Use em or lose em?

Dated 2008, new, never used. store in a cool dry dark environment. Dyneema

Use em or lose em?

Send to How Not 2? 

I'd use them but I'd be curious about degradation, even when stored in the dark.

10/10 would whip if I ever fell. 

Seriously though, I'd have absolutely no concerns, it's well established that dyneema is extremely stable. 

A few years ago the German Alpine Club tested various slings and recommended retiring dyneema slings no later than 5 years even with minimal use, something like "a few years later" for dyneema quickdraw slings. Their big takeaway was thinner dyneema slings that looked fuzzed up, or dyneema slings that were just old, often broke at really low strengths. I think they didn't find much reduction for plain nylon slings (UV baked ones excepted of course).

Someone have the link to that article (English translated version...)?

Lose em.

How much does being uncertain about your gear effect your lead head?

They are 16 years old.  What is the worst that could happen if you retire them?  

Greg Barnes wrote:

A few years ago the German Alpine Club tested various slings and recommended retiring dyneema slings no later than 5 years even with minimal use, something like "a few years later" for dyneema quickdraw slings. Their big takeaway was thinner dyneema slings that looked fuzzed up, or dyneema slings that were just old, often broke at really low strengths. I think they didn't find much reduction for plain nylon slings (UV baked ones excepted of course).

Someone have the link to that article (English translated version...)?

Here's a link to that paper from DAV on the Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20231015200506/ services.alpenverein.de/cha…

"Aging plays a bigger role with Dyneema slings than with polyamide or mixed fibres. It is recommended
to retire Dyneema slings after no more than 3 years once they look used (category 2). Dyneema slings
should be retired five years after purchase even if they were rarely used. Since quickdraws are not
knotted, they can be used a few years longer. But if you fall frequently, you stress your quickdraws
more and should be thinking about retiring them earlier rather than later..."

I guess I should be replacing my slings.

Lose em to me so I can use em 

So, Seb and Greg seem to be saying exactly opposite things — is Dyneema extremely stable, or does it degrade with age? I’d love to see both respond to one another.

peterfogg wrote:

So, Seb and Greg seem to be saying exactly opposite things — is Dyneema extremely stable, or does it degrade with age? I’d love to see both respond to one another.

Dyneema degrades fairly rapidly with use compared to nylon, if left in a dark room it's incredibly stable and non reactive and won't passively degrade in any meaningful period of time, there aren't too many polymers out there that are more stable than uhmwpe. 

The DAV study English version can be accessed here.

TL/DR: retire fuzzy dynema slings, especially thin ones. Cannot draw conclusions about old but unused slings from this study.

The question the research seeks to answer - how much strength is lost in used slings of different materials - is a good one and the testing appears to be sound but the results are reported incompletely and ambiguously. The main issue is they mix up and mix together two separate parameters: age and wear. Perhaps this is clearer in the German version or previous publications. It means this study cannot be applied to old but unused slings the OP is asking about. 

The slings tested are all used, to varying degrees. They recorded width, material, and age of sling, the number of days used (estimated by the user), and amount of wear (on visual inspection). The latter two measures are not ideal but still potentially useful. They report data for test results for slings of different age. Older slings were weaker, especially thin dynema ones. Despite recording this data they do not report the test results by days used or appearance. In the Conclusions they mention, in passing, that lightly used slings tend to test better. 

Their conclusion that old slings are weaker, implicitly because of their age, is probably wrong. It is possible that heavily-used and visibly worn slings are weaker independent of age but this is unclear from this study due to inadequate reporting.

Use them.  Dyneema doesn't degrade from sitting on a shelf like Nylon does, and it suffers less from sunlight than nylon or polyester do.

Igor Chained wrote:

Send to How Not 2? 

I second this.

If five years were the true life span of dynema what company would use that for cams ? Thread drift maybe cause these are well past 10 years. 

Another vote for hownot2

Ben Zartman wrote:

Use them.  Dyneema doesn't degrade from sitting on a shelf like Nylon does, and it suffers less from sunlight than nylon or polyester do.

Nylon actually degrades very little strength-wise sitting on a shelf. It does however lose elasticity over time. HowNot2's done plenty of testing on decades old nylon slings and ropes confirming this. 

Just a kindly PSA… if you replace your dogbones, make damn sure you put the biner through the dyneema/nylon dogbone loop and not just through the little rubber thingie. 

If they were nylon I’d use them in a heartbeat.  I’m moving away from spectra or dynema stuff and going back to nylon. 

I did the same, esp. retiring spaghetti-string runners.

I'd take 'em if you decide to lose them, especially the red ones. 

I would use them without hesitation. If you are going to retire them then definitely send them to HowNot2.