Compact Bulldog Bone

knothead said:
Second rope was a 12.5mm PMI Unicore static that they are just launching into the rescue market. I was given a short sample as a dealer and threaded it up and it was a religious experience. Smooth as butter on descents. Very nice combo.
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Thanks for your info. Can you tell me how easy it was to tend this line (did it slip through nice, or did you have to pull it through?)?

Looking for the balance of the thickest possible line that will still slip through the bone nice in a tending situation with no creepage when weighted. I'm not asking much - ha ha!

Most popular contenders: Cougar, Tachyon, Vortex...

Thanks JeffGu - I did notice that vital difference between the nylon and polyester cores in the descriptions, though have no experience of that XTC to feel the difference - much appreciated!
 
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TimBr said:
By way of getting this thread back on track, it's cool to hear you talk about how well the Bulldog Bone tends, and how you are able to bomb out of trees with it. It makes it sound like a much higher performance device than I'd imagined at first.

Tim
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Thanks Tim. Yeah, I can come down way, way faster than anything I remotely tried with my HH, and the BDB gets warm but not overly so, it has a lot of area to spread the heat. Of course, my idea of 'fast' may be turtle slow to other folks :). All I know is that it is very fun device for me, and it has made me much more confident in my climbing.
 
123Craig said:
Is this the 16 or 12 Strand XTC? - While I'm not doubting that this rope performs just as you say with the BDB - I'm having a hard time getting my head around the fact that in diameter and construction - it isn't too different than Blue Streak - and yet it performs so well for you.

Did you place the 5/8" bollard in place of the one that came pre-installed on the bone, or does it go on the opposite top link pin before closing the chain link into place?

Just need some help with this. A pic, and/or some more explanation would be helpful.

Thanks
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Hi Craig,

Here is a link to the rope from Treestuff (Yale XTC Eclipse, it is the 16-strand rope):

http://www.treestuff.com/store/catalog.asp?category_id=5&item=1931

I told Gordon what type of rope I was using, and he chose the bollard for me when he shipped it. I measured the other two bollards that came with it (and by elimination, figured it must be the medium sized one which others folks have said is the 5/8" one --I did not directly measure it). I did not do anything with the BDB except put it on the rope and start climbing. Since it it so similar to my HH in how it works, I had no problem with it.

I realize that my rope choice is probably a bit old-school - I bought the XTC Yale Fire as a semi-random choice when I first started out and I had no idea what to pick for a rope. I progressed through DRT style, then SRT with it, and when I decided to buy a second rope, stuck with XTC Yale as I could not decide on what other rope type to get. I did get to try a 90 ft tie-in + base anchor the other day, and my XTC was fairly stretchy (used just about all of my 200 ft of rope), so eventually will try something else, but I typically only climb 40-60 ft tie-ins so no hurry for a different rope.

Bob R
 
rbreesems said:
.... I can come down way, way faster than anything I remotely tried with my HH, and the BDB gets warm but not overly so...
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I am curious as to why you are finding this much difference. I know that my HH will allow an almost free fall speed. It will get hot but so will my BDB if pushed the same way.
 
DSMc said:
I am curious as to why you are finding this much difference. I know that my HH will allow an almost free fall speed. It will get hot but so will my BDB if pushed the same way.
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Well, I got my HH in December 2013 from Treestuff, so I climbed on it for 18+ months and learned SRT with it. My problem with descents it that it seemed like most of the heat was being dissipated in the hitch cord and not the body of the HH, so I had to keep my descent speed slow or else the hitch cord got uncomfortably warm (at least to me - I will be the first to admit that I have no clue was to what is an acceptable amount of heat in a hitch). I tried different hitches, I watched videos on it (like Nick Bonners youtube vid on it), tried different hitch cord, but really could not get it to where I could do smooth/fast descents like I saw others do in vids. It might have been a rope thing, I could not get the default hitch that is used in the HH documentation to ever work for me as it would not grab my rope reliably (unless I put so many wraps in it that it became difficult to tend). So I ended up using a Schwabisch hitch (I also tried others as well). I would fuss with it about every other month or so trying to get it to perform better.

Don't get me wrong, the HH was perfectly serviceable and I climbed many a tree with it. I got the BDB wanting to try an all-mechanical approach, and it has been just super good for me so far. I am keeping my HH as a backup and/or for use on my other rope.
 
123Craig said:
Thanks for your info. Can you tell me how easy it was to tend this line (did it slip through nice, or did you have to pull it through?)?

Looking for the balance of the thickest possible line that will still slip through the bone nice in a tending situation with no creepage when weighted. I'm not asking much - ha ha!
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The PMI rope fell right through the BDB as I was tending it from a neck loop attached to the tending clip on the Bone.

New rope so I am not sure yet what it will be like when it fuzzes up a bit.

Good luck! You'll find something that works and it will be an epiphany.

Mark
 
The Blue Streak has never worked well for me in any configuration, it is too GO and STOP. I did deepen the groove in the spine, which dramatically improved the self tending, but the release remains sketchy. It seems the Cougar is best for low stretch and smooth release. Tachyon also but some complain it is too stretchy. Km III works with my weight as does Rocket Line and Imori. Vortex works but I would say it is harder to manually take up slack because of its inherent "softness" and drag on the lower friction pin. The XTC fire is without a doubt the toughest , most wear resistant rope in my admittedly limited experience. it releases fine but because of its coarser cover, it is more like riding on a cobblestone road, especially if descending slowly.
 
rbreesems said:
Thanks Tim. Yeah, I can come down way, way faster than anything I remotely tried with my HH, and the BDB gets warm but not overly so, it has a lot of area to spread the heat. Of course, my idea of 'fast' may be turtle slow to other folks :). All I know is that it is very fun device for me, and it has made me much more confident in my climbing.
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DSMc said:
I am curious as to why you are finding this much difference. I know that my HH will allow an almost free fall speed. It will get hot but so will my BDB if pushed the same way.
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Hey, Bob! A couple of things I'd like to bring up here. First, I'm wondering if you've ever tried any bigger, fatter hitch cords, like 9 or 10mm. My gut feeling, not based on any science, is that a bigger, fatter hitch cord would provide more material to absorb and dissipate heat, and therefore maybe not get as hot as a thinner hitch cord. You do have to be sure it can grab on the rope your using, though.

Also, I had a discussion once with DSMc (Dave) about what I do to get my Hitch Hiker to tend easily. I use a knut hitch, and I tie it up as short as I possibly can by rolling the hitch cord back and down over the angled rope channel of the Hitch Hiker as I'm making up the hitch. (This seems like a shorter distance to me than the top of the Hitch Hiker.) Then when I've finished tying it, dressing and setting it, I have to work a little hard just to get the hitch to roll back up to the top of the Hitch Hiker, it's so tight.

At this point I can hardly get the rope to tend slack at all, it's so tight, which is just what I'm looking for, at this point in the process. Then I clip into my harness bridge ring, and sit back into it gently to make sure the hitch grabs and doesn't drop me.

Here is the big, important part. Once I know my hitch is holding me, and I've managed to tend a little slack, (but not at all easily; everything is still really, really tight at this point) I then sit into my harness as hard as I can, tend slack with my pulley, then do it again and again. Maybe three or four times, walking back and forth about twenty or thirty feet, tending slack each time. Frequently when I'm near the beginning of this part of the process, I find it helps to push on the spine of the Hitch Hiker to help force the hitch to stay seated at the top of the Hitch Hiker, instead of allowing it to drop back down the angled side.

By the time I'm done with this procedure, I've got a system that tends slack very easily, and a hitch with almost no sitback (or setback, I can never remember).

Having the hitch be super tight before you try to load it up is of critical importance.

This procedure might allow you to use a 10mm hitch cord and still have it grab effectively.

That's about all I wanted to say. Just looking for a way to maybe reduce heat at the hitch for you. Not sure if it will work, just giving you something to try.

Tim
 
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TimBr said:
By the time I'm done with this procedure, I've got a system that tends slack very easily, and a hitch with almost no sitback or (setback, I can never remember).

Having the hitch be super tight before you try to load it up is of critical importance.

This procedure might allow you to use a 10mm hitch cord and still have it grab effectively.

That's about all I wanted to say. Just looking for a way to maybe reduce heat at the hitch for you. Not sure if it will work, just giving you something to try.

Tim
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Thanks for all of this helpful advice, will definitely give it a try!
 
Platinum seems to shine as an access line. It actually wasn't designed for descent at all. The mechanical connection of the cover/core is the issue.

The weave pattern is difficult to explain, but essentially the rope goes back and forth, progressively, from a normal cover core configuration (no mechanical connection) to an interwoven configuration.

When descending, friction from the belay device (Hitch, RW, BDB, RR, Rig, D4, etc...) can begin to milk the portions of rope without any interwoven strands. That cover slack can only get pushed to the point where interweaving begins. When this happens, you'll have a bulge in the cover with nowhere to go and it can act like a stopper.

My old Platinum lanyard worked well for a while, but eventually the slack areas of the cover made it inconsistent.

It gets really complicated to explain, but the pattern takes something like 4 meters to repeat. For a lanyard, if you had a section of rope with as much fully interwoven strands as possible over the usable length of rope, you could have a really nice, slack free lanyard that would act smoothly. If you had a section without any interwoven strands somewhere along the useable length, you'd probably get some inconsistency.
 
Long story short, the right "section" of Platinum makes a super nice lanyard. A hank of Platinum can make for a great access line. It would not be my first choice for a work positioning line. The technology built into the rope is not intended for that.
 
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