I have spent some time at Spanset in Middlewich over the last couple of months, doing my IRATA L1 and a few other bits. Some of you will perhaps know that Spanset have been particularly friendly to cavers, donating large amounts of new rope to expedition groups and competition winners on places like UKCaving forum. …
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Author:Pete
Outdoor professional and enthusiast.
Mineral ID
It is sometimes really hard to relate the minerals I see underground to the professional sample pictures on places like Wiki and Google. All I wanted was to be sure that what I saw was a certain thing. Well, I’ve started a Flickr album showing actual minerals in actual mines in the hope that I …
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New Petzl Stop
Rumers have been circulating for a while now about a redesigned Petzl Stop being in development and test. The first pictures have now emerged following an expo in China. Thanks to Qi Woo for posting these on the Rope Test Lab Facebook Group. I have made a few limited observations based on these few images. …
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Testing the strength of heavy duty caving belts
A Method of Testing the Strength of Heavy Duty Caving Belts The aim of this was to establish a method to test the strength of heavy duty caving belts that did not rely on having access to a load cell. I hoped to produce a simple system that needed very little equipment and that would …
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Worn Connectors – Pull Testing 11-6-2017
Over the last few months I’ve been collecting a few bits of retired equipment from stores checks and ‘isolation’ bins with a view to looking at loss of strength due to wear. Nothing here constitutes a scientific test and this is purely for my own satisfaction, but I’m writing it up anyway. I used my …
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Removing Sleeve Anchors (SPITS etc…)
I guess this post is a bit of a continuation from the blog post I did about pull testing SPIT type anchors in 2015. Sorry it has taken me so long to get round to doing this! The original post can be seen here: http://www.peakinstruction.com/blog/pulling-spit-anchors-back-garden-test/. One of the points of that testing was to ascertain …
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Cwmorthin SRT Rigging Guide
In 2016 I was looking to increase the training resources in Cwmorthin Mine for use on my LCMLA Level 2 and SRT training courses. The following pitch was created by myself and Duncan S with the kind permission of Go Below who have the lease on the mine. In the winter of 2018 I installed …
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More force testing on 5:1 systems
This post follows up on some initial testing done on 5:1 mechanical advantage systems used to tension tyrolean crossings done a few months ago. I suggest anyone who has not read that report catch up with it here before reading on as I don’t explain everything again here. For this batch of testing I used …
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Wrysgan Rigging Guides
I’ve recently had a couple of visits to Wrysgan mine and taken the opportunity to place a few new anchors and remove the cable from the Floor 3 traverse and some older rusty hardware.I’ve updated and built on original rigging guides produced by Gethin Thomas and these new versions are freely available for use by …
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Loads on a 5:1 Tensioning System
Tyroleans have been a bit of hot topic with me recently. I’ve developed some sites to use in my woodland near Whaley Bridge and been involved in some testing with BCA Trainer Assessors for the LCMLA scheme. We’ve measured the actual forces held by the anchors in a number of tyroleans but a really interesting …
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