Palomar knot/reslinging old BD cams

Has anyone out there with one of those fancy load cells/pull rigs tested the palomar knot in climbing applications, with climbing materials?

I use it often for (big fish) fishing, with monofilament, and it is purportedly a 90% strength knot. It is also (deceptively) simple to tie, and compact.

I recently reslung some old BD cams (no thumb loop) with short dyneema runners (and that topic has been beaten to death, so don’t tell me I’m gonna die, I’ve already read it all), and it occurred to me that a palomar with a slightly longer sewn sling might be good for this application if you didn’t want to girth/larkshead or basket hitch.

Single sample test, not real science, liability disclaimed, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Tossed some nylon/nylon small diameter accessory cord on the tensile tester. The difference between the Palomar and the Girth Hitch was about 1% of the total breaking strength. Who knows what it'll do in Dyneema slings, but based on my experience with Dyneema, I'd guess it'd break similarly to, and maybe a little bit less than, a regular girth hitch.

Basket hitch will be significantly stronger. Does the difference in strength between a girth-hitched Dyneema sling and a basket-hitched one matter in that application? That's up to you.

Thanks. Interesting. Any thoughts about why the palomar is so much stronger when using monofilament? And not when using other materials? I’m actually fine with using a girth, like in the first photo (which I can easily convert to a basket on the fly), but the possibility of a palomar, and its reported (and anecdotally observed by me) strength in mono got me thinking about its potential applications for climbing.

I’d be very interested to see other tests in other materials like dyneema etc.

Monofilament is one single fiber, so it behaves very differently. Most knot efficiencies in climbing materials are pretty subjective anyway. Much of the testing is done with new materials, and there're tons of variables that can affect the results, so take them with a grain of salt. Security of a knot is often a more important consideration than strength.

Gotcha. I was thinking about dyneema, and other “slippery” cords/tapes perhaps behaving more like mono, maybe. And the palomar being tied on a bight, facilitating the use of a sewn sling, intrigued me.

Like I said, I’m fine with my current girth/basket hitch set-up, aside from the obviously possible user error. I’ll use them, but probably not loan them out.

Edit to note: there is no way I can see that a palomar could come untied in this situation/application, once lightly set. A girth or basket very easily could.

Why don't you just send the cam in to a guy like Luke at runoutcustoms or Larry at mtn tools and have them properly reslung?  

Skot Richards wrote: Why don't you just send the cam in to a guy like Luke at runoutcustoms or Larry at mtn tools and have them properly reslung?  

OP has already done it - read the 1st post in the thread