Aluminum carabiner with steel D rings?

[Burrapeg]

@Burrapeg

Your quailifiers are flowery and impressive. Gotcha
But how about quantifiers? Let’s say...you add some to your aluminum binder that attaches your aluminum lanyard binder to your steel d ring? That connection is rarely taken off the harness but still sees tough use every climb
How often would the shrink wrap be replaced?

Well, I expect that would vary depending on circumstances. The stuff might last rather longer in a colder, cleaner environment, for example, as opposed to someone climbing in hot, dusty or sandy abrasive conditions. And it would certainly last much longer for a weekend rec climber like me than for a hard working pro. The main thing is that it is easy enough to replace fairly quickly and one would simply inspect it at some regular interval, basically the same way one should inspect the rest of the gear fairly often. I have only been climbing with any regularity less than two years now and I did have to replace a bit of shrink tubing this summer that I had on one biner I use often, but it was not the rugged glue-lined heavy duty variety. Given that the stuff is cheap enough and can be considered sacrificial, whether it lasts any real length of time is perhaps of less importance than the job it is doing in saving the pricey biners. And it comes in all sorts of neat colours! There are loads of it on eBay.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

OK

In all my years I’ve never had gear that wore in any concerning way. A bit of polishing though. Rubbed off the anodizing and a little more.

 

[Burrapeg]

Well, I was not actually thinking of the wear and tear on the biners when I first tried this. I was using the shrink tubing to deaden the metal to metal sound, since I normally climb just out of sight near trails on park or federal land around here. When I was first doing this, I was shocked at how much noise I made, with all the clinking and tinkling of the gear. I tried to think up ways to prevent it as much as possible. The bright colours of a lot of the rope and gear are an issue too. My last rope was Poison Ivy which is not very noticeable at a distance, aside from being a great climbing rope anyway. And my helmet is bright orange! I almost spray painted it green. I will be glad when the day comes when recreational tree climbing is more widely accepted and we don't have to sneak about!