Hi Junior. That's a very good point about the permanence of the device on the saddle, and with your excellent observation, I can clear the air on that.
I have a microcender adjuster on the flipline that never comes off. It is permanently installed. Just an example.
The ferrules on my pole pruner poles are permanently installed.
The steering wheel on my truck is permanently installed.
The axel and roller in a pulley is permanently installed.
By saying 'permanently installed' the thought is that the device is always there and is not taken on and off, like a caribiner, or something that connects to a caribiner. The big reason for this is two-fold; 1) it is always there on your saddle. If you put your saddle on, you clearly have the intent to ascend and descend a tree, there is almost no reason why it shouldn't always be there. And
2) You can't lose it, drop it, etc. This is rather important. I have had devices come and devices go. Usually they go becauase I have lost them, or I've been on ascent, rattling around through the brush and something shiny will fall from my hip, into the vine-covered ground below, never to be seen again. Worse yet, gets lost in the sawdust and ends up being bush tucker for the chipper.
This just doesn't have to be the case, that is, if the design incorporates the solution into the design.
The 'permanently installed' feature would simply be a grade 6 threadless shank bolt terminated farside with a nylon lock nut. This bolt would pass through a roller, just bigger than the bolt itself and this part of the device would be on the belly side of the sliding bridge. This would be permanent, though removable with tools.
The other version of 'permanently installed' would be essentially the same as described above, though instead of the bolt, you would have a phat steel rivet, passing through the roller, passing through the far side of the device, then peened by you, the saddle owner, to terminate.
For those climbers with a floating bridge where on some of the more 'mod' saddles, that bridge is constructed of rope. Imagine the device on the frontside of the bridge, conglomerated with a micropulley working the backside.
This is how we create a device that doesn't have to be factory installed. Permanently installed' really means 'not easily removed'.
That was an excellent point to bring up, Junior. In one of our upcoming designs, the core of the design is a functional caribiner. Since the triple lock caribiner has almost become universal for quick attachment and detachment of climbing lines and hardware, and it's almost always up front anyway, to incorporate it into the design of the ('permanently installed') descender, it can ALSO be used to attach to the straps of your ascenders making the device uniquely multifunctional, and to a degree, bidirectional.
I can see ascending up, get to your place, flipline in, set your descent device with ascenders still on, then remove ascenders. With this thought you are never not attached to the climbing line during the few seconds of changeover. This would also allow midline changeovers while hanging in space. Stop, attach friction control, take up all slack, set hard lock. Little body bounce to release the cams on the ascenders, remove hardlock, come back down. There would be no actual need to remove the ascender from the rope until you got back to the ground.
I think we plugged the essentialness of EZ midline changeovers somewhere in the requirements list. |