Which Carabiner is best?| Choosing the right one for every situation| Beginner to Expert Guide

all right welcome to strider tree gear today we are talking about carabiners uh there's a lot to know a lot to say i've got a big selection of different types of carabiners snaps here and i'm gonna lay out uh the basics maybe a little bit extra more than the basics cover the ansi rules and and how it applies to carabiners used within work positioning harnesses hopefully cover what carabiners qualify and what some that don't and what you can use them for and which ones are ideal for what sort of circumstances and hopefully you guys find this useful so here we go whether you're new to the tree climbing game or you've been in it a long time there's been some fun recent developments there's a lot that goes into the design engineering of carabiners and so i'm going to start with kind of the most basic simple carabiner this here is the classic generic this is made by camp it's got this sweet bull nose set up to where uh unlike the old school ones where you've got a little hook inside here this one has this this bullnose catch so that it still is just as strong but it doesn't catch on things when you're trying to take ropes off and on so most good carabiners nowadays have that as a feature i don't know if i've got any here that have any yeah basically everything's everything is that style these days so it's great this as a carabiner within the tree industry is not super useful it's essentially even though it is rated it's essentially an accessory because in the us we have to go buy the ansi 133 standards now the ansi 133 standards dictate that any carabiner used for work positioning or your suspensions life support system have to be rated for at least 23 kilonewtons but 22 and a half which is about 5400 pounds and they must be self double locking and auto self double locking and must and what that means is this standard carabiner requires one motion to open that's it and so it requires one motion to get your rope out as well and that makes it less safe there's not the redundancy to prevent a rope from coming unhooked when you don't intend it to so basically all of the ones that we're going to use here that i'm going to use in my job are at least double locking now most companies have gone to a triple locking setup and virtually everything i climb with will be triple locking because even with a double locking carabiner it's still too easy to have that come free so i've got um i think i have an old double lock yeah so this is an old double locker it's a steel one i like occasionally climbing with steel carabiners because um a lot of times if i'm using a double drop system if i'm advancing my rope ahead of me as i'm uh accessing a tree i'd use this a lot with smaller to medium deciduous trees where i won't i won't bother setting the line i'll just attach a steel carabiner and a throw weight i'll just lob it up into the tree start hip thrusting in it's nice to have a little extra weight but this is just a double locker so it's just a twist and a pull in and that is technically legal it's technically will suffice according to ansi standards virtually all these other ones that i'm going to use are triple locking so an example of a triple locking carabiner would be like this one by dmm this is i think it's called the perfecto it's i really like this carabiner in particular it's small it's compact i use it frequently for my attachment point between the bridge of my saddle and whatever climb system because it keeps things compact and close so i have easy access but this requires one motion to lift the gate twists it and then pulls in so that's three different motions this one's almost where it's in need of some some lubrication so hopefully you can see that i've got another one here that needs some cleaning one of the things to look out for with your carabiners is that after a while without cleaning they start to get sticky so this one if i close it slowly and i let it go it doesn't always snap all the way across you can kind of see that just barely goes and so it's not totally locking all the way and that's that's a something that you have to watch out for carabiners need to be maintained regularly i've already gone through all of my dmms recently because they had their older style was known for that to be a sticky point and a failure point and these are probably my primary climbing carabiners but they need that consistent maintenance anyway talking more generally so we've got these guys single locking not particularly useful great for slings speed lines a little bit of light rigging here and there if you want to do a quick redirect maybe where you're not if it fails then you're not going to be falling to your death then you could use something like that the advantage is the fact that it's really light really simple there's nothing to it next thing the next thing to talk about here is uh shape so there's a variety of different carabiner shapes and and they design them differently for a reason right here is a standard oval carabiner dmm a lot of them are this shape this is what i tend to use most often the reason uh the reason they use an oval over a shape more like this has to do with the symmetrical loading so if you you probably can't see it but this carabiner has a nice wear point right in the middle where my rope has slowly worn through the anodizing if you look at a carabiner like this that wear point is going to be on the inside corner now carabiners are designed to be maximally strong when loaded in this direction and this shape this d shape aligns the rope closer to the solid axis which gives it more strength in that direction and consequently they can take more weight out of the carabiner and have it maintain the same strength rating now these are slightly heavier but what that allows them to do and they can maintain the strength rating it allows them to be symmetrically loaded in a system like like a hitch climber system so my hitch climber system here sits right in the middle and when i load it it doesn't try to shift to one side of the other it doesn't create a weird setup here it just kind of loads symmetrically a similar carabiner to that is going to be these bigger pear-shaped carabiners now it's also a little bit heavier even than the ovals but the nice thing about the periwins is they tend to orient themselves with gravity right because it's heavier on one side they'll tend to orient upside down like this which can be useful in particular this one's also got a really big top surface so you can see it's quite a bit wider than this dmm oval carabiner it's got a wider face now the point behind that is so you can use it for things like pulleys this pulley sits on here really happily and it's not loading the pulley weird it's not causing it to pinch for example like if i had a more d-shaped carabiner see how it's going to load a little bit of an angle that's going to put more an asymmetrical stress on this pulley which will cause premature failure so that's something you want to be aware of it's also great this oval shape is also useful for hitch setups because once again it's going to orient itself or it's going to stay symmetrical as far as the loading the part of the downside of this is that you've got a lot more aluminum so this is a bigger round portion so there's certain gizmos and gadgets like the notch rook attachment point that has these little rubber grommets inside and this carabiner won't fit through them so if you know your system and you've already built it sometimes it's worth checking what you're buying to make sure it fits through petzl in particular tends to be sneaky about their carabiners they're designing their gear for their carabiners to fit specifically so here's another petzl carabiner now this one looks like an oval but it's not quite it's actually a little bit d-shaped so it has a little bit of the benefit of being lighter than the oval and the load aligning to one side but it's almost symmetrical enough to where you could put a you actually can see where my wear point is you can you can mostly symmetrically load this so this would be a safe one to climb with with a ini prusik or a hitch climber system now petzl's got this great feature where it's this is also a triple locking carabiner but guys who are a little bit newer to climbing tend to have trouble with this three motions with one hand and you want to be able to access these quickly and use them with one hand this guy however because it's got this little little catch spring-loaded catch and it's green and you can feel it really easily with your thumb it's quick and easy to grab and twist like it's very it's almost as simple as a double locker but it's a triple locker which is nice it's a little extra layer of redundancy and it's recessed so it's a little bit less likely to be bumped and twisted although in the case of this particular one you got to watch out a little bit because if you if your eye is loose if it's not a really tight eye on the rope it could actually work its way over the gate like this in a side loaded configuration and a little bit of tension on that is actually enough to release that and you can get that out without using your hand i don't know if you saw that but something to be aware of even with the triple locking carabiners is in the right the right wrong orientation you can still often this one's gonna fit it that once but you can still often get your rope out if the eye isn't snug remember if the eye has loose enough to slide over the gate like this one here it's not hard to move that and have it come off i've seen a demonstration where the guy did this in the tree pretty easily without having to actually activate the carabiner so something to consider i like tight eyes on my on my climb system for that reason alone alright some of you guys who may be coming from rock climbing might have a bunch of these lying around because you use them in your climb systems uh these are screw gate carabiners they've been around the rock climbing world a long time they're nice and secure when you screw them shut they don't they're not qualified for ansi certifications because you have to remember to screw it it's not an auto locking auto double locking it's only auto single locking because if you forget to screw that shut it can come out really easily so much as it's a great carabiner you might be able to use it for something that's not necessarily life support or if you want to use it for something where either it's not critical to have that screwed or you've got it screwed and then left then that might be a good choice but generally not for your climb system [Music] as an alternative one of my absolute favorite carabiners right now is this one made by edelrid it's a little bit pricey more expensive than your standard carabiner but it's very heavy duty it's rated for 25 kilonewtons which isn't particularly high that's fairly standard but it has a couple of really cool features that i just love so it's triple locking and it's got a very nice sort of natural feel to it i don't know why i just i just like how it feels but it also has this little eye capture so that prevents my uh my climb system from rotating around accidentally it's not perfect because it's spring-loaded so i can still kind of squeeze it through there but generally when it's loose and moving around it's going to kind of stay put and that keeps everything oriented properly and then you've also got this awesome stainless steel insert so this is where carabiners tend to rub they wear out fast especially if you're using it for something like a speed line or for your attachment to point to the bridge now i don't i don't use a swivel on my bridge generally because i like how my climb system orients itself either left or right so i can use my right hand for tending on my left hand for tending depending on how i attach it to my bridge but this tends to be the wear point on my carabiners where it slides back and forth on the bridge this stainless steel will outlast all the rest of this carabiner you know this gate is going to be non-functional before this stainless steel is worn out so that's kind of nice too it's reassuring you know it's going to have that maximum safety value for the whole life of the whole functional life of the carabiner so that's made by edelrid another carabiner i'd like to talk about here is the ansi gate rated carabiner now this is a d shape so it's a little bit stronger in this direction i think this one's 27 kilonewtons 27 so it's a couple thousand newtons stronger than some of these other ones but it also has a rated gate strength so 3 600 pounds now the nice thing about this carabiner in particular with the rated gate is that it's you know you can be safe to some degree with side loading so what i mean is if you're in a situation where this carabiner might receive some side loading i mean you're not really supposed to do this but i'll do it a lot of times if i'm doing a crane tree where i come out of the crane and i wrap my climb line around the tree and i'll just choke it off to the tree if i have this as my attachment point with my eye on it and i'm around the tree right that's a side loaded carabiner now this is not your optimal orientation for your carabiner but with this one you can be confident that it's going to have more strength than a standard one now once again i'm not really recommending that but in a case like with a crane operation i'm not going anywhere i'm very stable i know i'm not trying to do some big rigging where things are going to get shocked and moved i can feel fairly comfortable doing that with this particular carabiner whereas i won't with some of these other ones the other nice thing about it is these tight eyes don't like to work their way around this one so it's fairly unusual that i find that i'm side loading it at all just because of how thick this is once again it's a little more expensive but it has those distinct safety advantages um so that's another another useful carabiner here but that would that would be why you might pay the extra for the for the rated gate all right so here we've got another kind of cool dmm one pear-shaped roughly it's got a little bit of both the the d the asymmetrical loadings for a little bit extra strength but it's also got this big open top the reason another reason you might want one like this even though this one is not a good one for mounting pulleys because actually no it's not bad for that pulley that'll work for that pulley because it's symmetrical it's going to load evenly but for something bigger something bigger or wider it may not be great this one still is really nice to have around because you can use it for something like a munter hitch pretty frequently when i'm up in the tree i will rig out some pieces using the tail end of my climb line i'll bring it up i'll tie on a little branch i'll throw it over a union above me i'll tie on a little branch and then i'll put a munter hitch back to me or back to some other anchor point and the cool thing about the munter hitch here i'll show you guys you have to pretend like this is actually a long rope it's nice to have a nice a wide carabiner opening when you're running the munter hitch because it gives more room for the rope to move it's smoother it doesn't seem to like twist and bind up the rope as much so it makes for a little more gradual application of friction so i like having a big wide caribbean like this specifically for times when i'm using them under hitch which can be really handy i use it often here we've got another another cool carabiner by dmm similar idea uh as similar idea to sort of the oval it's got this nice wide symmetrically loaded but it also has the added advantage of this gate now in this particular dmm one if you look the gate opens up the opposite direction so you get your line in by pulling it down and then it's actually locked in better whereas this one i lift it and then my um whatever you put in there can still get itself out more easily see if i can demonstrate that more clearly than i just described it so this guy also has this cool advantage it's got this ridge right here which prevents my your climb gear from sliding around as easily so this one's kind of cool because it'll stay if i put it on my harness it'll tend to stay oriented like this and this won't slide around so once again that captive eye keeps things keeps things safe but but you can get it out whereas this guy it's harder to get it in but it's easier to get it out so that's probably the one one design flaw of this particular device it's still helpful but it's not quite as effective as on this carabiner once again these are a little bit more expensive easy in but it's so nice to not sit back and all of a sudden look at my climb system and notice that it's side loaded which happens frequently with the more standard carabiners without this eye capture oh man you didn't tell me i got an ant crawling on my face ugh it stinks now all right so i've got a couple more little things to go over snaps snaps are cool we've got two different types of snaps these are made by isc this one by notch i think is basically just a rebranded ise this is a double locking snap now you can actually use a double locking snap on your secondary positioning system that's allowed according to ansi standards it's a little bit risky because this is easy this is really easy to open up i mean it's nice for that reason it's super simple and straightforward this is slightly more complicated it's got a swivel which i love this is what i use on my lanyard but it has a three-step process so it's got one two three going on here so it's a little bit harder to get especially if you're at a weird angle and i'm trying to like connect it to my thing but you get used to it it's nice and the swivel keeps the rope from getting twisted up i love this snap they have a known flaw some of them have had issues binding binding sticking open basically so you want to make sure if you've got one that it's not doing that once again a little bit of maintenance keep things lubed make sure nothing's bent can prevent that those are really great for lanyards but they have this asymmetrical nature again they're not great for climb systems and then of course this is closed off so harder to mount it's worth noting that unless a system is specifically says it's allowed for you're not supposed to connect carabiner to carabiner so if you've got one that's permanently mounted on you're not supposed to uh double up i don't know really when you would want to do that but it's worth noting that you're not supposed to so in addition to climb systems we use carabiners for a lot of other things i like steel carabiners anytime we're pulling with a machine i've even broken these so this one's got a working load limit of 50 kilonewtons which is twice what most of the aluminum ones are and i've still broken these with um with a lot of our basic bull ropes even a 5 8 full rope you can break these things pretty easily but they're sturdier they're not really much more expensive it's good to have a few around even if you don't climb with them because they're heavy and then with rock exotica makes this cool little carabiner it's kind of pricey for a little guy but it's actually rated at five kilonewtons which is nice to know i use these for a couple of things i keep one on my harness for attending my climb system in a single rope system and then i also keep an extra one sometimes to attach a throw weight on the end of my line when i'm advancing it or well i'll attach my uh work positioning lanyard with this to my harness sometimes when i'm negative rigging a spar so i've had some friends i know people have gotten injured in a case where the spar started to peel away and separate kind of like a barber chair and what can happen is if i've got my lanyard around the spa i can get squished into it pretty aggressively and it's not very often but occasionally that's the scenario and in if i can anticipate that sort of scenario happening i will attach this little guy with five kilonewtons which is plenty to hold me in place and but it becomes the weak link in the system so i can have essentially a breakaway attachment point on my lanyard and that adds some safety factor if things go wrong to where i'm not going to be crushed by the piece that catches me so it's worth keeping one or two of these little guys around another thing we use snaps for is speed lining for those of you who don't speed line then you're probably not in the pacific northwest with all our big tall conifers in tight areas but if you do you've probably got a set of something like this where you've got your uh your strap here and then a snap these are fantastic for that i will probably eventually though switch over to these edelrid ones with the steel insert because these are going to wear out so much slower all of these snaps get worn out in here pretty quickly speed lining because the way it runs along the road but builds up a little bit of heat and if i've got an old rope especially it tends to wear them out faster but another use for these sorts of carabiners even if it's not on your climb system same with these if you've got a bunch of these around you've been climbing with them you realize it's not safe these make for great attachment points for these guys you just have to be careful because they don't hold a whole lot of load and if you're speed lining sometimes you're you're shock loading it and you can break these more readily one other cool little addition here edelrid actually sent me this this is this is new for them this is a beautiful little double locking carabiner it's going to be great for this sort of system like we were talking about i'm probably going to use it for redirects it's not going to be great for a primary attachment point despite how cool and lightweight and double locking it is because of this same flaw i was showing you with some of these other carabiners where if i've got an eye and it slips over the gate this one's especially susceptible if i slide that down it catches the lock and releases it just like that so it should actually yeah so there it goes just gonna pull it's just gonna get that thing open now it actually even locks it open and and that's a that's gonna be a hazard so it's probably not one i would use for my climb system per se but the fact that it is double locking and it's super easy to get to deal with um that'll be i'll find some use for it but it's new d-shaped nice and strong really lightweight it's it's every bit as lightweight as this camp one in fact i think it's lighter than this camp one but it's still a double locking carabiner pretty sweet halo red i like it i like it so there you go there's the primer on carabiners a little bit of a long video hopefully you found some of that information useful if it was new great i'd love to have your feedback if there's something i missed there's a carabiner that you love let me know i'd love to check it out i've got a pretty good selection here but i know there's quite a few more these are pretty main brand they're long well established in the climbing world but there's still some decent ones on amazon and some of these other places that are a little more lesser known but they're inexpensive and they're rated and they're tested and a lot of them are just as good so don't feel like you need to spend the big bucks to get the name brand ones but they are awesome if you do when it comes to me i don't like to skimp for it to save a couple of bucks when it comes to life-saving equipment i'll just buy what i think is going to be best and use it until it dies and get some new stuff so there are actually a lot of times i'll retire it before it dies generally and then i don't die with it so thank you guys for joining me catch you next time at strider tree gear you

Channel: Strider Trees

Views: 45,923

Keywords:

Id: s0ADuY5ftFE

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021