Tumbi Venturers (Index)
Equipment (Back a Page)
Table of Contents
1. What are ropes?
2. Types of ropes.
3. Care of ropes.
666666- Packing away
666666- On site
4. General Info.
5. Costs and lengths.
6. History.
7. Bibliography.
What are ropes?
Rope is a item used for tying knots, movement up or down a cliff face, for tying down a load or for construction as in scouts. Rope can be made from many materials and can be an width from thread for needles to huge ropes used in tying up ships. Most rope these days is made by manafacturers but you can still make it yourself if you have a bit of time and inginuity. Rope, like all equipment has to be cared for in a appropraite manner (more on that later). The earliest knowledge of ropes is from egypt approximately 3000BC so rope has been used for more than 5000 years. There are many types of ropes which all come at different prices, lengths and all have different benifits and uses.
Types of ropes.
There are two main types of ropes Dynamic and Static.
-Static.
-Dynamic
Both Of these 2 types of rope can be made from many different substances. These substances include:
Flax (a plant with blue flowers that is grown for its seeds (linseed), extensively farmed in Ireland & UK.), Bullrushes, Camel hair, Animal skin and jungle creepers are what used to be used. Now we tend to use products such as:
Steel wire, nylon (synthetic), vegitable fibres, manilla, sisal, coir, cotton and hemp.
As above ropes come in diffent width. The widths used for rock activities (climbing, abseiling etc) is between 5mm and 12mm. The 5mm being for prussik loops and the 12 mm for thick abseiling ropes. Of the two types of rope they can both be constructed in many ways. Three of these ways are Hawser, Shroud and cable-laid. Each made with a different number of strands. Most of the ropes we use as venturers are synthetic (or man made). The benifits of synthetic rope are that it is twise as strong as naturalk rope can be elastic (this is important for climbers in particular because it helps lesson the shock of a sudden fall), is lighter than most natural ropes, is easier to handle and it doesn't rot (allthough some ropes deteriorate due to extreme heats which can be caused by excessive friction.
- Care of ropes.
Ropes will last for quite along time if cared for properly. there are many things which you can do in order to maximised the life of the rope. You must care for the rope both on site and when packed away.
666666666Packing away
Some things not to do when packing away a rope.
There are many ways of packing away a rope. They are coiling (which can be done many ways), Backpacking, chaining (daisy is the most common) and hosing (similar to coiling buit done verticle over a peg, like a hose).
666666666On site.
And most importantly do not let rope chafe over sharp rock edges, it is dangerous and wears the rope away extremely quickly.
- General information.
Breaking force is the mass the rope can support. It is generally expressed in kilonewtons. A rope with a 20 kilonewton breaking force could support approximately 2040 kilograms.
Costs per lengths & manafacturers.
There are about 9 major manafacturers of ropes and there average prices per metre. These are:
These prices come from the wild gear Survey on static ropes and was compiled mid 1999. This price is an untreated price. Ropes can be dry treated for about 50 cents per metre. This is more popular amoung canyoners as when the rope is wet it can way quite a considerably lot more.
-History of ropes
The first ropes were invented before the beggining of written history.Certainly the first assist in climbing was a hanging grapevine, a natural rope. Strangely enough the construction of this rope, a core of very long fibres, covered with an exteral sheath of vine, is identicle with most modern of ropes the kernmantal lines, now used extensively all around the world.
Since then rope has made of many different products the next in line was leather or hide ropes then onto horsehair and even womens hair was used for religious reasons (according to legend). The next products to become ropes where cottons but this did not have long enough fibres so it didn't stick around too long. Following cotton was Flax, hemp, sisal and manilla which lasted for neally a thousand years before the introduction of polymers (or synthetics) which are man made by machine. But it took awhile to get synthetic rope to work. Some of the first trials with products such as rayon proved unsucessful. Then they tried nylon with excellent reults. Nylon was first used in 1942 with a max load weight of 3680 kilo's and hen reporduced with new techniques in 1959 giving it a max weight load of 4575 kilo's now it can hold up to 12000 kilo's. But now we have steel ropes which can hold even more.
Thats a pretty rough history. For more see some of the books listed in my bibliography.
-Bibliography
Tumbi Venturers(Back a Page)