Rock Exotica Akimbo Vs Unicender arborist review

all right welcome to strategy here you guys asked for it so here's the review I want to compare the Uni sender with the akimbo these are two in function really similar devices they're both made line attachable single rope or double rope compatible devices so they're good to go head-to-head here so I want to give you a little demonstration but we're going to start with the unit sender so here's the unit sender it's made by rock exotica thompson tree tools is the kind of the main developer brilliant guy give him a fall out to get the chance so the rock the the uni Sanders got a couple of key features obviously the midline attach ability but that's about the same it's pretty easy to do as you saw to just thread on it works with a pretty wide variety of rope diameters doesn't actually have the marking on here to say exactly how how big of a rope it can go on but it's at least this half-inch thick this is Samson Voyager and I know it can go as small as poison ivy which i think is a ten point eight or eleven millimeter rope so it pretty much will span the gamut of arborist ropes I have not yet found a rope that I climb on that I haven't been able to use it with people who use it more if told me that what they'll do a lot of times they'll start out using it on their thicker ropes I mean they're they're thinner ropes and as it starts to wear in and as these edges that provide your friction start to wear out they'll put it on their thicker ropes and just use those exclusively as it starts to slip on them with the thinner ones until it wears out speaking of wearing out the downside of both this device and the akimbo is that there are no replaceable parts you you essentially have to replace the whole device when it wears out every time in this particular device it's likely to wear out a little bit faster than the akimbo because of a sort of a side effect of its advantage over the akimbo so if you look really closely all the contact points where the Rope hits that rub that actually create the friction they're fairly small radius small contact points but there's a bunch of them kind of like the zig zag a bunch of small contact points makes for a very smooth running rope as you can see I pull down on that it goes up if I pull up on this you know it's not going to fall through because this is a thick rope but it's very easy to get up and down that's the result of lots of small contact points the downside is those contact points are in aluminum and they tend to wear out fairly fast so people who are using this regularly you're probably not going to get more than a year's use out of it and for a you know $300 device that may not be enough for you I could see you pretty easily going through ten friction hitches in a year and ten fiction hitches at about thirty bucks apiece or one of these at 300 dollars I know it's a half a dozen one and six for the other so that you'd teach their own the way this operates when you're on a single line is as shown here if you're really dexterous and you kind of hold this side you can kind of work with one hand but what I find is that it's a little bit a little bit jumpy it's not bad a lot of guys can do it it's sort of designed more to be used with this wrap and then you pull on it and now I can lower this and I can release myself really slowly now when I'm doing on when I've got it mounted up double rope it functions a little bit differently as far as it's double rope use here Poison Ivy's got a little fat from us-- over the years it's still thin and diameter another one you just clip on it they're pretty straightforward as I pull down it pulls up if I do a couple of pulls like this you know the slack tail is pretty easy and it grabs immediately and more than anything I think the advantage of this device over just about anything else I've used no sit back none when it grabs it grabs straight out but this is pretty easy to manage with one hand and I'm through a friction saver right now so it's fairly low friction the other cool thing is if I say I've got a I can foot lock or if I've got my foot ascender when I pull down on this it tends through effortlessly I almost don't notice it's there so it's super quick no sit back so as far as a double rope device I find it works really well especially on a nice thin line or through a friction saver using the friction savers all the time it's pretty nice it's too fast for you you take a little wrap and it's easy the one downside is a little bit tricky to tend one-handed as for example if I'm going to say I'm gonna come out here to do a limb walk and walk right here along the edge of this grass I can just let it out pretty easy well most of my weights saw my feet no problem no problem I get all the way out here right and I'm gonna start coming back in well as long as I pull here it's not so bad if they actually sell them a friction his device that moves it away from your body so you can pull it more easily I'm pulling down below it's easy if I pull from up above and I go to 10 my slack what I find up pretty often is that this little chunk of rope ends up outside of this catch unless you've got one of the aftermarket little devices to keep it in there that happens all the time so it can be a little bit annoying when you've got slack in system but on the whole it functions very smoothly that's why I actually have it semi permanently mounted to this saddle as my rescue saddle Amy and my guys can slap this on a rope and use it it's really straightforward alright so I switch back over to single rope here I just want to point out that okay if I'm tending a bunch of slack and this thing's hanging below it pretty often like I was saying comes out to here instead of being caught underneath this one of the things that would make this perfect would be a little pulley here and a little catch that keeps this closed hint hint it's coming out on the next one we don't know when it's going to come out but I've seen the next version anyway so here I am back on single rope say I want to do a little climb here I want to show you how nicely this tends as I'm going up so got my little chest harness I'm gonna switch switch loops for that once that's on there this thing actually climbs beautifully so it as I pull up the angle of this changes and it tends bright with me really nicely and as soon as I go to sit down boom I'm held once again no sit back doesn't drop it really does a good job staying put but I want to also show you guys here the downside of not having a really easy one-hand operation if I try and feather this it's pretty on/off hard it's rough I got two hands no problemo or even after I use two hands I kind of use one and it still works that okay but it's not quite as nice as the akimbo or their zig zag that you can the biggest and I'm gonna say this over and over again hopefully advantage of this device over the akimbo is it doesn't care if your rope is a little bit pitchy or sapped up I'm here in the Pacific Northwest I climb a lot of Doug firs and ponderosa pines and they can be really full of SAP this rope that we started out on is pretty sappy and so I want to show you guys that it just doesn't care it's I think it has to do with these small friction points but it does a great job with this kind of in this sort of scenario still buttery smooth all right of course if I try and do it one-handed it's not great kind of kind of jumpy throw my little loop over the top no problemo nice smooth descent easy easygoing despite the sappy rope all right so let's bust off the old Kim boy alright its akimbo doesn't get too much easier getting midline attaching and the adjustability is pretty easy too you don't need any adjustment for the akimbo because it just works but I mean for the Uni sender but you do for the you Kim Bo alright so here I am set up on a double rope as far as adjustments go side by adjustments later all right here I am set up on a double rope double rope so I'm just gonna do a couple a little bit of moving up here it tends pretty well I'm actually tending it here with my hand I can clip into this loop up here but what I have found with this akimbo is because of a safety feature if I lean back on this at all it pops free which drives me nuts actually as long as I'm up right it tends well if I keep my chest really high but as soon as I sit back it pops free some will say that's a positive so I'm going to say it's a con for me it's a I find it annoying but it's a safety feature so that apparently if you pull back on this too hard you can actually release the mechanism and that's no good so you don't want to release when it's not ready but as far as a double rope system it's fairly smooth assuming your rope doesn't have any SAP on it so I can actually operate with one hand without too much trouble I found it coming over here to do a limb walk I collapse it almost all the way or all the way a little bit of SAP there it's making it hard and I can come out over here and I can limb walk coming back in same kind of deal I could pull in here turn the slack it's never gonna come out it's never gonna change shape but it's not quite as easy I can't just pull it through as easily with as the unis but it tends more easily like you stent like a standard hitch which is something that motion you should be used to doing or if I pull a bunch of slack through and then pull it off the end no big deal I don't have it on this nice swivel which probably would make it perform a little bit better but for this demonstration is not too different it also grabs really quickly that doesn't have any trouble let's sit back probably my biggest gripe about it is it doesn't do well with SAP and my chest attachment point is usually more annoying than it is worth even having so a lot of times I won't even attach the chest harness to it I'll just advance it by hand as I'm going up just like that which is yeah you get used to it but maybe perhaps not ideal let's switch it over to a single rope setup here and see how it goes so I'm mounting this on this Samson Voyager once again this ropes had a little bit of stuff in the last couple days so we're going to see how well it performs I've been in at least one sort of non pitchy oak tree since then so it's cleared out a little bit but I want at least with you a general idea all right so here it is a single rope when it's working it's very smooth to do one-handed you have that Jam though little bit gummy here we go going up it's not always as quick to grab it's got a little bit of sit back it's not much it's pretty good as far as coming down sometimes it goes sometimes it doesn't it's just not this rope isn't even that sappy if you look closely there's one little spot here and that's where it jammed up pretty good it's not much and it's been a couple of days in in pitch free trees and it'll eventually clear up to where I can use this again but here's where the problem lies this little this little device it's got this one rounded edge now when that gets pitchy there it jams up into the rope as it feeds through and gets really tight so it's hard to bust free I could probably adjust the settings a little bit as far as adjustability goes this is awesome see these little holes in this oblong shaped cam I can actually adjust this cam by rotating it and setting it in different holes for a different diameter rope I've found that it seems to work best when the bottom one is fairly loose fit most a knee rope but the top one is tight enough to where you can just barely get the rope into it so a notch or two tighter on the top and the bottom seems to work better and obviously the more closely it fits the rope the better so if you're if you've got one rope that's always your rope for oakes or some other fairly clean tree you might find you really like this it's very quick for getting off and on or switching systems in the canopy but it is also adjustable so there is the akimbo great piece of kit I find I use it a lot despite that's drawbacks mainly cause it's so quick off and on and I and I'm in the tree very often where I come up to the single rope I'll switch to a double or I'll come up double rope and I'll switch to a single and so a lot of times I'll just take this with me it's small its compact I've barely noticed it on my saddle and and I'll just throw it on on a new rope but I usually keep a rope that's clean in the truck at all times so I actually find I like it is it better than the Uni I don't know it's up to you not to see what you like they both have their place they have their advantages frankly I'm really looking forward to the you know you know sender 2 which should be coming out within the next couple of years and they've got a prototype going around by Thompson tree tools it's fantastic device a lot of improvements but you tell me what do you lose what do you like to climb on thanks for joining me here at strider tree gear don't forget to Like comment subscribe turn 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Channel: Strider Trees

Views: 26,220

Rating: 4.9215684 out of 5

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Id: gE4JeDN51ik

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020