Hilti Capping demo on ***VIDEO***

Hi Guys,
            Some of us have a caving talk coming up for irish students in Kilfenora. Thought it would be a good idea to show them how to cap rock, here is a new video fresh out, hope you like it:

* link removed *

Cool video, thanx! Presumably then, the caps are set off by being hit round the rim and not in the centre?

The caps are rimfire not crntre fire,the pin wil be like a phillips scredriver with the middle ground ou to leave a crown of points.
Ois nabdy to have your friends wear catcher mitts to help get the bits berore they get you 2!.
Good video

Good to see some infor being shared - isn't it about time that those of us using caps regularly got together to compare techniques?  I don't want to sound like a moaning minnie, but it is worth pointing out that capping is an inherently risky technique.  After having used caps extensively (several thousand of them) and seen several accidents (including being on the receiving end myself) there are several points that I might argue with in this video.  I am sure that there are others out there who in turn would suggest that the way I am doing things could be improved.

The big difference in the way I do things is to place the pin in a heavy rod which is struck rather than the pin directly.  This has two effects, firstly moving you further away from the business end of the capping and secondly the extra mass means that if the pin does "jump" it does so much more slowly than just the very lightweight pin.  Anyone who has seen a naked pin shoot back out of the hole at high speed will know what potential it has to cause injury.  The other often overlooked accident is from fragments of the cap making their way between the mat (I use eavy rubber sheeting such as conveyor belt matting or heavy workshop flooring material after seeing what these fragments can penetrate).  In order to prevent this I use a large diameter washer on the pin on top of the mat - since using this I have yet to see a fragment injury.

The techniques I use have evolved over time with a group of friends that I dig with regularly.  Given the somewhat unsurprising reluctance of some to talk openly about the technique we have learned only from our own mistakes, I think it would be really great to get as many active cappers as possible together to compare notes.  It is after all far less painfull to learn from other peoples mistakes, and personally I would absolutely hate to end up having an accident and someone else say "same thing happened to me"!  Capping is a really useful technique, but I believe that there is still a long way to go in evolving safer techniques and spreading the word as widely as possible.

This post is not intended to slag off teh above video, I think it is great that someone has stuck their head above the parapet.  I am just appealing to make sure that as a community we make sure that lessons are learned from our experiences.

All the best,

Ed

Hopefully this video will illustrate my techniques a little better than my ramble above!

Bone Hole 20 Nov 2010

Surely burrencrawler forgot his ball protectors?

Sorry, but POOR SAFETY TECHNIQUES in this video

Prodding and cleaning the hole WITH the caps in risks setting them off. The way this chap was doing it risked the cleaning rod being shot out right up and into his arm. The injury would be appaling.

If you need to clean the hole (and if you have the right sized bar you don't need to) then use a babies bottle brush or rifle barrel cleaning brush.

He even says it would be better to clean the hole first before putting the caps in!...ermm yes it would!

NEVER NEVER have any part of your body over a charged hole, especially not your face/head 

I agree that shoving the cap down with your hand over the back of the tamping rod may be a little foolish, but i didn't hear him say anything about cleaning the hole. Andy can you give me a time stamp for that part?

I'm well aware that there's more than one way to skin a cat; people are all doing things differently and view various parts of the procedure as more risky than others. People's own experience shapes these techniques.

However, personally I would strongly advise against the vigorous prodding and poking of the cap in the hole before putting on safety kit (goggles, gloves and long sleeves - the latter two weren't used at all).

Hole cleaning with a blow tube is very helpful when using Hilti branded caps as they're a tight fit in an 8mm hole. Spit branded caps are a smaller diameter and slide nicely into the hole without lots of cleaning or poking.

I'd also say you were quite lucky to avoid a good kick in the balls or at least a bruised knee cap from one of those chunks of rock.

A good starting point though Quentin!

Rhys

Sorry Andy, just spotted that I was watching the wrong video.... :chair:

Hi Guys,
            Thanks for all the feedback. I have blown more than a few thousand caps myself especially in the last two years. Where I do not claim this to be a textbook execution it is however how I  do things. The exception to this is that I forgot to clean the hole with the rod before putting in the caps. The reason i did this was simply because the caps I use are not Hilti (I dont like them), and fall in without the need to push them down with a rod at all, and so I forgot to do this, and thought I would pretend to push the caps down with the rod for the sake of the video. As for the chap with the washer around the pin well that's fine, I use a thick plastic disc with a tight fit hole and some tractor tyre inner tubing  on the other side of the mat, same thing. I did not want to do an overly long video about this, just merely something for people to get started on so they can get a 'feel' for it themselves. I used to use the heavy rod too, and sometimes still do, that's why the end of my pins are hex bolts. There is a fine line between total safety and getting anything done. I like getting things done safely. I use two drills at the same time when drilling to cut down on time spent hanging around, then I cap them all one by one in a matter of minutes. The other reason why this rock blew so dramatically was because I picked up a piece of stone around my house which I later discovered to be sandstone=> would prefered to have had a block of Limestone which behaves itself much more. (It took just under two minutes to drill!!) as opposed to 30 seconds. Keep the feedback coming, its just my way now.

Rhys said:

Hole cleaning with a blow tube is very helpful when using Hilti branded caps as they're a tight fit in an 8mm hole.

Click to expand...

Correct, which is why we drill for capping with 9mm drill bit!

They are easily obtained mail order... 8mm is just a bit too tight.

JESUS WEPT

This video should be re-titled how NOT to perform capping.

I cringed my way though most of it.

burrencrawler said:

Where I do not claim this to be a textbook execution

Click to expand...

Damned right - Well why bother going to the effort of making a video and publicising if your going to make a cock up of it.

Prating around broddling/cleaning/tapping etc with caps down hole, no matting/gloves/anything. 
Matting woefully small. 
Pin a bit too small, not convinced by the mole grips to be honest - proper capping bar/slide hammer would be better.
And most worryingly - Bollocks fully exposed to blast.    Forget the goggles - you needed to be wearing a box!!

I'm sure you've capped a million boulders etc, fine, but its your limbs/eyes/bollocks your putting on the line, but videoing 'the way you it' and all your bad habits and poor techniques get passed on from generation to generation etc.

Ed's video is better.

I mate of mine ended up in hospital under a general having brass shrapnel from the cap removed from between his ribs, dangerously close to his lung, because a crappy bit of carpet was used. He wasn't even the one firing and was sat a good 6 feet away and behind the firer. The matting IMO should provide a barrier between rock and human, it doesn't have to be huge, just provide a line of sight barrier.

I also doubt the wisdom of spreading the knowledge of capping out on the WWW.  Its been debated a few times on this site and the consensus has always been that its best kept word of mouth and low key. However, I appreciate that poor word of mouth leads to chinese whispers thus poor technique and bad habits get passed on. Perhaps there does need to be access to some sort of ratified code of practice however I'm fairly certain that Vimeo and YouTube are not the place for it.

Previous discussion on this here...
http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=10997.0

If folks insist on having something on vimeo/youtube - I suggest quents  vid ought to be taken off vimeo for the time being whilst a decent one is made.

Hi sam,
            I suggest more time spent caving and less time spent posting, it will cure you and make you less negative. Maybe we do things different in this country. Nobody said we all had to be the same.

Haha, somebody accusing Sam of not doing enough caving 

There's nothing wrong with having good capping information online but if it's done like this with glaring safety issues then it's better kept to yourselves.

Link removed, topic locked.

I've unlocked this as perhaps discussion is best

There's an article on capping on the wiki: http://ukcaving.com/wiki/index.php/Capping

Please feel free to submit a video that has proper safety precautions included.

burrencrawler said:

Hi sam,
            I suggest more time spent caving and less time spent posting, it will cure you and make you less negative.

Click to expand...

What ever 

burrencrawler said:

Maybe we do things different in this country. Nobody said we all had to be the same.

Click to expand...

I'm not suggesting we have to do things the same, lets just try to do them safetly eh??

I apologise for the tone of my post, it was late, I was tired and irritable etc etc but seeing bad capping practice really gets my goat. Let alone when its a video running under the guise of "how to cap".

Off the top of my head, I know of 5 potentially serious capping injuries. 3 of which could easily have been fatal. 2 of which lead to hospitalizations.  It'll happen one day, and as a result the caving world will have a world of legislation and law heaped upon it,  along with perhaps a knock on effect to other 'techniques'.  Why risk it upsetting the apple cart by posting it all over the web.

The wiki page is a start and can be peer reviewed/altered I guess (though the capping mat is still too small IMHO).

Yes  I watched it a gain and got to agree with the points Sam picked up on.

For us some useful pointers are:

9mm drill bit not 8mm

We use dome head coach bolts for strikers. Cheap, hardened, don't matter if you bend them just get another out the box and the dome head allows for mis-strikes better.

Conveyor belt material for the "carpet"

Full face mask, not just goggles. - Paintball masks are quite good as an intermediate.

Get your mate to actually do the hitting.... 

Firstly, let me make it clear that (unlike Quentin, Ed and some of the other posters) I have no firsthand experience of hilti capping whatsoever and have not the slightest inclination to ever alter this situation. Having spent the last thirty years ensuring that I am as far away as possible before boulders shatter into numerous fragments I am not going to deliberately reverse my basic survival instincts now.

However, I do not think that the link to the original (Quentin's) video should have been removed. Doing so was pointless in any case as all anyone has to do is go to Youtube or Vimeo, type in 'Hilti Capping' and there it is! Far better to make it readily available to use as a starting point for further discussion and (hopefully) education.

Hi Guys,
            You may not like my methods, but I am not inexperienced nor am i ignorant of everything you have said. I have tried it all at some stage and arrived at what I do from thousands of caps spent. Back to discussing pros and cons of stuff you have been mentioning.
1)9mm vs 8mm bits: No thanks, the area to be drilled (If you use the Pi X Radius squared) quite clearly gives you one third extra battery power for 8mm bits. Also in UK you may have more materials and gauges available to you than we do here in Ireland. I had one set of 9mm rods + bits, and i will never do it again. First its impossible to order standard 9mm stuff here and i need to get it 'off  the shelf' without especially ordering. Next the caps I use are 7.5mm and super short; with a 9mm hole they sometimes go in on their side==> not very safe because if it dont go off and you put in more, you are causing an unnecessarily big bang. When i cap I am usually drilling between 20 to thirty holes a session, so let's see how far your batteries go on 9mm holes.
2)The carpet: My carpet is thicker than conveyor belt material even though it may not have looked so on the video, its just 'carpeted' on one side. you may think its small, but its bigger than I need and it fits in my capping box with ALL my stuff including two drill batteries.
3)The cleaning rod: I mean for gods sake, someone said it was unsafe to tap down the caps BY HAND when i have done this regularly (when using the larger Hilti caps which I dont normally use) with a lump hammer. THIS is why the god-damned ends of them are rounded off, the firing bit is one edges of the caps, remember?
4)The firing pin: yeah someone else said "I put a heavy thicker steel rod to be further away and take up the recoil" or something like that. Well you keep on doing it, pal. I got sick of it personally and now I dont do it. If I still want to i can screw it on and its still in my capping box. I dont put my face in the way of the firing pin, its impossible or you would smash it with the hammer as you hit it.
5)'My goggles are shit' well whatever, as I PM'd someone earlier I use to use diving tempered glass goggles and i got sick of that too, If you REALLY want to know I rarely use goggles at all (eat that, capping police), and i out my feet on the rock i am going to cap to keep it from hopping up.
6)'Lacking body protection' or some other lame way of saying it. Yeah sure I ended up getting hit by rocks at least once every two capping sessions, for me its part of the job, a bruise for a day or two, and we get on with it.
7)'No gloves' well i did mention 'some people' like to wear gloves. I hate gloves for any aspect of caving that is digging, capping SRT or plain normal stuff, who cares? Sure i end up with some minor capping scrapes and 'sand shrapnel' but in a couple of days its gone.
Remember guys that when I am taking time off to do some capping far from an entrance and a lot need to  be done, I want a small load to carry, no danger of my batteries running out, and for my equipment to TODALLY rock. I am not trying to make out that i am hard, (you obviously call it 'stupid' and that's fine by me) but experience is the only thing that will teach you where you can cut back on certain things.
    If you didnt like the video thats cool, but despite what you think, in my mind I am in full control of my own  :idea:safety issues.