quercus

guys, I'm gonna take pictures of my device too. I'll post them on this thread ASAP.
I do have something to say that could help you document accidents with cammed ascenders. Not the ones from Kong though, but with the ones from Petzl. Not so long ago, I stumbled upon a failure notice from Petzl itself about the ascension. The reason why seemed very odd to me at first, and it occured to me that this would be operator error, so I tried to let one fail for about a whole day. Petzl claimed that if the ascension with certain lot numers would be tilted far enough in the opposite direction in wich the handle is faced, the teeth of the cam wouldn't grab the rope anymore and the ascender would slip. This in mind and the fact that it is never a good thing to drop load an ascender could result in sheath damage and sheath and rope failure at some point. What was wrong with de device? The bottom teeth of the cam were simply not there and therefore the device became unrelyable.
Because of the fact that I have had an accident once with an ascender because of this problem, and the rope got pretty damaged due to that occurence, I thought that it was worth investigating.
This is what I think of the Kong ascenders:
-The device itself is far to big and bulky
-I feel that Kong made a bad choice between a fool-proof design and a weight problem.Therefore they left essential parts who would make the design tougher out.
-The design from Kong is simply not a unique design, but a modification handle that is riveted onto a small ascender that allready existed. The ones from petzl is not riveted, but a totally new device that is differently forged except from the cam section.
-If it were droploaded pretty good, the rivets could fail, and if that were the case, the device would break apart with one small part going up very very fast and the other bigger part to wich the climber is attached would drop instantly.Far too many rivets who could loosen trough the years and fail at one point in time.
Just my two cents...