My Solution to the BD Front Point Shortage

I made my own front points.

Surprisingly not too difficult make, with the help of Sendcutsend.com to laser cut the design out. Then grind out the point on the front, and then heat treat and temper. They climb great and puncture ice very easily. Just seeing if this is something that anybody would be interested. It's still a prototype but I could possibly make more if people are interested.

Very cool. What did it cost for the laser cutting?

I did that several years ago for a different make of crampon. I cut them from retired picks from my ice tools. Crazy tough steel (Cr-Mo I assume). No heat treat or tempering needed, but I did go through a few hacksaw blades and drill bits in the process.

Edit - photo (OEM frontpoint at the top)

Cost about $30 for four points so fairly inexpensive. I'm using AEB-L. A fairly tough and hard stainless steel, but apparently some surface rust. Originally used for razor blades, but has become very popular amongst knife makers.

Assuming you had to do the 3D design yourself? What sort of file did you have to send them? This is reaaaalllllyyyyy tempting. It’d be cheaper to do this and buy a bench grinder than buy any new points on the market.

I have a bin of used BD points and some new Kuznia's as well. Is BD still having supply issues? 

Greg Millerwrote:

Assuming you had to do the 3D design yourself? What sort of file did you have to send them? This is reaaaalllllyyyyy tempting. It’d be cheaper to do this and buy a bench grinder than buy any new points on the market.

You only need a 2D draft and just quote the thickness in the materials box. A competent shop can work with any number of files. Plus there are plenty of free 2D drafting software out there to use.

I can't believe you got those points cut and heat treated for $30. The HT alone must be more than that.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZMp2moudaD/?utm_medium=share_sheet

That’s pretty cool. 

I have heard lore that BD has a shipment of frontpoints arriving ‘Late Jan/early Feb’ and will be restocked, so keep an eye on the site!

If they show up let us know here too!

Really cool. I will keep this in mind for a variety of other things. 

Was interested by this post last year, so i thought I'd take a chance and throw a pair of these homemade front points on my guest crampons (i copied the Krukonogi profile into a CAD file). For the most part they worked well - didn't require much sharpening, sunk through soft ice like daggers, didn't immediately blow out dinner plates when kicking into hard ice. However, you can see what happened to my new-to-ice friend when using these front points on more three dimensional, chandelierey climbs that don't always allow for perpendicular sticks straight into the ice. Ater this I definitely wouldn't consider these for anything other than TRing, but at the very least I now have a set of crampons specifically for climbing dihedrals.

Zach Woodwardwrote:

Was interested by this post last year, so i thought I'd take a chance and throw a pair of these homemade front points on my guest crampons (i copied the Krukonogi profile into a CAD file). For the most part they worked well - didn't require much sharpening, sunk through soft ice like daggers, didn't immediately blow out dinner plates when kicking into hard ice. However, you can see what happened to my new-to-ice friend when using these front points on more three dimensional, chandelierey climbs that don't always allow for perpendicular sticks straight into the ice. Ater this I definitely wouldn't consider these for anything other than TRing, but at the very least I now have a set of crampons specifically for climbing dihedrals.

What material and heat treatment did you use?

@rocknice2 something like 13c26 or one of the other stainless steels used in knives. They didn't have 303 or 304 available when I ordered. If I remember right I ordered .150" thickness which is probably too thin for flat sheet front points.