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slacklinejoe
Jul 24, 2004, 1:20 AM
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This week was product prototype & descrtuctive testing (ie, intentionally doing what you know you shouldn't and trying to break things).
Item being tested: running a sling directly through the sewn eye of a main line - theoretical purpose: save a biner but still produce a 100% flat connection.
This photo is of only around 20 minutes of hard slacking on a 35 foot slackline set medium tight. The surfing motions produced so much friction on the nylon to nylon that it melted the webbing and "welded" the two peiced together.
Ignore the red stitching in the middle - that's my marker for items to be destroyed.
After inspection I turned the eyelet inside out to really show off how well they got melted together. You could not pull them apart by simple pulling.
http://www.slacklineexpress.com/...es/meltedwebbing.jpg
These results may not be typical but it shows it can happen - given another 30 minutes that sling would have melted in half.
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bouldering_fool
Jul 24, 2004, 2:53 AM
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good info.
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areyoumydude
Jul 24, 2004, 10:32 PM
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Wow joe. Crazy stuff. I have slacklined hundreds of hours on slacklines from 20' to 175' with webbing on webbing and I have never had this problem. I too surf the line and bust airs. Like I said before There are right ways and wrong ways to do this.
I use what we call the slacker-hitch to tie the slackline off. Tie an overhand knot at the end of a piece of webbing and run it through your anchor( I use rabbit runners for the anchor). Take the other end and run it through the end of your slackline. Then run the webbing through the overhand knot. now go back through the slackline and back through the anchor rapping it at least 4 times. Now you can tie a slip knot around the slacker-hitch right at the anchor to prevent it from slipping. Release your tensioning system on to the slacker-hitch. When you are ready to release it untie the slip knot and SLOWLY lower out the tension. This works fine for slacklines up to about 80 feet. Any longer and I would recommend setting your tensioning system back up to lower out the tension. I hope that is not too confusing. I will post some pics when I get some.
Peace, Larry
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slacklinejoe
Jul 24, 2004, 10:40 PM
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Thanks for the process Larry. I use lots of other different release hitches that perform the same as what your mentioning but those end up on the tensioning side. This was on the "dead" end of the line. Kinda bugs me now thinking about soft pointing highlines.
Like I mentioned, this wasn't what normally happens but it shows that it can. Bizzare stuff, I wasn't even that hard on it or anything and it was brand new climb-spec webbing.
By the way, I still haven't been able to pull those pieces of webbing apart.....
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areyoumydude
Jul 24, 2004, 11:12 PM
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I wonder if the mil spec that I use reacts different than the climb spec. Off to the drawing board. :)
I do have a highline set up right now with all soft-points. It is a 46 footer with two slacklines and a 9 mm static line taped under the slacklines. I feel completely confident with the setup.
Thanks for the info Joe. This is a new sport and we are learning new things every day.
Peace, Larry
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slacklinejoe
Jul 24, 2004, 11:25 PM
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Larry,
Your probably right that mil-spec could perform differently - I too normally use it instead of climb-spec and I've never seen this failure mode before when conducting similar tests (ie, playing).
I finally got them pulled apart; it took attaching one end and giving it a solid body weight running jerk - insane huh?
Oddly, once seperated it didn't look as bad as I expected. It melted only about 1/4th of the thickness and fuzzed the surrounding area really well. It had compacted a wrinkle in itself and that the main damage was limited to the area the wrinkle contacted.
I don't think this is near enough information to warrant not using soft points but it might lead us in a direction that can help us determine the best way of doing it.
However, until then I'm going to stick with only selling lines that don't have nylon on nylon rub strictly due to the increased chance of wear.
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corbin
Jul 25, 2004, 5:13 AM
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This is quite a problem at hand. I burned halfway through a a piece of ancor webbing over a bit of time (3 weeks) then I purposely broke through the rest of it by moving it back and fourth; as a surfing motion would do. It does happen.
There are a few ways to deal with this problem, covering the knot loop and ancor webbing with "beer bong tubing" (the clear vynl stuff you get at like home depot) I like to put a 'slit' in it going from one end to the other, cover it over the nylon then put tape so it stays in place. Its a pain to clip biners into tho. But, it does save your nylon from burning.
Second, and what i like best are eyelets, or thimbles. They are kind of hard to find. Ive seem them here and there, mostly at like marine stores that sell boating supplies. Buutt, be sure to get the big ones so the nylon stays flat in them and dosnt abradde against the edges of the eyelet. These do work very well and are easy to clip biners into and such. They also leave you a big nice space to soft pt. trrough. I will try and get some pictures going, if i can find out to get em on here....How do you do that?
Shawn snyder, had a 230 highline up. Every thing like totally melted together. It melted allmost completly through one strand at the knot (was doubled) and this line was not up for very long. If it was up longer, think what could have happend? Start to thread every thing you use for highlines-soft pts, ancor pts, lines.....whatever you use.
-corbin.
ps- joe- good job on the soft pt reasearch. keep at it. How many times did you wrap that soft pt?
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lv2climb7
Jul 25, 2004, 5:15 AM
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555
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therealbovine
Jul 28, 2004, 4:46 PM
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Old news guys, old news.
Fifteen years ago I watched a demonstration during the Rock Climbing section of a NOLS course. One of the demonstrations showed how webbing on webbing can and will fail, if not in 5 seconds, maybe two weeks or a month. Simple test: take two peices of webbing. You hold the two ends of peice 'A' and you pal holds both ends of peice 'B'. With the centerrs looped together, start puling back and forth in a saw like motion. You can do this with a very small amount of movement to simulate that of surfing on a slackline. Ours failed in less than a minute.
So many issues with the safe practice of building a slackline.
Best of luck!
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seidon
Jul 29, 2004, 3:27 AM
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Its still always a good thing to remind people of what not to do. Say for example : people new to RC.com, people new to slacklining in general, NEW PEOPLE.
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