even then I´d just put one in a bolt and connect to the other with a chain as a back-up. I´ve never fitted two on a route myself and never used them like this either. Given how ductile titanium is I´d prefer to see two up there though, we struggle with stainless to get acceptable performance before they bend open and Grade 2 Ti is like soft cheese compared with 316L.

Despite John´s optimism you´ll have no trouble finding comments like;- "However, titanium and titanium alloys generally exhibit poor fretting, wear resistance, and tribological properties even when sliding against softer materials." if one reviews the literature and the poor abrasion resistance of Titanium is well known. As Martin has pointed out using a standard abasive wear test ASTM G65 which is a rubber wheel and silica sand and is realistically fairly near (as far as the ASTM tests get) to a dirty climbing rope grade 2 Titanium wears twice as fast as 316 stainless. The limited amount of testing we´ve done backs this up but Martin may have done some more extensive research.
However pigtails are cheap, simple, have no mechanically joined parts, moving parts or welds so work well no matter what they are made of.

Jim Titt wrote: Only if you´re dealing with existing bolts installed horizontally, even then I´d just put one in a bolt and connect to the other with a chain as a back-up. I´ve never fitted two on a route myself and never used them like this either. Given how ductile titanium is I´d prefer to see two up there though, we struggle with stainless to get acceptable performance before they bend open and Grade 2 Ti is like soft cheese compared with 316L. Despite John´s optimism you´ll have no trouble finding comments like;- "However, titanium and titanium alloys generally exhibit poor fretting, wear resistance, and tribological properties even when sliding against softer materials." if one reviews the literature and the poor abrasion resistance of Titanium is well known. As Martin has pointed out using a standard abasive wear test ASTM G65 which is a rubber wheel and silica sand and is realistically fairly near (as far as the ASTM tests get) to a dirty climbing rope grade 2 Titanium wears twice as fast as 316 stainless. The limited amount of testing we´ve done backs this up but Martin may have done some more extensive research. However pigtails are cheap, simple, have no mechanically joined parts, moving parts or welds so work well no matter what they are made of.

Thanks Jim, based on your information, it seems like a single stainless ramshorn is the best way to go, now I wonder where I could get such a contraption;)

bolt-products.com/SinglePoi…

eli poss wrote: Have you asked Titan to make them? It seems to me that Titan would be more likely to do so because they are already in the business of Titanium and they seem to be more concerned with sustainability than profit. On the other hand, they may not because they already make the ramshorns which the biners would compete with. I'd ask them myself but I thought it may be more effective if someone well known or familiar to them did so. And as for the issue of using clips/ramshorns rather than simple rings or quicklinks, they are very nice when it starts raining on you while you're climbing

What we are all about here at Titan Climbing is the most sustainable solutions possible and that is reflected in every product we design and manufacture. Products are sold at very reasonable prices, all profit is ploughed back in to buy greater quantities of raw materials to lower purchasing costs and to buy better machinery to make products more efficiently.
There's a lot more 'doing it for love' than 'doing it for profit' here!

I have given a lot of thought about Titanium biners and it seemed best to have a 'clip and go' kind of anchor that didn't have any moving parts to seize, hence the Ram's Horns. Ram's Horns also have two 10mm diameter bars to wear through so should last twice as long as a biner made of the same material of the same size.
We will make Titanium biners eventually but it's not a priority right now as they just don't last as long.

To offer an answer to the train of thought that asks "why use two when one is sufficient?"... My opinion, when it comes to safety, is why take the chance when you don't have to? If a person takes a very small chance quite often then they are more likely to end up splattered than a person that takes fewer risks... simple. We are only talking about the cost of a few drinks in the pub here.
Redundancy wherever possible.
Do it once and do it right.

I would always use two Ram's Horns as below...

Titanium Ram's Horns from Titan Climbing

The rope does not twist as the back prongs of the Ram's Horns touch the rock stopping them from twisting

Jim Titt wrote: Only if you´re dealing with existing bolts installed horizontally, even then I´d just put one in a bolt and connect to the other with a chain as a back-up. I´ve never fitted two on a route myself and never used them like this either. Given how ductile titanium is I´d prefer to see two up there though, we struggle with stainless to get acceptable performance before they bend open and Grade 2 Ti is like soft cheese compared with 316L. Despite John´s optimism you´ll have no trouble finding comments like;- "However, titanium and titanium alloys generally exhibit poor fretting, wear resistance, and tribological properties even when sliding against softer materials." if one reviews the literature and the poor abrasion resistance of Titanium is well known. As Martin has pointed out using a standard abasive wear test ASTM G65 which is a rubber wheel and silica sand and is realistically fairly near (as far as the ASTM tests get) to a dirty climbing rope grade 2 Titanium wears twice as fast as 316 stainless. The limited amount of testing we´ve done backs this up but Martin may have done some more extensive research. However pigtails are cheap, simple, have no mechanically joined parts, moving parts or welds so work well no matter what they are made of.

Jim is such a nice guy that he emailed me a drawing of his bending jig for Ram's Horns a couple of years ago so thanks for that Jim :-)
I didn't use it for a few reasons but thanks anyway.

Grade 2 Titanium is more ductile than 316 Stainless and that allows me to bend it tighter, a tighter bend means more work hardening and thus an increase in strength and the tighter radius means that our 10mm Ram's horns releases rope at about 15kN.
It's not "soft as cheese".
Wear resistance is a very complicated and unpredictable thing, sometimes counter intuitive. From memory, the ASTM G65 rubber wheel and sand test stated that material loss was twice as quick with titanium than stainless, I can't remember exactly but Grade 2 titanium is significantly more wear resistant than Grade 5 (Grade 5 is over twice the tensile strength of grade 2). Counter intuitive as Grade 5 is also much harder than Grade 2.

As John Byrnes mentioned, all anchors on Cayman Brac have two bolts and they just thread rope through the eyes of the bolts. After 15 years there's no measurable wear after all that time, just polishing where the rope runs - granted, they are not the most frequently climbed routes on the planet but clearly they have seen some action in 15 years and show no wear at all!

Titanium anchor rings have been in use in Thailand for a couple of years now and they are used by climbing schools all day, every day. They belay from the
sand with pretty old dirty ropes and there's no wear on those rings either.

Wear resistance really is a tricky thing to predict. Think about this... use a normal file on a block of rubber and use the same file on a block of steel... Which will wear fastest? It's not what most people would expect!

How about lets try a few pairs of Titanium and a pair of Stainless Ram's Horns on the most frequently climbed routes that you guys know about and ask that on these routes only, everybody should not use their own quickdraws but always use the Ram's Horns?

Martin Roberts wrote: How about lets try a few pairs of Titanium and a pair of Stainless Ram's Horns on the most frequently climbed routes that you guys know about and ask that on these routes only, everybody should not use their own quickdraws but always use the Ram's Horns?

Yes, we should try a pair of Ti Ram's Horns and a pair of SS Ram's Horns on two of Rumney's 5 most popular routes. I hesitate to ask people not to use their own draws on these two "Specials" as they normally should. The reason is pretty simple; we do not want people to do the same (not using their own draws) on the other 500+ routes at Rumney! Fear not, the traffic is so heavy at Rumney that we see significant wear on SS clippies on most popular routes after just two years even though these should only be used for lowering off the last person of a party. DQ and Smitty have replaced a large number of anchors the past few years due to wear and tear.

wouldn't it be better to put one SS and one Ti on each anchor so that they both get wear every time someone lowers off? that would control the variable of popularity.

eli poss wrote:wouldn't it be better to put one SS and one Ti on each anchor so that they both get wear every time someone lowers off? that would control the variable of popularity.

Great idea to have one of each material at each lower-off. They would need to be at almost exactly the same heights though to ensure similar wear as best as possible. The highest Ram's horn of the two would see the highest potential for wear and this would increase with the increase of a height difference.

The Ram's Horns would also need to be made of the same diameter bar - I only make Ram's Horns from 10mm bar by the way.
Also, just one anchor would not be very scientific at all. The greater the quantity the better. I would suggest at least 10 pairs but ideally more to have some significant results.

To make things as comparable as possible, half the lower-offs should have Titanium Ram's Horns on the right hand bolt and the other half of the lower-offs should have Stainless Ram's Horns on the right hand bolt. This is just in case people have a clipping preference or to help negate any other variables not readily obvious.
Both Ram's Horns should be used every time.

This is a very valid test and would be the first of its kind, lets fine tune the details and get it done :-)

The trouble with the ASTM G65 test is that it uses a rubber wheel pressed on to the test material at a particular pressure with a particular sand poured above the rubber wheel.

Although the G65 test should give some indication of wear resistance, it's not so relevant to our application -
We have a nylon rope, not a rubber wheel.
Wheel speed is very different to our rope speed.
We don't have anywhere near the level of abrasive material.
We have a very different pressure.
ASTM G65 is constant and our use is very intermittent.
Heat generated and maintained is very different.

There are far too many variables.

I've thought of doing my own tests for comparison but whatever I think of is just not a 'real life test'. What we are proposing to do here is about as real as it gets.
It just needs enough thought to be as fair and equally comparable as possible.
It also needs a significant quantity to have meaningful results - that quantity will likely be the toughest decision to make