UKH

Does anybody know why Wild Country metalware has a 10 year max lifespan when most other makers have theirs at "indefinate"?  It sure is depressing to have to ditch a set of nuts that seem to have the same wear on them as their competitor's pro.

Same reason why they don't resling cams, unlike every single other major manufacturer I guess...

Do you think they're super cautious or just money grabbing?

Probably a bit of both.

DMM warrants metal gear indefinitely and soft gear for 10yrs and reslings their own cams.

Yes, I'll largely be buying from them in the future.

Of course, you don't have to retire your gear just based on the manufacturer's stated lifetimes... unless you are an instructor using it for paid employment, in which case it is prudent as using out-of-date kit will almost certainly invalidate your insurance.  I cycle all of my gear because of this, and as a result I simply won't consider WC kit.

As far as I'm concerned there is no discernible quality difference between Rocks and Wallnuts.  I like having sets of both.

Don't worry Tarquin. You don't have to retire your nuts, they are just out of warranty against manufacturers defects. There is no logical reason that will mean they have degraded any more than any of the others, so don't be depressed, carry on using them.

I'm an instructor using my own gear so sadly I don't have an option.

If you are using your gear personally then it comes down to the frequency that you use it, and you checking the quality of the equipment.

If used corectly then a piece of metalwork has a lifespan longer than yours, But it all depends on being inspected by you. You should look for cracks, excessive wear or deep scratches/scars.

Just like any fabric equipment you could decide to replace the metal item within one year if it shows enough wear.

It all comes down to your head when using your equipment, if you dont feel confident using a quickdraw after its fifth birthday (fabric lifespan is recomended to be 5 years) then replace it. You dont want that little voice reminding you that your quickdraw is past its recomended lifespan when you're run out well above it.

I don’t understand why fabric has such a short life span, it takes thousands of years to degrade in landfills but 5years of use? I guess it must be amount of use dependant

It is degraded by ultraviolet in light.

Oops most of my rocks are significantly over 25 years! I presume they were wild country but my Alzheimer’s stops be being quite sure they were around back then.  All my Clog stuff is still going strong though and no one has topped troll for “soft” stuff and it’s longevity!

 In reply to Gone:

I get that, but how much UV does it take? Are we talking constant exposure? My gear sits in a dark room 6months of the year.... do I get 10years on it? I live in the North East the sun is a rarity.... 12years?

It all depends on who made it. If it’s Wild country and it’s passed all it’s inspections then it’s 5  years if it’s Dmm and it’s occasional use then it’s 10. If it’s Beal and you stored it 5 years before using it then it’s 15. 
 

that’s what I find so weird that different manufacturers with very similar products give such vastly different  lifespans

I’m sure you’re aware that it isn’t a 10 year warranty - but the manufacturer’s maximum recommended lifespan: https://cdn1.wildcountry.com/media/pdf/be/46/48/0ab067c7-1f44-4f17-8365-ee4...

This does seem crackers for entirely metal products. Obviously if you’re using them professionally then you would be required to retire them in line with the manufacturer’s recommendation. For personal use it really doesn’t make a jot of difference...

The strength of fabric gear is proportional to the lengths of the strands in the threads its made from.  Abraded fabric has cuts in the strands which weakens them.  If you're not abrading the item because you've buried it in a landfil at constant temperature in the dark it won't degrade. If you're using it on rocks it will get abraded and weakened, especially webbing whose strands all lie on the surface of the material at some point. 

Anyhow, perhaps a more pertinent point would be why don't car seatbelts have a lifespan? They're fabric and sat in the sun all the time.

DMM reslung three of my 4CU cams. They did an excellent job. Another reason why I also bought some Dragons. Future proofed repairs. Sadly most others don't.

That's a great question. Do you think it"s because of the lack of abrasion in their daily use? 

Good job Wild Country don't make cars. You'd need to bin it after 5 years (if you were using it for professional purposes.)

Car seatbelts are behind glass which will filter out most of the UV.

Or you'd have to send it to America to get new seatbelts put in from an independent company

They are usually made of polyester which is more resistant anyway bur more importantly they are coated for UV resistance and tested, the test is fairly brutal.

10 years is a made up number, produced because WC are required to do so. We're it an underpinned value, the lifespan would be consistent across the industry.

Does it really make a difference? 

Climbing regularly I lose 1 or 2 wires a year, stuck, fumbled, whatever. (tend to profit on gains). That rate takes out a rack of wires before their time is up. 

If you are instructing then increased use and use by the inexperienced will increase the burn rate and also increase the wear rate. I expect the 10yrs is for average use, instructional use will incur greater wear. 

Have you considered that in stating 10yrs lifespan WC may be being more realistic/cautious/pessimistic in their outlook and actually behaving in a more responsible manner than other manufacturers? 

I might be misremembering but I think most manufacturers used to state a ten year lifespan for metal gear. We certainly used to be told to use that as a limit in my uni climbing club a bit over a decade ago. Rather than being a complete outlier, maybe Wild Country are just being a bit slower to change their recommendation. In any case, I don't think it makes a huge amount of practical difference. It's a different estimate of the longevity rather than an indication that the gear is actually lower quality in any real way.

I presume they must have decided they didn't want the risk of possible lawsuits by joining most of the other manufacturers with indefinite lifespans. I suppose the instructor customer base that won't buy from them isn't big enough for them to lose sleep over?

I suspect they would be concerned if they thought it was having a big impact. Instructors are a small market but they're influential. Hence all the discounts they get offered.

But I wouldn't have thought many instructors would be all that put off by the ten year limit. Between sheer volume of use and exposure to amateurs under instruction, I would think that any nut which survives ten years in an instructor's rack would look a bit too battered for a professional image anyway. But I'm not an instructor so maybe I'm overestimating the wear they would get.

When WC closed Tideswell (Derbyshire) in its move to Italy, they could not take the textile machinery for sling manufacture, as they did not own it.  After several emails to them they said they wouldn't be continuing this service. A shame as I like both WC and DMM equipment. 

You are getting upset over nothing here. Sure, avoid WC if that is going to be your personal tantrum. 

I doubt a 10 year old wire will project the best image for an instructor, if indeed you can keep hold of it for 10 years. 

As an instructor, any gear you buy will be tax deductable, saving you 30%. Dependent upon your level of qualification or professional contacts you may have a discount ahead of this.

The preferred option would be to regularly "retire" professional gear well ahead of any expected end of life. Where you retire it to is up to you. One suggestion could be your personal rack. 

I have DMM wallnuts in my rack that I bought when I started in 1998.  They're fine: there really isn't much to go wrong with a nut as long as the wire doesn't get damaged.  If they'd been WC rocks I'd have had to destroy them and then throw them away twice now - retired PPE must be destroyed so it can't re-enter use - and I'd be on my third set by now!  

As it is something like 60% of my original nuts are still in use. I don't recall many clients shying away in horror at the sight of a scratched up wallnut #4.

But really, it's the cams where this feels much worse than the nuts.  WC friends are bloody expensive and to find that they are out of quoted lifespan and professionally unusable at 5 years is shocking. 

I understand why it's happened, but I wonder how many people shelling out for new cams realise that the fabric is unreplaceable right from the off? The fact that this thread repeats itself about every six weeks suggests that not many do.

If you read the obsolescence clause on the WC tech info sheet they state that they are simply conforming to an EEC directive and presumably all other gear manufactures will need to do the same, DMM included.

WC claim it is difficult to be precise and do seem to be plucking a number from the air in a conservative manner. As you state, there's really not much to go wrong with a nut on wire and that's regardless of the manufacturer, so providing the wires appear in serviceable condition there seems to be no good reason for not continuing to use them, at least for personal climbing. Simply throwing away decent gear is mindless waste.

5 years of use for fabrics seems fair though and agreed, if you're throwing the cams away after only 5 years that's quite an expense. But amount and type of use will come into it and for many recreational climbers getting out a couple of times a month it's very likely the fabric will still be in good, serviceable condition, again WC state to being conservative with this and leave it with the user to decide as many other factors out of their control must be considered. And correct me if I'm wrong here (as I don't do it), but a WC cam doesn't need to have the sling in place to be used effectively. For example, at a belay stance a Karabiner can be clipped directly to the thumb loop, there may even be instances when this is advantageous. 

Like I said earlier, have you considered that WC could be acting more responsibly than other manufacturers here?

There hasn't been much research that I know of to support the 10 year lifespan on fabrics.

Walter Siebert is doing lots of research on old, retired and damaged equipment, the results are that age, and on certain fabrics UV damage, doesnt reduce the strength.

https://www.facebook.com/SiebertResearch/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/932800537062371/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq62mVrEfBsGgk-oswsUhpQ

The issue for me was that slings on WC cams can be damaged even after one use, rendering the unit unusable well before the 5 year life span. Hence Dragons.

Like a lot of climbers, I've used 8mm dyneema slings threaded through the cam holes and BOTH ends clipped into a Karabiner. Not recommended by WC and others. But it doesn't look worse than the extended double loop on some manufacturers cams where they rub across each other at the cam.

I have replaced the loops on my WC friends with Dyneema cord which seems to work well. If the unit looks ok, works, and there is no damage or excessive wear then I cannot see a problem.

Yes - and rejected it. 

WC are selling a cam for more than £60, and then:

* making the bit of it that is most subject to wear non-replacable - as Brian says, the sling could be damaged in one use.  Even in normal use, this is the part of the unit that will almost certainly wear out first, but they have taken decisions that make it impossible to replace, short of sending the cam to NZ or the US.  DMM and Totem, otoh, will replace this part.

* stamping a lifetime on it that is half the time that the rest of the industry has settled on, meaning that anyone using it for professional use is forced to destroy it (or, at least, sell it on at four and a half years, which is what I did with my few WC friends).

We don't seem to have an epidemic of cam failures, from WC or other manufacturers, so it looks like even the timescales adopted by DMM etc are quite conservative.

I'm afraid that's contrary to manufacturer's instructions and, therefore, also no good for anyone using it in a professional context.

Why have you rejected it, what evidence do you have, or is it simply that you don't like the answer? 

None of the lifespans have been technically underpinned. Any one of them could be correct. You might like the indefinite answer, your customer may find the 10 year answer more comforting. 

An industry standard would be preferable. 

Wrt cams and reslinging, I find this a bit "meh" as the cool kids say. If it bothers you massively buy cams which have a thumb loop that will take a crab and cut off the tape either at end of life or when you deem it unsafe. 

Again as I said earlier, best practice with gear in instructional use is to replace well before the estimated end of life. Exploit the tax breaks and refresh your personal rack. 

WC gear meets the CE and UIAA standards, it is no better or worse than BD, DMM, or any of the other manufacturer

I'd ask the opposite question: what evidence is there that, say, DMM's approach of ten years for fabric is not safe?  I don't see an epidemic of accident reports suggesting they were caused by age related sling failure between 5 and nine years of use. 

Of course, you know full well that I'm not really arguing against WC's lower limit per se - it's the combination of that very low limit along with the removal of facilities to replace the slings.  I wouldn't rule out buying cams from a manufacturer who said five years, if they had facilities to resling.

Of course WC gear is just as good as other manufacturers - in fact I really rather like their cams, and I wish I could use them, but it's economically not feasible when I have to destroy them at five years old.

I have no idea why you think that best practice is to replace gear well before manufacturer's guidelines?  Are you saying you get rid of your WC cams at, what, two years old?  Three?