Will BD start selling <10 cm screws?

Blue Ice and CAMP seem to feel there's a good business case for 7 cm "super-stubby" screws. Until BD gets on board, your best option for a 7cm Express is to buy one from me.  $50

Other lengths made to order; just ask. Buy two and US shipping is free.

I have bought screws from Gunkiemike and they came factory sharp or better. Highly recommend.

I think a market for the commercial stubby is there. But a company like BD is not likely to take on the liability. Artem is on point, shallow pro can be dicy.

Artem Vee wrote:

Okay lets be real here. If we can make a comparison - with these being the aid sized brassies and sliders of ice climbing - at what point are we just deluding ourselves it will hold? I think the super stubby falls into that category… it also could easily melt out a few minutes after you place it… micro sized dead weight is my first impression.

I am curious though - how are you guys actually using these screws without it being hilariously bad? The red is already like… ehh… I don’t know amigo…

Super niche aid climbing uses? Thats all I can imagine so far. Though mental pro is a legit tactic and does work. 

You can not make that comparison because that is not what stubby screws are about. And no they do not melt out a few minutes of being placed.  So your impressions are not correct. Further, thin ice does not mean hilariously bad. Many of us have climbed many pitches of ice that are solid but thin. BITD we just tied off a screw. Still do when needed. But super stubbies fill a real need.

Cronwrote:

Artem is NOT on point, shallow pro can be dicy.

Not necessarily. 

I have placed one of Gunkiemike's 7cm stubbies a couple of times on bulges ,where you go from steep to rampy.

The ice is usually thin or just a shield of ice,and it serves 2 purposes: as protection from a short fall or a slide as you are climbing up and over.

And as a handhold(yes Aid) you can pull on versus whackng the shit out of things and possibly destroying the climb

Also his work is impeccable 

With all due respect to Gunkiemike's contributions to the forum (which I always enjoy) and the high reputation his custom stubbies enjoy (which I'm sure is warranted) let's not pretend this thread is anything but an advertisement and that the BD reference was anything other than clickbait. Have some self respect, people.  There's a "For Sale" section of the forum for this kind of stuff.

Are people still buying BD screws-seems like blue ice is so much better-why waste $$ on bd? 

Where do you mostly climb, Artem? In the Northeast at least a lot of the hard lines are often thin. That's spookier to me than fat and steep 5+. But it doesn't mean that the ice is bad. I see Cloudwalker on your to-do list; many times the first pro there (if it's iced over enough to not be using the crack) is a super stubby 30' up. Happy to take it if that's what the climb gives me ...

You can get some sense as to how much they will actually hold by piecing together the bread crumbs.  The UIAA 151 standard says they need to hold 10kn in a block of solid ice. But... screws that are shorter than 10cm are not rated and sold as "non PPE" gear. So it's less than 10kn. You can hear Bill Belcourt talk about standards here. He remarks that small cams get certified at 5kn and small stoppers get certified at 2kn and that it's a bit silly to not have a similar provision for small screws. Reading between the lines it sounds like one could expect stubbies to perform like small cams, with all the same caveats about requiring more attentive placements, don't build an anchor out of them, and so on.

A 7cm ice screw has 7 threads not 3-4. A 5cm screw would have 4 threads and I agree that is ridiculously short. 10cm screws have about 10 thread.
Generally if its so warm out that a stubby screw is going to melt out before you can place the next one. It's time to move on to a different climb or try another day.
Believe it or not but thin ice can be of high quality and well bonded to the rock.
A blue BallNut is rated to 7kn. I definitely place micro cams rated to that.

Have said all that, a super stubby is not like a micro cam. You can't whip on it all day. Ice unlike most rock, fractures after an impact. They should be treated like a marginal placement.

Artem Vee wrote:

When only three or four threads are set in the ice, it’s inherently a marginal placement. Like, body weight only. My point is that thebuse case for these is very limited and I’d be hard pressed to include them on my rack. 

HowNot2 got 4-7 kN in this test with a half-inserted 16cm screw, which is a pretty similar length (and threads) to these stubby screws.  4-7kN is way higher than body weight, and similar in strength to small cams and nuts that people regulator take whips on (like a purple Metolius).

https://www.hownot2.com/post/ice-screw-break-tests-in-iceland

The camp super stubbies are very well made and have more threads than a chopped down 10 cm. I believe that the Op is experiencing the same thing that us professional photographers went through when phones started having good cameras in them.   In good ice I consider 10 cm screws to be truck

Climb 40 feet up.   Place a Gunkiemike 7 cm stubby in good ice at 5-8 degrees  boring upwards.  Climb another 10 feet and jump.  $100 says you don’t crater.  

7 cm ice screws make me happy. In good ice, with double rope technique, I have confidence that a pair of 7 cm ice screws would often work. 

And in many situations, lots of pickles can be avoided by using gear that might not hold a fall, but 'is good enough for body weight, lowering, doing a hard move with the gear at my waist... Being able to back down to a single 7 cm anchor makes it possible to suss out lots of additional terrain.

As someone noted above, ice is unlike rock. Ice is brittle; it has a lower fracture toughness than rock, and gets weaker as the load rate increases. Brittle means that every once in a while ice will just shatter. 

Standard deviations on ice screw testing are often a half or a third of the average strength. You can get a 3 sigma carabiner rated to 22 kN, so (very) roughly, (gaussian) statistics says one carabiner in a 1000 will break at a force as low as 22 kN. One time in a 1000, 3 sigma ice breaks when you sneeze in its direction. Ice strength/fracture toughness isn't gaussianly distributed ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibu…), so the previous sentences are in many ways misleading. But the tail end of the Weibull strength distribution is still in a place where you don't want to be during fall arrest on ice. And in a place where anecdotal, climber experience does not lead ice climbers to correctly understand how weak ice can be. 

Artem Vee wrote:

If you cover the extensive medical bills, I’m in! 

(That being said, the last couple ice whipper videos I’ve seen involved seemingly bomber screws in seemingly good blue/green waterice ripping out one by one until the climbers hits the deck or a ledge - so I’m pretty pessimistic about the theoretical holding power vs the real world holding power. I still place them though, since I am generally a reluctant free soloist) 

I'd love to see those videos you refer to. Links?

Gunkiemikewrote:

I'd love to see those videos you refer to. Links?

Same. 

I refer to 13cm as stubby. You guys are nuts. Please don’t fall. 

Balewrote:

I refer to 13cm as stubby. You guys are nuts. Please don’t fall. 

13’s are my “long ones”…used only for anchors and A-threads,  lol. 

In that video, it looks like hollow ice. After the screws blows out, you can see a void. And I don't mean a cone like cavity a screws would make.

He protected a candlestick.

A 13 has the same amount of threads as a 22. 

rocknice2wrote:

In that video, it looks like hollow ice. After the screws blows out, you can see a void. And I don't mean a cone like cavity a screws would make.

He protected a candlestick.

A 13 has the same amount of threads as a 22. 

Always wondered why they don’t place more threads on longer screws….. if the screw has the real estate-why not maximize the holding power?

One thing I think we can all agree upon….just this little banter and talk of screws has got all our juices flowing and itching to sink something asap in this new season.   Bring it on!