When did BD stop making ropes?

As the title says - When did BD making ropes? Just trying to get a time frame on the minimum age of a rope marked with BD on the end. Thanks - Larry

I'm not sure they ever did. I believe Beal was making them for BD.

BD only distributed Beal for a while.

I figure some other company made it, but it had a bd logo on it.

seldom seen or found any ropes from Black Diamond, old Chouinard or GPIW either...they are all about hardware. Probably only offered ropes to just have something available for the one stop shopper.

Chouinard made ropes back in the 70's.
On page 26 of the classic Chouinard catalog (with the clean climbing
treatise by Doug Robinson, it lists 11mm ropes in lengths of
120, 150, 165, and even an 11 x 150 bicolor. They ranged from $47 to
$66 for the bicolor. I had a few of them and then started buying
Edelrid ropes from a buddy.

There were BD brand name ropes from 1990 through 2001. After that it was all Beal distribution.

JML11 wrote:There were BD brand name ropes from 1990 through 2001. After that it was all Beal distribution.

That's what i was lookin for! Thanks

Chouinard didn't make them back in the '70s either. Mammut did and Chouinard put his name on them. Nice ropes BTW. One of my favorites back then.

Dane wrote:Chouinard didn't make them back in the '70s either. Mammut did and Chouinard put his name on them. Nice ropes BTW. One of my favorites back then.

That sounds familiar...I did buy my first true bicolor rope as a Mammut in early 70's. Solid orange entangled and turned into dark purple...what a classy rope! My identifier for years. 150 ft. back then, my first real kernmantle rope. I went everywhere for over 15 years on that rope. Now it's cut up to short ropes for home wall, and finally 'retired' to make a huge rope hammock last spring.

I am pretty sure BD does not make any soft goods. I believe Baily Ribbon Mills makes their webbing.

Does soft goods include clothing? BD in the Rag Business
Or backpacks?

Jim Sweeney wrote: Does soft goods include clothing? BD in the Rag Business Or backpacks?

No, I was referring to climbing gear. However, I would bet BD does not make any of their clothing either. Maybe they make backpacks, but I would not be surprised if they dident.

It is amazing how few manufacturers actually manufacturer everything they sell. Quite a few of the soft goods sold in our industry are not made by the company on the tag. The only "real" manufacturers that actually manufacturer their own slings or ropes that I can think of at the moment are Sterling, New England, Mammut, Blue Water, Beal and MAYBE Yates, but I dont even think Yates makes their webbing. Hell, I don’t even know if Beal makes their own webbing. Webbing is almost exclusively made by companies that specialize in making webbing. Climbing equipment manufacturers very rarely make their own webbing. A large amount of webbing on the market is milspec which means not only did the manufacturer that sold it to you not manufacturer it, but it is not even their design! It is military specification design in many cases. Here is your rock climbing milspec webbing from the real manufacturer: ballyribbon.com/products/co…
BRM also makes a number of Dyneema slings for our industry as well.

Rock Exotica makes a number of the hard goods that a number of manufacturers sell. For example, most of Petzl's pulleys and large number of Petzl's carabiners are made by Rock Exotica. It makes me wonder how much of my Spirit draws are actually Petzl products. RE also makes a few of CMC Rescue's pulleys and I think they make a number of Mad Rock's carabiners, although I am less sure on that one.

Even more interesting is the fact that not everything that RE "makes" is made by RE. So Petzl is made by RE and RE is made by another company, and so on and so forth. Funny really, when you think about it. A number of climbing products and parts are made by companies that are not known for making climbing products.

20 Kn just described modern manufacturing. The slight twist is that manufacture and DESIGN are typically done by different companies. Typically, the company MAKING a product is just doing the brute force and dirty work according to a design and specification from another company (BD, Petzl, etc in this case). The DESIGN company likely does all prototyping, testing, specifications, and is deeply involved in the quality control process (or should be...this sometimes falls through the cracks in this model)

It is much more complicated and subtle than one company just putting their label on another product made by someone else.....although that happens as well in some cases.

The unfortunate outcome for the consumer in this new reality is that when you dissociate the design group from the manufacturing part, quality and responsiveness takes a hit and internal finger pointing and lethargy grows. Been in the middle of this for 15 yrs.

On a side note (or is it more on topic?) I have a 10.5mm "Chouinard" rope from circa 1988 (actually Mammut?) that I cannot destroy. I have been trying to break this rope in drop tests and other tests for more than a dozen years. I may just give up and start leading on it again....