I saw the other day on a web site saying that after 3 years of general use caving ropes should be drop tested (bugger i cant find the web pages for you to look at) :evil: but it was suggested to chop off 2 mts of rope and drop test using a rig etc. But what i was thinking about was look at any old rope the wear is always in the middle of the rope and not at the ends.

My thinking being this could give a false result! or you will end up after a few years with only short lenghts of rope!


Any veiws?

Take your long old ropes, chop them into shorter ropes and at the same time take a 2m length out of the middle to test. That's what we do anyway.

Would certainly agree with Diggerdog that ropes don't wear evenly - the 50m rope I've just scrapped looked almost new for the first and last 8m even though it 4 years old. The middle however was really showing the wear (quite glazed in one part).

I remember reading somewhere that the most wear occurs at the 25% and 75% "points" on a rope i.e. 1/4 way along and 3/4 along.

This would leave you slightly longer ropes when you cut them for testing.

Fred said:

most wear occurs at the 25% and 75% "points" on a rope

Click to expand...

why is that?

seems to me it would be where the rope goes through a deviation or where the knots are tied... anyone got any idea?