Using a sling with strop/girth hitch vs a water knot on a cam

I've retired (i.e cut off) the loops on my Black Diamond/Wild Country cams because they are 10, 15, 20 years old.  Some were original, some homemade. The homemade loops were 12mm tubular webbing (bought from REI?) to fashion a new loop that's 3-4 inches long, similar in size to the original loop, but tied with a water knot with 1 inch ends. The water knots were well cinched and the ends inspected before every trip. I don't recall if the webbing was UIAA certified, but it appears to be similar to webbing that is. I am comfortable (perhaps unreasonably so) that they would not break if I took a factor 2 leader fall.

I was wondering what the pros and cons were of using 12mm, 15mm or 16mm sown nylon slings instead of my 12mm water knot loops. Since the slings are sown I would have to use a strop hitch or a girth hitch. (The difference is that the part of webbing which goes across the main, load bearing loop is closer to the cam for a strop hitch than for a girth hitch where it goes below the main, load bearing loop. The video at https://www.climbing.com/videos/how-to-tie-a-strop-hitch/ shows how to tie a strop hitch; https://www.climbing.com/skills/essential-climbing-knots-complete-guide/ show how to tie a water knot and a girth hitch.) 

If I used tubular webbing instead of sown slings, I could go around the cam loop twice and then tie it off with a water knot.

Black Diamond's user guide that comes with their 10mm Dyneema (the brand name for an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) webbing) sown sling says that using a strop hitch with a wire nut may fail catastrophically. Note that the wire diameter of a wired nut is much smaller than the plastic covered wire of the main loop of a BD cam. They also indicate that a water knot or a girth hitch using 10mm Dyneema will fail at less than Dyneema's 22kN minimum breaking strength. (All knots weaken the strength of the material they use.)

Of course, at least for the Black Diamond Camalots, I can send them to Black Diamond to have a new loop professionally sown. 

Thoughts?

Thanks.

This is mostly a personal problem on my part, but unless you grew the slings from seed, they're SEWN, not sown.

Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M19taMAZHp4

Run out customs will also sew you new slings on any cam (except totem) if ya wanna do it proper.

Just basket hitch with presewn slings if you’re going to go diy. You know those bluewater runners at REI that are mysteriously short lengths, yeah those. Just basket hitch with the racking carabiner. But really just consider any of your or my solutions as a stop gap until you actually decide to get them resewn by BD, runout customs, totem etc. you do not want to be wasting mental energy on whether your slings on your cams are legit or not.

Vladimir G. Ivanovicwrote:

I've retired (i.e cut off) the loops on my Black Diamond/Wild Country cams because they are 10, 15, 20 years old.  Some were original, some homemade. The homemade loops were 12mm tubular webbing (bought from REI?) to fashion a new loop that's 3-4 inches long, similar in size to the original loop, but tied with a water knot with 1 inch ends. The water knots were well cinched and the ends inspected before every trip. I don't recall if the webbing was UIAA certified, but it appears to be similar to webbing that is. I am comfortable (perhaps unreasonably so) that they would not break if I took a factor 2 leader fall.

I was wondering what the pros and cons were of using 12mm, 15mm or 16mm sown nylon slings instead of my 12mm water knot loops. Since the slings are sown I would have to use a strop hitch or a girth hitch. (The difference is that the part of webbing which goes across the main, load bearing loop is closer to the cam for a strop hitch than for a girth hitch where it goes below the main, load bearing loop. The video at https://www.climbing.com/videos/how-to-tie-a-strop-hitch/ shows how to tie a strop hitch; https://www.climbing.com/skills/essential-climbing-knots-complete-guide/ show how to tie a water knot and a girth hitch.) 

If I used tubular webbing instead of sown slings, I could go around the cam loop twice and then tie it off with a water knot.

Black Diamond's user guide that comes with their 10mm Dyneema (the brand name for an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) webbing) sown sling says that using a strop hitch with a wire nut may fail catastrophically. Note that the wire diameter of a wired nut is much smaller than the plastic covered wire of the main loop of a BD cam. They also indicate that a water knot or a girth hitch using 10mm Dyneema will fail at less than Dyneema's 22kN minimum breaking strength. (All knots weaken the strength of the material they use.)

Of course, at least for the Black Diamond Camalots, I can send them to Black Diamond to have a new loop professionally sown. 

Thoughts?

Thanks.

FWIW bdel specifically sews the webbing in a double loop on their c4s to get a higher strength. From what I've seen any other attachment will weaken that connection and has potential to damage the cam under normal fall forces.

https://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en_EU/stories/experience-story-qc-labreslinging-camalots-and-c3s/

@Brandt Allen: Arrrgh, of course. 

@Mr Rogers: Thanks for the info. I'll check both out. Runout Customs it seems will also repair my Wild Things trigger.

@Seth Morgan: I'll have to check out what a basket hitch is.

@Matthew Bell: Thanks. I'll check out the link.

— Vladimir

I would 2nd the basket hitch, I think the easiest that makes me feel safe. I add some tape to make it a little more fool proof while I'm climbing. However, i wonder if anyone has thoughts on doing a double wrap basket. Shorten the sling a bit, and maybe help distribute the load and prevent kinking a thumb loop? Or is that just asking for it?

@Sam L: I had thought of a basket hitch which can be used with either a sewn sling or a water knotted loop, but I worried about accidentally dropping the the loop when clipping. I hadn't thought about taping the bit nearest the cam. Thank you. An alternative might be a short length of tubing instead of the tape.

Basket hitched sling with a short section of tubular sling slid over it?

Where I am in favor of re-slinging cams with new material, in an emergency or on an extended road trip you need to do this, it is possible to connect a sewn sling to the cam with a bowline on a bight knot.

This would make a closed system (unlike the basket hitch) and would provide a double strand of material on the cam (as Black Diamond recommends).

@John Pitcairn: The idea is that you set up the basket hitch on the cam, but before you attach a carabiner you slip a short piece of tubing over the free ends and slide it toward the cam. The tubing would take the place of taping the sling near the cam loop.

Since I've never done something like this, and I don't know of any experts that recommend a basket hitch + tubing, and I don't know how it would hold up in actual use, I don't know if it is safe or reasonable. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

@MartyC: Nice. Thanks.

Marty Cwrote:

Where I am in favor of re-slinging cams with new material, in an emergency or on an extended road trip you need to do this, it is possible to connect a sewn sling to the cam with a bowline on a bight knot.

This would make a closed system (unlike the basket hitch) and would provide a double strand of material on the cam (as Black Diamond recommends).

Similar vein I would imagine you can do a two wrap girth hitch to similar effect? but thats really becoming a prussic at that point, but offers more material and a closed system like you have pointed out, is advantageous. Curious how it would do compared to just a girth which has shown to not be super good enough in Ryan's pull tests.

the last time I reslung cams with water knots the water knots worked loose at the worst possible moments...  the water knott  should have been banned from climbing in the 80s. lot of folks have gotten hurt and killed with that knot... 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

the last time I reslung cams with water knots the water knots worked loose at the worst possible moments...  the water knott  should have been banned from climbing in the 80s. lot of folks have gotten hurt and killed with that knot... 

The trick with a water knot is to soak them in water and then bounce on them. They will weld themselves shut. 

12mm is pretty skinny for nylon.  15mm is the smallest rated that I know of.  I use blue water 5/8" (15mm) on my old tricams.  I felt like BD reslinging service was cheap enough to go for it but, reslinging tricams was almost the price of buying new tricams on sale.