Equalization is NOT a myth - new bolt pattern to make sliding x highline anchors equalize

Well I'm super determined to find out if we can get a bolting pattern that makes four point sliding axes automatically equalize at all four points. Check it out on this episode of How Not to Highline. I'm Ryan Jinks and welcome to my backyard where about almost a year ago Andy Lewis and I used his four dynamometers and my one dynamometer to find out if the four bolts were sharing the load when we did a sliding axe which in theory automatically equalizes between all four points. We found out that that is completely not true but we have some ideas today on how a bolt pattern might change whether or not that is true. Now the original bolt pattern that we had are just four bolts in line like we have here and I've got 3.6 kilonewtons of force on there right now with just my given ratchet on the tree and it's a sliding axe. There's a lot of ways to do this I just use a figure eight here as an example that everyone can follow since if you can tie into a highline you can tie a figure eight. Anyways a sliding axe in theory all shares the load evenly between all the bolts but as you can see here which is consistent with our results from last time that this is really only sharing 25% of what this is sharing in the middle. What we found is the ones that are most directly in line see the most force or we saw the ones that are closest see the most force and since these are all the same distance the ones in the middle are seeing 75% more than the ones here. Okay so I moved the removable bolts to the new holes that I drilled during the intro and it's very very interesting actually. So on our master point right now we currently have 4.2 kilonewtons which is almost a thousand pounds and here we have 0.87 and 0.94 so those are roughly the same and here we have 1.0 and 1.2. The middle is still seeing more force than the sides but it's significantly more even than it was on the flat straight bolt pattern. You can see here that the one that's holding the most force right here is more or less directly in line with the tree. Please ignore this it's very hard to remove these removables the less deep they go easier it is to remove. Now I'm curious if I put these bolts maybe back here whether or not I can get this to perfectly equalize with a sliding axe. Before I take this apart I cranked it down one more time we're at 4.8 and here we are at almost 1, 1.2, 1.4 and 1 as well. So the sides are even this one's holding just a little bit more but they're significantly closer than they were when they were straight. Okay so I put bolts even further back and now we have 4.56 kilonewtons. Just in case you're curious 4.4 kilonewtons is a thousand pounds of force. What do we have over here? Oh my god those are even at 1.1 ish and back here this one's still seeing the most force but this one's less than 1.1 just only by a little bit. We actually may have found a bolt pattern that will equalize when you do a sliding axe. So let's show distance between our bolts right now even though this setup is not perfect. Our outside bolts are two feet as you can see right there but you can see here that this bolt and this bolt are not equal distances from the outside ones. So you can see here this is 11 inches away from this bolt and this one's only seven inches away from that bolt and I think that really reflects why this dynamometer was seeing more force than this one and you can see here that the bolts back here are about 17 or 18 inches directly behind these bolts and they are about the same distance away from those bolts however these are not perfectly centered and if this was more like right there instead of right there I think these would actually be more equalized and I don't know what the math would be in order to make this perfect maybe instead of 75 behind maybe 70 or 60 behind so if the bolt hole was right here instead but you could play with this all day long and you probably could get it perfect. This is equalized enough to make any sliding axe equally hold the force. Now you can't always control the bolt pattern that you're rigging your highline off of because most of the time the bolts are already there but if you're rigging in softer rock this could be a great bolt pattern to evenly distribute the pressure. I have learned that I like BFKs because I can generally get them to equalize and it's a little bit more redundant in this scenario you would still have to use whoopie slings and it becomes quite a cluster here at the master point. I have really really learned to love BFKs after the equalization is a myth video number one that we did. However we just rigged the space net at GGBY and some of the anchors were equalized with BFKs however others were not and I had this beautiful 4x redundancy and 10 to 1 safety ratio however only one bolt and one leg of my BFK was holding all the force on one of my anchors. So BFKs are not perfect especially when you're dealing with something like a space net where you really don't know where your anchor is going to be. It is a little bit easier when you're doing a highline and you can see the direction the line will be going. Another important thing this is for is if you're rigging off of cams. Now I never recommend doing a sliding axe or even a BFK when you're rigging off of cams however you should do a cascading anchor which is where you have a V off of two points and a V and take those and create a V so V to V to V helps distribute the load more evenly. You don't want one cam holding all the force for your highline but it is important to know when you are rigging anchors that the most direct in line is going to see the most force and the closest piece is going to see the most force and if you can move and mitigate that by having them cancel each other out like they do here then you can build a better stronger safer anchor. So here's one more bolt pattern I thought would be interesting before we go. Here we have 4.6 kilonewtons 4.7 and I made a three point sliding axe and by doing that I just used a climbing sling right here which is safe enough when you're only putting uh in this case 1.5 kilonewtons. You would never put more than 4 kilonewtons on here they're rated for 24 kilonewtons you technically have a safety ratio. I always if I'm doing this like to use two of these is a redundant method rather than folding this in half. Now of course you can see here this is one thing folded in half because I didn't want it sticking out too far. Now this three point sliding axe is technically really equalized it's 1.5 1.5 and 1.6 kilonewtons. Now that doesn't mean all the bolts are sharing the load you can see back here that it takes two to share that load and I assume that's holding about 50 to 60 percent each on those bolts back here. Now if you were to rig this with cams what I would do is I would rig two cams here two cams here and then two cams further back and you can see the pattern you would want when you extend things out and I would create a V a V and a V and then I would do a sliding axe with whoopies and by doing that they would share one third of the load on each pair of cams and that is how you can rig safely on something that's more delicate than these strong bolts. Okay one more experiment we have here we did a sliding axe between the two here and then took the two there and equalized it again to there however these are so far back and they're no longer directly in line because the V's isolate them. Let's see what happens we have basically four kilonewtons it is settling and we have an even number on both of these 1.2 1.9 and then back here we only have 0.5 and 0.8 so that is less than half the force on the outside ones and it's just really good to know how these get manipulated when you're building your anchor. So here is another configuration we can do we put a sliding axe between those two and a sliding axe between these two and we took those points and we made a sliding axe. Now this leg is longer than this one so this is seen more force than this so let's find out where we're at 4.76 kilonewtons and these are 1.2 and 1.6 that's interesting and this is 0.8 and 1.9 so these are seeing less force because of the issue we just talked about of this leg being longer and these are not holding an even amount because I think this one is more in line. I even tried kicking it and I cannot get it to move because this equalizes so well. What I mean by that is I can't manipulate where the sliding axe is because if you have a span set or a thick rope it can get all jammed up in here and you can actually kick it into submission to a point. So automatic equalization with a sliding axe is not a myth however it takes a very intentional effort in order to achieve equalization so all of your bolts or cams or wraps that you do around the boulder are holding tension evenly. Now if you really grasp and get good at equalizing your anchors well you might be tempted to do sketchy highlines therefore you shouldn't highline. Hey thanks for watching but don't be an idiot and try to learn highlining from youtube videos from a guy you don't know. Instead go to slackademics.com to find a person you don't know in person to show you how to do all this. These videos are just to give you a basic knowledge so when you go out with someone who knows what they're doing you can learn it very quickly. 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