[Music]
whoa so
it's not the sound that you want to hear
when you're out climbing
is it bad if I scream behind the camera?
how fuzzy is too fuzzy
this is the rope that i used for about
two years of intense climbing
or at least this is the end of this rope
if i compare to the middle this is how
the middle of the same rope looks
and as you can see it's a huge
difference
so the question is should i worry about
this fuzziness or another question that
i see climbers disagree a lot on is if i
can squeeze my rope like this does it
mean that inside core strands are
damaged or no
so to avoid breaking my back on homemade
experiments
yeah as some of you noticed
it can be quite stressful
so not this time. This time i decided to
reach out to Mammut and ask if by any
chance i could come over and nerd with
their engineers
how dangerous is this?
(laughs) we will find out
so this is a product developer from
Mammut
and you said you're an expert in textiles
would you whip on this?
(uncomfortable noises)
can we destroy this rope? I would say the
core's joints won't fail if it's a normal
sport climbing fall
within the first fall?
no no no not the first fall.
Would you whip on this?
Oh yes definitely.
How many times?
So this rope is not the same rope that
we used in an experiment. That one was a
little bit worse than this
and it kind of died.
Can ropes die?
Anyway the goal was to find out what
happens if you take a huge fall
and this soft spot hits on your
quickdraw
exactly on the peak force and by the way
this video is not sponsored but in case
you don't know mammut is one of the
oldest companies making climbing ropes
so they have some serious knowledge
about that so I wanted to know everything.
Let's get nerdy! I have a
bunch of questions from me and my
followers
Sounds great!
Ah. You're probably gonna add
10 000 more questions
I'm sorry
and by the way the questions that you
guys sent
had some
serious sense of practicality
a cat pees on my rope how bad is that?
Or a dog peed on my rope how bad is that?
If you have a dry rope
we test it with human pee
because i mean if you're on a multipitch
and you have to go
so you actually did the testing on this?
yes and
the answer is no it's not dangerous.
I wonder if cats pee or dog's pee is more
aggressive than a human pee?
hey let's go do some science
so this is where the rope testing magic
happens and this is where you get those
six seven eight or whatever falls on the
rope.
Exactly yeah.
Statistics.
The scenario is like really really hard
like we have a fall factor of around 1.7
we test the ropes with the 80 kilogram
steel mass which is like super static.
What are the forces on standard tests?
For a single rope it's
around like 8 to 9 KN on the edge...
For the first fall?
For the first fall.
And... we had the first problem.
so called standard rope test that every
manufacturer does is super extreme in
order to make it more like a real
climbing fall we needed to reduce it
below 4 kilonewtons and if you ask why 4
it means that you haven't seen these two
videos where we tried to create their
hardest real climbing falls and measure
the forces of them.
That's why I said like maybe we try like
with a new rope to get like a feeling
like what falling height we need to have
like around this less than 4k and then
we switch to your rope
don't look guess 2km 2k
i think it's less
wow two and a half as i said these guys
are really good it took only one fall
and we got the force of two and a half
kilonewtons on a brand new rope and that
was perfect because we were estimating
that once we swapped the ropes to the
old one the force will go slightly
higher because all the ropes don't
absorb the impact as well and it's going
to be a perfect representation of
realistic
hard climbing fall so here's the tricky
part
when you fall on rock
[Music]
sometimes it happens but almost the same
spot hits the
top carabiner yeah
and now the tricky part is how to place
that spot that it would be on a peak
force on the carbonyl
[Music]
not easy or heart disease as you can
imagine once the fall happens the rope
stretches and that soft spot that we are
trying to hit will move
[Music]
you thought it's gonna be easy
no no
i knew it will be exactly like this the
force to the rope will start increasing
increasing increasing increasing
increasing and at some point reaches the
maximum and then the force will start
dropping dropping dropping dropping
dropping
so the challenge is how to position the
soft spot
that it would move over the quick draw
as close to the peak of the force with
this
small forward scenario a new rope oh
it's about like what 400
300 400 500 right
a lot so neuro would hold about 400
falls on realistic fall yeah let's see
what happens if we put that damaged rope
and see
if it's hundreds or it's just few
vietnam
[Music]
do you think we will hit that spot or we
will be very far off
i think we hit it yeah
where is it now like 30 centimeters
below
yeah it's around here now
and the rope is tense so probably this
will move up
and
how much we will see
[Music]
so we overshoot the soft spot just by a
little bit so we will try to readjust
now and
see if we can hit it more perfectly
[Music]
so we managed to hit the spot
at
2.47 kilonewtons of force now we will
try to increase the fall a little bit to
get to really hard falls 20 30
centimeters
let's see if we will still stay in
the damaged spot where it will just
stretch over
so we broke the shift
we broke the shift after two falls
and you said it's gonna last
no but that's what i said like the
sheath will break
by force
the force was
only two points
only 2.1 kilonewtons and the shift
broken
so
if your rope is
soft good luck
if the sheath is already damaged like we
saw it like now this will lead like to
cut its sheath like immediately but the
the good thing is that the rope will not
slap snap
because the core strands like are
still intact so how many falls it would
take now to completely snap the rope
that's a good question i never tested
this
but we could do this i guess we can do
at least like two or three folds now
only on the course yes yes guess how
many falls it's going to take
20 20 yeah wow so it took only two falls
to completely shrink this sheath but the
good thing is like a rope is constructed
in a way that the sheath only takes
around like 10 to 20
of the load
and the rest like the the
load bearing structure is basically only
the core
okay so
the question is if you take a rope and
you squeeze it so you feel that it's
soft completely outside does it mean
that the core is damaged or no no no
because a lot of properties think that
it's damaged inside the core is still
intact like if i would cut the rope at
that spot would i find some damage
inside of the core strands it's
difficult to say because over time the
core strands also when we do fall tests
you can see that it gets a little bit
more hairy
if you would cut it open but it's just
a couple of filaments that might have
broken but it's not that an entire core
strand is broken but it's weakened for
sure
let's see if we can snap this room now
yeah so how many phones you set
i don't know
10 to 20 10 to 20. let's see so
this is one multifilament multifilament
made out of multiple filaments yes
how much
280. this is 280 inside of this so if i
would take one
what force that one thing would hold
well you would not test it like this
because a multifilament you look at it
as the entire thing but what i can tell
you that this core strand
would hold 180 kilos and we are not even
reaching very hard falls yet this is
nothing
so you said 20 how many strands are
inside
[Music]
two of eight
so you set 20 false and we have 10 to 20
20. apart from standard drop tests what
are other tests that are performed on
climbing ropes what we usually do is
also test the abrasion resistance of the
rope so there we have an in-house
developed testing method so it's a
machine which pulls a rope over a sharp
metal edge and we are counting how many
cycles it takes for actually damaging
the shaft
[Music]
we have like two parts now broken so we
have one part and two parts broken yeah
if we talk about abrasion resistant i
have some interesting stuff to show is
200 cycles so 200 times
back and forth here you see a classic
rope so it does not have any treatment
impregnation it's a 9.5 it's pretty worn
out it is worn out it's at the point
where i would consider maybe even
cutting this yes and you should then
next to it we have
also 9.5 but it has the dry treatment
what that's a huge difference yes that's
exactly the same rope but just dry treat
it yes that's a huge huge difference
it feels a little bit burnt like when
you
touch it
it definitely got hot
like on the edge
so your six lives got a bit damaged but
that's good to know and you can climb
you can climb you would climb on this i
mean the brits
was done by jean villanova like with a
sheet colored rope like from the
beginning on i think in the second pitch
of that pitch he had a stone fall and
his rope already got cut like the sheet
was completely damaged and he did the
whole fits reverse with this rope then
he like repaired a lot over it does the
percentage of sheaf versus core strands
it's not always the same in sport
climbing ropes yeah or like climbing
ropes in general it's not always the
same now
and what does it depend on well for us
it depends on what kind of rope we want
to make sport climbing
wait let me show you something show me
something okay so you have the interplay
of both the percentage of material that
is the chef but also
how the chef was constructed for example
here on this rope we have more chef
twines so
if you would count these
singular ones they are much more than on
this chef oh yeah that's almost double
no
no no it isn't but it's just a slight
difference but if you check out the
surface
you can see that here the little cubes
that they form are smaller
than on this one so here we have a super
fine surface of the of the chef so if
you for example would touch this one it
feels much rougher yeah
so this is also what makes it more
durable
so we are still very far from twenty but
what's the maybe i get some coffee
huh it was already 3.4 yeah it's
increasing and increasing so the dynamic
performance of the rope gets low and
lower and lower this one here is our
workhorse construction it does not have
any treatment but we're using the best
and the finest yarns that we have to
make this construction and it also i
would say you know it's as good as the
dry rope so why
not all ropes are made this way where we
have finer
construction because price matters yeah
now i would like to see not 200 cycles
but 1 000. yes they come here oh really
not the 2000 but the 500. i would climb
with
this one and with this one or if i have
a risky day i would choose this
do you have risky days
sometimes turns out size or diameter is
not all that matters when we talk about
durability construction and extra
treatments might have a bigger impact
it's a crazy difference now having in
mind that all of them will run through
the same process to the point where
super thin 9.0 millimeters rope looked
completely fine after 500 of cycles of
dragging it across the sharp edge this
one looks quite good
like a little bit fuzzy but i would
definitely use it however much thicker
9.5 millimeters rope but old
construction and no treatments were
completely
done
my guess is five more falls and we
snapped think we have to increase
otherwise yeah let's increase everybody
wants harder falls but it's already
getting harder we went yeah two and a
half to three and a half yeah to
increase
you can't just dropping keep dropping
yeah keep dropping and we'll get coffee
what do you want coffee espresso
are you asking the viewer with milk are
you sending me yes
one interesting observation i got while
i was making this intro animation
which by the way took me multiple days
and multiple attempts
was that while the rope is new
the file glides over the rope very
smoothly and it's pretty hard to make
any damage to it but once the rope
starts becoming fuzzy it becomes easier
to make some extra damage so it felt
like the
fuzziness or the damage to the rope is
kind of exponential the worse it gets
the easier it is to make it even worse
oh yeah let's do again all these six
tracks left
whoa so
okay
so you can come back already with your
coffee so the force went lower but one
strand snapped
too snapped but the sound of the strand
snapping was good
is it bad if i scream behind the camera
it's not the sound that you want to hear
when you're out climbing
okay the fun part how fuzzy is too fuzzy
or how soft the rope is too soft when
should people actually cut it i mean you
pull the rope through your hands how to
to check the ropes this you should do on
a regular basis and what are you doing
when you're pulling well on the one hand
i feel the rope so i feel the how the
rope behaves if it's super soft if it's
thicker and at the same time you know
you you pull it over your finger and you
look at it so you do like a visual
inspection
beautiful rope wood whip
would you whip you would whip you would
see oh the force went lower again
so basically the less core strands we
have the better the rope is the softer
the catch
i wouldn't see it that way but
if you want a soft catch just break the
rope
so let's say i'm running my rope through
my hand and i find that spot which is
softer so how do i know if it's already
bad
or first consider the whole rope i mean
if you have a really soft rope because
they're hard i mean some ropes are
already soft when you you buy them in
the store huh i would say the hour ropes
are a little bit stiffer in general and
we do that to make them more
long-lasting but if your whole rope is
very soft and you have a spot which is
just a little bit softer
i would say i would not like say oh
that's super dangerous huh but if you
have
the rope is generally really stiff and
then you have one spot with this ultra
soft then you know
something is not right there and exactly
what's not right there
hey there is so many things that it
could be so as an example if i would be
just looking into this piece of the rope
it would be pretty difficult to say how
soft it needs to be and if i should cut
it
but
if i compare it to the middle of the
same rope i can clearly see a big
difference so this clearly is far from
what it used to be and it's better to
cut this end and if you want some tips
on cutting ropes check out this video
[Music]
i don't think we can do another one
unfortunately the rope kept stretching
and stretching and stretching until we
almost reached the bottom of the drop
tower and we couldn't do any more
testing
however we decided to show what happens
if you have 80 kilograms of mass hanging
on only core strands and you touch the
core strands with the knife
test
it just barely dude
you went too long
what happened
but what happened
so it didn't broke so i was right with
10 to 20 right
yes thanks
so basically what we got is
running very damaged rope on relatively
hard dish
maybe to normal foil yeah real case
scenario ripped the sheath of the rope
in just two falls which is very
dangerous but then it was good to see
that the rope did not snapped
and only the core strands kept holding
for
multiple more falls so
but when he touched barely with the
sharp knife the core strands he just
barely touched it it snapped
so if your
shift gets away
and then your rope runs across something
sharp on the rock super dangerous
yeah
i think now we're coming to the second
scenario you wanna you wanna show when
it comes to sharp edge scenarios yeah
like the ropes don't have this high
safety margin
i hope that you are subscribed because
the next experiment that i'm gonna show
in the next video is gonna blow your
mind and probably change a little bit
the way you care about your climbing
equipment
okay now i need you to pee
come on