Lifespan of a sling

Out of curiosity, whens a good time to resling your cams purely on age?  I get outside once a month so wear-wise my cams can probably last at least 5+years and is not really a concern of mine.

Thanks.  Do any companies resling totems?

DMM cams, and many brands of slings are often rated at 10 years. Other manufacturers say 5 or 5-8 years. Personally I go up to 10 years as long as it's otherwise in good condition.

I have cams on my rack I use and fall on that were slung in the 90s, climbed on a couple of times, and taken back out of the closet 2 years ago.  They seem to hold falls okay.

Check out How not to highline. They do testing on old cams. ropes, slings, etc. Really puts some faith into gear for me. 

I have some used cams from the early 2000s that have original slings cause they look fine. From what I have read, nylon is one helluva of a material. 

It depends a lot on the material.  If it's dyneema, they probably need to be replaced sooner than pure nylon slings.  (like half the lifespan or less depending on use)  It wasn't a cam, but I had one of these: backcountrygear.com/contact… tested that I had used for anchoring for two years and it broke at 5kn.  Their rated strength is 22 kn and while it looked used, it didn't have any specific wear that looked sketchy.

Max Tepfer wrote:

It depends a lot on the material.  If it's dyneema, they probably need to be replaced sooner than pure nylon slings.  (like half the lifespan or less depending on use)  It wasn't a cam, but I had one of these: backcountrygear.com/contact… tested that I had used for anchoring for two years and it broke at 5kn.  Their rated strength is 22 kn and while it looked used, it didn't have any specific wear that looked sketchy.

Damn! Really? That's the worst testing result I've heard of yet. Making me reconsider using any skinny dyneema on my rack. 

The fibers in skinny dyneema slings break down much faster than nylon. Dyneema should be replaced significantly more frequently than nylon.

Max Tepfer wrote:

It depends a lot on the material.  If it's dyneema, they probably need to be replaced sooner than pure nylon slings.  (like half the lifespan or less depending on use)  It wasn't a cam, but I had one of these: backcountrygear.com/contact… tested that I had used for anchoring for two years and it broke at 5kn.  Their rated strength is 22 kn and while it looked used, it didn't have any specific wear that looked sketchy.

For the 2 years, was it pre-tied (like quad or something) or were you tying a knew knot every time you needed an anchor?

I was mostly using it as a quad and would untie and retie the limiting knots pretty much every day.  (there were probably 5-10 days over the two year period where I got lazy)  That being said, I was consistently tying the knots in more or less the same place due to where I like the bartack to locate on the quad.

Max Tepfer wrote:

It depends a lot on the material.  If it's dyneema, they probably need to be replaced sooner than pure nylon slings.  (like half the lifespan or less depending on use)  It wasn't a cam, but I had one of these: backcountrygear.com/contact… tested that I had used for anchoring for two years and it broke at 5kn.  Their rated strength is 22 kn and while it looked used, it didn't have any specific wear that looked sketchy.

Do you have a photo of what the 5kn sling looked like when you tested it?

I don't unfortunately.  I gave it to a friend who works at Metolius and I think he threw it away after breaking it.