After the last blog post where I tried to compare washing a caving rope in a washing machine to jet washing I thought I’d try to see how much damage I could do to a rope with a jet washer.

This photo was from the previous test where I exposed the rope to a full power, fine jet for approximately 30 seconds.I could not see any evidence to say that the rope had been damaged by the jet wash exclusively. The longer fibres shown here could have been the result of the already cut fibres in the sheath (short cut sections showing) being forced out from under another braid. Of course, the damage may be down to the jet wash alone. I think the only real way to progress with this test is to take a piece of brand new rope and jet wash it. I don’t have any laying about right now so I did some more testing with the leftover Beal Antipodes 9mm from the previous testing. I hypothesis that the worst case scenario is a rope being jet washed up against a solid surface whilst under moderate tension. The tension would keep the rope in the jet longer and the solid backing would provide a surface for the fibres to be crushed against or even abraded. It had occurred to me the damage could come from the power of the jet rubbing the rope against a course material.
The backing for this test was a piece of porcelain tile, almost completely smooth to the touch. The tile sat between the rope fibre and the wood in the test device I knocked up.I tested each size of bundle on both full power and the normal setting that I use for washing. Both jet setting were fired at point blank range into the fibres for 60 seconds. This test was repeated at least twice for each sample after it was checked close up.
This sample had been washed on high power/very tight jet for 120 seconds. The jet was directed at the same area of the sample for all the test time. For scale, the fibre here is about size of that very tough cotton used for stitching canvas and kit bags together.

The fibre bundles became so small that I could easily break them in my hands. This one was no bigger than a piece of cotton.I figured that if my jet wash could not cut through a piece of sample that was thin enough to break easily with my hands then I did not need to progress onto smaller samples.

Conclusion?

As before, I need to state that this back garden test does not give a statistically sound result and as such only serves to show what occurred in this one instance of testing.

I could not get my jet washer to cut any size of sample on this test. In both high power/confined and low power/wide spread modes, I saw no damage to the rope fibres. No doubt individual filaments of the fibres may well cut very easily but they break with the slightest of effort in the hands anyway so I doubt the value of that observation. The cotton size sample was the smallest test size and even that could be broken by hand with little effort. It is also worth noting that this experiment was done on a 7 year old rope that had seen high use in very abrasive environments over its life.

Challenge

I’d really like for other cavers to go out and try this experiment for themselves. Take a small piece of old or new semi-static caving rope and split it down to various sample sizes. Use a domestic jet washer / pressure washer on it’s highest setting and see if you can cut or damage the sample. For consistency, do it in 60 second, point blank range bursts.
Let me know via the contact address on my website or via the thread on UKCaving what happens. Failures to cut are just as important as actual cuts, so let me know either way.

I thought I’d ponder a little bit about the ‘myth’ of jet washers and caving ropes. I say myth because it appears that there is no real test data out there in the caving community. Recent caving forum discussions about jet washing happened to coincide with an associate company requesting we don’t use jet washers on their kit earlier this week and the two events spurred me to type something up.

Disclaimer – This is not a scientific, empirical experiment and you should always follow the care instructions of the equipment manufacturer.

I have used all sorts of methods for washing ropes over the years and most of my older ropes have been subjected to each at one time or another. Some times a rope may simply get dunked in the stream by the cave, other times I see fit to pull it through my home made rope washer but, more often than not, I get the jet wash on them.
The jet wash is always set to its lowest power and widest spray pattern. I’ve caused real damage to wood and clothing before by using the jet wash on full power so I am cautious. Some site this as the reason you should never use a jet wash on ropes. I agree. If you don’t know how to wash with a jet wash don’t do it. That, and if you don’t know how to operate your washing machine and it ends up on a boil wash, you probably shouldn’t put your ropes in there either.
This Beal 9mm got a super fine jet of water for about 30 seconds at point blank range in a test today. 

Apart from being incredibly clean for a 7 year old rope, you can clearly see the elongated sheath fibres. I’m not convinced the jet wash cut any fibres, more that it simply forced the already cut and abraded fibres out from under the other braids. The core was not exposed. I’d not want to do this to my ropes ever but I would call it far from ‘cut’ or ‘shredded’ as some anecdotal tales from the web recall.

Moving on. The rope I chose to retire was a Beal Antipodes 9mm semi-static that I purchased in 2007. The rope was one of my main users for 3 years as a 40m before being cut into 2 shorter lengths for cave leading handlines and general Italian Hitch duties. For the last 2 years it has languished unloved in the shed and has been the subject of much abuse in non life-critical applications. It’s probably not been washed for a year but before that it saw regular jet washing and stream dunking.

I cut the length in half and removed a control sample from either piece. The two 1m control sections came from the very end of the rope, where it was marked, and roughly half way along the 20m length respectively. I single daisy-chained one 10m length and double daisy-chained the other.

The 2 longer lengths were soaked in cold water for 10 minutes as a pre-treatment.

As this was happening I cut open the 2 control lengths for a comparison.

End of rope section: Mid rope section:

The 2 samples looked very similar and I’m happy to say, despite years of being jet washed, were relatively clean and un-abraded inside. The fluffing you see was caused by the cut into the rope.

I dropped one of the test lengths in the washing machine. I set it to ‘delicate’ on a cold wash with no spin after first running a rinse cycle to clear any detergent. It had a 62 minute wash time.
While this was going on I jet washed the other test length in the same manner I do all my ropes. The process took approximately 5 minutes and once complete the rope was allowed to drip dry until the washing machine had completed it’s cycle.

In both photos the washing machine cleaned rope is at the top and the jet washed one at the bottom.
I think it’s clear to see from the photos, and certainly was in real life, that the jet washed rope was far cleaner than the machine washed rope. It also had a much suppler feel and was more knotable over all. Remember the ropes have been identically treated until this very last wash in this test.The rope on the left is the machine washed and the one on the right has been jet washed.

It is hard to draw conclusions from the comparison here as this is only one wash cycle. The jet wash seemed to get the better results in terms of appearance and suppleness but the internals of the ropes looked very similar.
The one thing that I do take from this test is that despite the differences in the test washing, all the samples from this rope did not show any appreciable abrading of internal fibres from grit ingress. The anti jet wash argument is that the force of the water pushes grit into the core, causing damage. What I observe here is that this is an incorrect assumption as the 4 sections of visible inner on this very old, well used and heavily jet washed rope show no signs of damage by internal abrasion.

My theory is that the jet washing forces the grit and mud through the core and out the other side of the rope, as opposed to moving it into the core and it magically stopping there. I always clean my ropes after each trip. Perhaps they simply do not stay dirty long enough for the grit that does enter the core to be damaging. The outer sheath shows far more wear and damage than any of the internal structures of the rope.

I continue to believe that regular low-power jet washing does no harm to my ropes. I do know that some manufactures do not suggest using a jet wash on ropes and you should make your own choice with reference to the manufacturer’s guidelines. I will continue to cut open ropes as they are retired and will update this blog should my opinions or observations change. Meanwhile, if there is anyone out there prepared to take this subject up for a dissertation or just for interest then get in touch!