http://warranty.bdel.com/CarabinerRecall/Landing

Issued on 4 Febrary 2016.

Cheers for posting that Nick however their voluntary recall on tape slings that I received the other day is even more worrying and certainly brings into question their quality procedures.

http://warranty.bdel.com/RunnerRecall/Landing

Indeed it questions how the faulty slings got passed their quality control procedures.

But looking at the details and photo of the faulty slings that require returning, would it be out of order to suggest that anyone using one of the faulty slings for any significant application could be a candidate for a Darwin Award?

Maj.

that is amazing.

fully agreed Maj, on the darwin award nomination for anyone using one.

Maj said:

But looking at the details and photo of the faulty slings that require returning, would it be out of order to suggest that anyone using one of the faulty slings for any significant application could be a candidate for a Darwin Award?

Maj.

Click to expand...

How many cavers put coloured insulating tape on their slings to mark them as their own? From my experience, most.

This is not the first time the tape splice issue has come up.

Back in the 1990's we were doing the first through trip of two newly connected caves in Matienzo. Everybody on the trip went down on properly rigged ropes and I was following behind and rigging pull throughs to retrieve the rope. We had purchased a 30m length of webbing tape from a UK supplier and I was cutting it as needed for the rigging.

At the top of one of the pitches I reeled out some webbing and made a 'Y' hang. In one of the legs of the 'Y' there was some insulating tape wrapped around the webbing. I never once imagined it would be a tape splice. In fact I'd never heard of a tape splice at the time. Needless to say, it failed as soon as I put my weight on it.

Whilst I may well be entitled to a Darwin Award, when we discussed the issue at Bar Herman later that day ALL the other cavers confirmed that they too wouldn't have imagined the insulating tape being a tape splice on new webbing and would have rigged it the same way as me.

When we got back and I told the UK supplier of the issue they were gobsmacked and put procedures in place to ensure it wouldn't happen again. From then on they ensured their webbing stock lengths were actual lengths and not, e.g. 1000m made up of 600m and 400m tape spliced together.

Cheers,

Mark



 

The tape splice issue is terrifying.  As has already been mentioned many people use insulation tape to mark kit including slings. A tape spliced item could easily slip through the net and find itself as a safety critical component in a rigging system. 

Whoever is responsible for quality control at Black Diamond deserves to be strung up by the balls, preferably with something sturdier than one of their slings.

tamarmole said:

The tape splice issue is terrifying.  As has already been mentioned many people use insulation tape to mark kit including slings. A tape spliced item could easily slip through the net and find itself as a safety critical component in a rigging system. 

Whoever is responsible for quality control at Black Diamond deserves to be strung up by the balls, preferably with something sturdier than one of their slings.

Click to expand...

It is a curious recall as it basically sounds like 'our entirely quality control department buggered off to Lanzarote for a week without telling us and we don't trust anything made then so check all the usual faults' rather than 'we have identified a particular failing'. In fairness we don't know if BD even know if any faulty items have been sold; it could just be a precautionary recall. Or it could be the complete and total disaster it looks like at first glance...

I've created a new topic for the sling recall so people's attention is drawn to it. Thanks to Mark for drawing it to my attention. Mods may wish to move some postings accordingly.

Apparently a BD dealer sent back a sling with a tape splice, and internal inspection found a carabiner with an incomplete gate rivet, so while no accidents have happened at least one faulty product was sent out for sale (albeit caught by the shop).

http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/press.php?id=8150

For more info on Tape Splicing, have a look at http://outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/6435/climbing-webbing-with-taped-ends-where-why/6437#6437