Climbing cams pulled over an edge! Break tests in real rock

I'm fingering this crack right now. We're not going to brake test my fingers today but we are going to brake test some Metolius TCUs in real rock because I don't like them and I'm willing to sacrifice them for this video. We're going to pull these favorably in this direction and we're going to pull them unfavorably around the edge of this rock which sometimes happens depending what you're climbing and we're going to measure all of it with this line scale too and hopefully we don't break anything except the cams. Watch us just struggle bus on this episode of How Not to Highline. You should feel this crack Bobby. Stick your fingers in this. I don't want to be a part of this. Oh come on just one finger? I mean that's a nice pod. Hi I'm Ryan Jenks and this is Bobby Hutton who's being too serious right now. It's why you need the guy with the yellow pants in order to make things fun right? Anyways we are going to brake test these TCUs. That's not technically a TCU because I found that one but it goes well with my other TCUs. These are tri-cam units. There's tri- three cams in this unit and I have used these a lot in Yosemite over the last 15 years but I like aliens so I'm willing to sacrifice them in order to do some science. Now a lot of people have been asking about these angles that are unfavorable when you put cams and rocks because every test really that's done is pulled in this favorable way straight out or straight down. In this case we're going to pull straight out because we're you know that's how we can pull but we're also going to test this cam here that's going to show what happens when we're getting kinky with our wires. So our first test is going to be a red TCU and you can analyze the placement of this. We believe that it's a pretty good one. Leave in the comments below what you think of it because it's good for the algorithm. We are going to first attach it to the sling here and we kind of think that this might break first. You know what happens with this test will determine what we do with the rest of these. This is a learning curve almost as curvy as that. This is a pretty sharp edge. We've tried to avoid this in climbing if possible but sometimes it happens and it'll be nice to know what actually does. We're going to pad the crap out of this. We're going to embed this into the system here and this is our SMC three inch pulleys which goes over to a tree and we're just basically going to pull to see if we can brake test this. If not we'll just pull out some more muscle. We got a lot of stuff in the van today. No cam will go unbroken. Okay we're all set. We installed a catcher so this thing doesn't go flying. We're going to pad the crap out of this thing. These things are important to have peak on not hold but peak and we already have 0.79 kilonewtons on it. We're all locked and Bobby's all set to go. Okay we just pulled our guts out and I don't want to get too close to this. The cable looks like it's doing okay. The lobes seem to have moved a little bit. 13.02. I'm impressed. Well I'm also not impressed like that's all we've put on. We can add one more multiplier which should give us more to like 18 but this thing is probably not far from going. So I'm just gonna pad our dyno a little bit. This cam is like 15 years old. We just put a multiplier on let's see if we can pull it out. What happened Bobby? Our backup cord to keep the dyno safe. This was full of cameras. There's one there and there and there. There's a third oh there's the phone right there. Damn we were only supposed to break the cam and all we did was break the sling. Wow this thing isn't going anywhere. Check that out. It's the thing we actually needed to know is 15.57 kilonewtons before the 15 year old nylon sling broke. Okay let's let's break the cam now. That'll be a pretty exciting shot. Hey this one still works and that phone still works. Yes and this phone still works. Okay we have reset to five kilonewtons. While he's doing that go to our new domain slackline.com. We re-updated the website. It's looking really good and it's all at slackline.com. All of our resources Highline University. You can learn all the stuff walking and flow, bolting bible, everything. So we just have a ton and ton of resources on there now and we're adding to the data for our slack snap which is also the chart and the raw videos. You can watch all of the phones flying across the the mountains here if you want instead of the edited version you're watching right now. Do you think the rock's opening up? You did fall. So I was standing behind this because I wanted to see what was happening. I thought this crack was widening and so that's why the lobes are open more than they were. That's crazy cool. Look at how those wires are all they all snap and on different sides some in the middle. 18.95. Okay that's pretty cool and it didn't break. It didn't break where we were kinking the wire. So in theory it doesn't matter. Man we learned that about a lot of these tests that nothing really matters at the end of the day. Well let's let's look at how badly that's damaged. Like I don't think any of those wires are broken are they? I don't think they are. Here can we pull out the cam without getting metal slivers? Oh yeah. Whoa that's that's sick. It's kinked but like none of the individual wires are broken. It's not too kinky that's what we're saying. Man those teeth are like not teethy anymore. I've also used them for many years so that is what the teeth are supposed to look like where it doesn't engage in the rock and then where it does. Okay well that's done let's do the next one. So now we have test number 933 is an orange TCU going sharply around that corner. That's a lot sharper corner than the other one. A lot sharper of a corner. Now this can damage your cams from being usable again but will it hold you? That's really the the test we're doing here. In order to do like a drop load test we would need a better dynamometer that would work on a cliff so if you have suggestions please put that in the comments below and where I can get a dynamometer that'll read 2500 times per second that I can take up a mountain. Peak fast on 0.7 we're gonna wrap this up and start pulling. So the wires straight up broke right on that edge. Very interesting the variety in which we get but that's pretty good too. 13.42 kilonewtons. Did I say kilonewtons right Bobby? No probably not. Kilonewtons. So I add an extra T at the end of kilonewtons like I just did. One because I've said it wrong for so long now I can't help it and two if I keep saying it that way you'll think it's intentional instead of me being hooked on phonics. So what'd you find Bobby? So the bar there broke. The trigger bar. Oh because it was pretty not it was really badly placed in there like something you wouldn't want to do. So that's how they are normal and that's how so where's the bar? Who knows. Did we pass the bar while we were walking over here? We'll have to check the slow-mo camera. Yeah. As if that's going to tell us anything. So we hope this cam is retrievable. I've got a carabiner clipped into the and pulling on the other trigger wire but I don't have any down force anymore to disengage. All right what'd you get? You look genuinely proud of yourself. That was a lot of Now that is a brake test. That's a rad. Oh shocker the sling broke. Those are some fresh fibers. What? You guessed so close. What'd you guess Bobby? Nine. You guessed nine? 7.75. That's pretty cool. I bet you if you padded that well it would be better. Yeah we'll have to look at the slow-mo take a look at this. I think that is where exactly where it was loading over the edge. For sure. So let's attach something else to this that and then maybe we'll pad it because I am curious if you're not pulling directly in line but at a 90 degree angle if the I don't think the cam would come out right? I think the wires would break. Yeah if we could get something strong enough. What strong enough? That's soft Bobby. I think I think this would cut soft shackles. Well we'll find out on this next brake test of how not to high line. So instead of putting a soft shackle on there that's not very realistic. We're going to put this carabiner on there which is going to be one of your other options if you were to do this in real life and bypass the sling. And we are gonna just see if this carabiner breaks before the wire does. So it broke the wires at the top of the cam like we've been seeing quite a bit. Yeah but it was where the carabiner was contacting it. You can see the two marks where it was but this is in okay shape. Bobby we talked about this we're supposed to break the cams. Why? Sorry Andy. So Andy Redrick gave me this one. This is the very first line scale. This one had sentimental value to him. We'll be more careful with the other one. I bought the other one. So we have a couple theories. The carabiner smashed it like went whack or the carabiner went whack or it basically did this because we were pulling at a full 90 degrees or like a 91 degrees and grinding it in the rock which is why it was so hard to get padding under it while there was like two kilonewtons on there while we're pre-loading it. So what we're gonna have to do is pull at an 88 degree angle so it's like on a little tiny a-frame. Get the dynamometer off the rock and then continue to pull. Instead of you breaking your dynamometers smash that like button for me. Make it worth it. Let's see if we got another dyno we're willing to risk. So our next test is a yellow TCU and this is the only spot for it in this crack. So we are going to pull it. We're going to pad it a little so it's pulling up just a little bit. That's kind of the angle we're looking at and we have our slack snap dynamometer in here with shackles padding the bottom and if this holds our catcher we're fine. If our catcher breaks then that would suck. Let's try one more test sample since we're getting such different results. Go for it. What happened? So it popped out of its placement after it the sling failed. Okay so the sling okay so sling failed. And it was just kind of resting in there. Okay so let's uh it's pretty good carabiners are what 22 something kilonewtons so let's let's try it let's let's reset it. What happened? Wires broke but the plastic stayed on. Very interesting. It stayed in its position this time. 14.15 kilonewtons. That is a kinky gal right there. So what's really interesting is that it was kinked all the other way on the last test and I reversed that and we're still not seeing any of these wires floated over the sharp edge with any cuts in them. This is very interesting. So instead of breaking more dynamometers we are going to break this episode into two. We are going to pull uh in another episode we're going to film this separately because these turn out to be too long otherwise and that direction favorably to see obviously the slings will break we might not even test that or we might since we have them but we'll see if the wires break before these slip because in cam crusher on the cam crusher adapter on our slack snap machine these have a tendency to slip because they're metal plates. We're gonna find out if we can get it to slip in this rough granite. No rocks were harmed in the making of this episode because the rocks but dinos were and cams were so this was an expensive episode uh please donate. Now that I'm looking at this this is actually bowed which is why well there's a lot of reasons this is not camming anymore. This sling broke on this one at 14.75 kilonewtons and then when we connected a normal carabiner to it uh an aluminum carabiner is that what we used yeah okay yeah a lot of tests going on here anyways that's a smaller bend radius we got 14.15 kilonewtons less on the wires for the wires broke so it's interesting how that happens with but we've also seen it with the big steel carabiners that I'm sitting on these bend radiuses are pretty big they're the biggest you're going to ever have in a climbing scenario and it's still it's breaking the wire before the sling the sling breaks first and then these carabiners breaking these wires sometimes lower tell me in the comments below why you think that and um do you think they're compromised before we actually test it again because if we just avoid this all together and then pull what do you think would happen I only have so many cams you can only do so many variables um anyways it's something we discovered why you think it's breaking here versus here versus here why it didn't break here in some cases um yeah it's very interesting I uh try to read everything within like the first week of a video being released and I start to uh I learn a lot and it really helps us make our videos better I'm still gonna say kilonewton it's wrong because that's how I do it now smash that like button and enjoy our new fancy ending that we just finished and go to slackline.com hey check this out we found it we found that bar that broke ah damn it I'm sitting in a puddle now my ass is wet now now the ending