UKH

I'm looking to replace my old ice screws. 

Currently looking at the Petzl Laser Speed light or the BD ultralight screws, although I'm still undecided and may just go for the extended durability (and cheaper) Petzl Laser Speed. 

Has anyone used the two light weight ones, what are your thoughts?

This is not so much a comment on BD vs Petzl in their light forms as their teeth. IMO the Petzl teeth and hangers are better in just about every way. I just spend 8 days climbing compact waterfall ice on a mix of old BD screws, new BD screws, Old Grivel 360's and new 360's, and a Petzl Laser speed. The petzl was by far the easiest to start, retained it's teeth better (the BD's were blunt by the the end and IMO a liability...) and the hanger was less problematic to get into small niches in the ice to reach deeper ice. Infact so much so that I plan on selling my BD's. As ever I was also impressed with the grivels for hard to reach ice, especially with the new hanger which racks so much better than the old ones as they have finally accepted racking biners on your harness rather than pan pipes or some other type of monstrosity. I have no experience of using th lightweight screws in earnest so cant comment properly on those, other than that they have the same tooth profiles...

Hmmm, do you not think it's just 90% how good nick the teeth are in? I've not tried the new Petzl ones, but generally I've found all new comparable screws much of muchness when new. 

Not really because I was comparing the petzl to brand new BD's. In addition when you look at the profile they are so much more aggressive that you can see why they don't start as well - when you rotate the peztl back and forth it digs in deeper and literally crunches out the ice, whilst if the BD's are even vaguely blunt they just don't go in and you have to press down on them like crazy. This is even after having had the BD's professionally reground on one of the Grivel machines, i.e. restoring them to their former glory... I guess what I'm getting at is sure, when they are brand new all is good, it's once you've blunted them and I found the BD's got progressively worse through the week (that was across 8 screws) whilst the Petzl was my go to screw whilst I was papping myself as it just went in, closely followed by the grivels...

What are your old screws? Also, what do you plan to use them for? I ask this because I still believe that the BD Turbo Express is still the best all-round screw out there. If weight isn't the biggest concern then I would consider these as they are so much more durable and place like saints when you need it. They also come in at a very reasonable price in gear bundle deals. TBF I was lugging up to 14 of these screws up icefalls for years and the weight never really an issue. I've only played around with the BD Ultralights a little in comparison to the Petzl screws and personally I wouldn't go for the BD screws right now, but here's some of my thoughts...

I would be tempted by the BD Ultralights due to their thread profile and wider range of lengths in comparison to the Petzl screws. The BD screws look like they have a longer tip but actually the amount of steel that can be re-sharpened is pretty similar. These screws are relatively new for this season so we don't know yet how well they stand up to abuse. E.g. the wire handle looks flimsy as hell and not great for cranking into wet sticky ice, it seems like a potentially unnecessary point of failure. The Petzl screws suffered with serious failures at the tip, who knows BD screws might do the same. It could be worth waiting a season to get good feedback. They also don't rack as nicely as the Turbo Express. The alloy hanger is quite thick, so despite racking neater than the laser speed lights they still take up a lot of space on an ice clipper.

Having climbed well over 100 pitches on the Petzl Laser Speed Lights I can say I've been very impressed, so far no issues with failures at the tip or handles breaking off which seems common with friends screws (although they seem to be getting a little loose). The handle issue is due to the little wave washer becoming deformed over time, resulting in a handle that flops about and ultimately breaks off. They also hold the edge on the teeth very well and seem surprisingly resistant when bottoming out. They bite wonderfully and screw relatively easily although they can be a struggle in warm/wet/sticky ice, something I haven't really experienced with other screws. I like the small hanger size as you often don't need to chop out ice to get them up to the hilt, but getting two carabiners onto one screw can be a pain (you get a lever effect on the upper carabiner).

My biggest gripe with these and the BD screws is the way they rack. If you want to fit an entire rack of screws onto a harness, then you need a minimum of 3 ice clippers for them to rack reasonably. Even then they stick out all over the place. One final thing that can be worth mentioning is packing, the alu tubes need to be treated quite carefully. Like some climbers, I store mine in a crampon bag. The system works great but I find each screw takes up a lot of space in comparison to more compact screw designs. The BD screws have a wider tube and bigger hanger so this will also be an issue. The Grivel and Salewa screws also work well, but have their own obvious caveats.

About racking. I saw that Petzl has come out with a new and larger ice clipper, the Caritool EVO.

Very true, its sized sort of in the middle ground between the regular and large (freaking massive) sized older version of the carritool. Though the attachment system seems leaves lot to be desired and I think it also still suffers from the same gate issues.

The only factor that's really important is whether BD green or Petzl orange best matches your outfit

In seriousness I'd be wary of buying a full rack of either if your main use will be icefall climbing, due to the stickiness issue in certain ice conditions - it can be a grim experience trying to wind them in on steep ground.

I agree that brand new, all three top manufacturers (Grivel, BD and Petzl) are much the same. However, I have been rather unimpressed with the longevity of the Petzl offerings - both the aluminium and steel screws. In certain ice conditions - seems to be wet or very cold ice - the aluminium ones seem to not engage the threads very well and I usually end up pulling the screw back out and placing a steel one.  My Petzl steel screws seem to not maintain their ease of placement as long as similarly treated BD ones, or Grivel. Also, I have broken one of the speed-arms of the Petzl screw clean off. Not sure how it happened, but I've been ice climbing with speed-arms/knobs for 16 years and never had that happen before.  I have some BD ultralights on order and will report back, but the rumors are that they are better all around than the Petzl.  

Yes, I have a couple of friends that have sold a full rack if Laser Lights in bulk and gone back to conventional steel screws for this reason. Nothing worse than not being able to wind a screw in on steep ground. Even with steel screws I reckon my ice rack is significantly lighter than my trad rack, and certainly packs better. The only environment I would consider aluminium screws for is on big alpine ascents where weight is genuinely a greater issue than technical difficulty. Eg if also carrying bivi gear. Even then I don't think the relative merits would warrant such as specific investment. 

To be fair neither BD nor Petzl market their lightweight options at ice climbers - both promote them towards alpinists and ski tourers and I suspect this might not just be because of the obvious durability factor but also because they are well aware of the sticky situation.   

It's a shame, the concept is good.  Maybe a second generation will address it somehow, I would guess that having a wider internal diameter to the aluminium shaft compared the steel tip would help.

Fair enough. I realised my old BDs are 21 years old now and my "new" ones are 18. They've probably all lost 5 -10 mms in length through resharpening.

I have some of those nice Grivel ones with the slings on them that are probably less than a decade old, so like brand new! And they do start the easiest as they've never needed sharpening, but their hanger design also makes it easy to push them in to start. But having said that there's not much in between them and my self sharpened BDs.

I guess for people who climb fat ice once or twice a year where the teeth never get within metres of rock, the teeth design is really important as it will be years before you need to sharpen them. But if, like I used to, you climb ice once or twice a week and including regularly climbing thin ice, you are going to need to re-sharpen regularly and the tooth profile becomes less important quickly! We placed a few screws on the Ben 10 days ago, but I suspect for UK winter climbing again you're going to need to resharpen reasonably often.

Lots of interesting thoughts, I'd heard about the sticky screw issue, I beleive its something to do with the material properties of aluminium in certian temps.  I shall probably go mainly for the normal Petzl Laser Speeds for Ice routes and maybe get a couple of BD ultralight for fast and alpine stuff.

Interestingly one of my Laser Lights looks in perfect nick and bites well but only goes in a couple of inches before jamming solid. I put this down to climbing at - 10 with water running over the ice. The core froze solid during placement and I think this caused some damage. 

Would there be any point in lubricating the inside of the screws before a route?  Vaseline?  WD40?   Vegetable oil? Lock de-icer?  an appropriately sized bottle brush would make this a quick and easy process.

Obviously not as satisfactory as a product that just works but could be a workaround for existing owners.  

This happened to me in Canada at -14. It is to do with super cooled water that when it touches something it freezes. It took three screw each making the hole bigger before the fourth made it home. We could not clear the choked up screws. My coffee from my flask was sacrificed and was up to the job. Weird and scary

Why not just pop them inside your jacket for a couple of mins?

I think it has something to do with the thermal conductivity of the metal that make up the ice screw, and aluminium transfers heat 5 times better than steel. When you turn an ice screw, it causes the ice to melt into a thin lubricating film of liquid water, just like when ice skating. However, if the metal is aluminium rather than steel, heat is transferred away from the liquid water film at a higher rate causing it to freeze quicker.

I suspect that damage has been caused by the ice expanding and aluminium not springing back as well as steel. Sound plausible? 

I've seen this with steel but never had the ice screw rendered u/s before.

I don't think there has been caused permanent damage to your aluminium ice screw. Just that you experience the problem I just described. Have you compared a "damaged" with a new ice screw?

well it's indistinguishable from the others but doesn't place well when others do, so much so that I don't generally carry it.  It could be a duff screw from the manufacturer tbh.