Would you re-sling these cans?

I purchased these 2 cams from a consignment store. They show literally no signs of ever being used. I cannot determine the age of the slings. The slings show no evidence of wear or UV damage. Since these could potentially be 20+ year slings, I’m wondering if folks here would have them re-slinged. Examining them myself, I would feel comfortable whipping on them. Does anyone recognize these tags and estimate the date based off the tags? All my BD slings within the last like 7 years also list their manufacturing year. 

Run em 

That generation of cam, the Camelot, was phased out in 2005, so the slings are certainly older than 20 years.

That being said, the age is not a huge factor in strength. Absent obvious wear or sun bleaching the only real concern is exposure to caustic chemicals. Some chemicals don’t leave obvious signs of exposure and it’s impossible to know how they were stored. For this reason some people would go ahead and resling them; a $10 sling is a lot cheaper than the potential consequences of being wrong. Sometimes when you are above a piece your brain presents to you all the ways in which things could go wrong, this is one more thing to worry about.

On the other hand, they are probably fine. Many people would whip on them without a second thought. It’s really about your comfort level. 

I think 2006 was the year that CEN started the requirement that the manufacture date be included on the sling, so those cams are indeed 20+ years old.

Me, personally, if these were on my A-team rack, I'd resling them. If these are the C-team I only bring out when I'm at Indian Creek or bring along on climbs where I expect to have to retreat--maybe not. That said, I got all my 20+ year-old cams reslung last winter so I wouldn't have to keep track; now they all have dates on the slings.

At manufacture, those slings were good to 20kn and the rest of the cam was rated at 14kn. I highly doubt that shiny 20+yo nylon has lost 30% of its strength. I digress, but by this logic, there's probably no reason to ever re-sling a micro cam unless it's obviously cut, bleached, or chemically degraded. But, to Rachael's point, if trying hard is worth the cost of a re-sling, and preoccupation with the slings might hold you back, then it makes sense to resling. Could be as simple as tying a couple of double fisherman's knots in fresh cord.

I have a friend who thinks ropes are sketchy after 1 year of use. She can afford to buy a new rope every year, and there's no point in arguing with her about it. She's happy and my rope gets less wear. Win-win.

A totally unnecessary practice that I employ is that I place the highest-rated or freshest-looking cam of a given size first (where it could experience a higher factor fall) and save the rest for higher on the pitch.

Tommy T wrote:

I purchased these 2 cams from a consignment store. They show literally no signs of ever being used. I cannot determine the age of the slings. The slings show no evidence of wear or UV damage. Since these could potentially be 20+ year slings, I’m wondering if folks here would have them re-slinged. Examining them myself, I would feel comfortable whipping on them. Does anyone recognize these tags and estimate the date based off the tags? All my BD slings within the last like 7 years also list their manufacturing year. 

Personally I'm not very worried about age with nylon. Chemical damage however, can be impossible to tell with a visual inspection. All it would take is being stored in a garage near a lead acid battery. Unless I know the previous owner I don't use secondhand softgoods for this reason. The chances of contamination are really low but nonzero. Everyone has different budget and risk allowances so do whatever feels right for you. 

Matthew Bell wrote:

Personally I'm not very worried about age with nylon. Chemical damage however, can be impossible to tell with a visual inspection. All it would take is being stored in a garage near a lead acid battery. Unless I know the previous owner I don't use secondhand softgoods for this reason. The chances of contamination are really low but nonzero. Everyone has different budget and risk allowances so do whatever feels right for you. 

This would also be my concern, but a minimal one. One of the great myths that will not die in climbing is that nylon ages. It does not. Not a scale relevant to climbers. Wear, UV, chemical exposure -- these are the things one has to worry about. 

If someone handed me a 30 year old rope still in the packaging that had been kept in a dark closet, I'd use it without a second thought. Same goes for these cams. Things is with these, there is a non-zero chance they just hung out in a somebody's garage for 25 years near where a battery was stored. But I'd put that at less .1% chance, so personally I wouldn't bother reslinging.

"If there is any doubt, there is no doubt."

I'd have no concerns with those brand new cams.  You'll pull harder if you trust your pro.  Tho l reckon you'll pull hardest if you fear your pro

Most folks don't understand that battery acid doesn't produce vapors to any significant degree. So "stored a few feet from a battery"?  Pfft.

Gunkiemike wrote:

Most folks don't understand that battery acid doesn't produce vapors to any significant degree. So "stored a few feet from a battery"?  Pfft.

I've seen anecdotal evidence to the contrary. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/comments/11n7y9/analysis_of_a_mysteriously_broken_rope_tldr_rope/

 Solvents and gas aren't as big a deal a battery acid. That stuff is scary, even fumes. I kept about 15m of 11mm static line in the back of my last rig as a tow line (in a milk crate, reasonably well isolated from the rest of the tools/equipment, etc). I also had a spare battery in the back due to electrical issues. After I read the initial report on this incident I examined the static line and found a section that was a bit lighter in color than the rest. I pulled it, and it came apart in my bare hands. This rope separated in two with a mere tug, and I ain't the Hulk.

Scary stuff, mind your gear. 

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/117555012/safety-of-climbing-rope-left-near-sulfuric-acid-container

I've seen a climbing rope that was exposed to acid from a car battery in a hatchback trunk. It created a fuzzy hole that when you picked at it, fibers easily came out in clumps. Just so you know what to look for. We discovered this damage at the crag right before leading a route, too.

Is this the age when slings were "knitted", did a test of a WC cam sling i found once, put a small cut in it and watch it grow under load ~10 cycles to failure...

I purchased these 2 cams from a consignment store.

Just remember, slings are "consumables." You use them up, and replenish them over time, like ropes and shoes. 

So if you use those cams over time you'll be replacing the slings eventually, anyway. Knowing slings are consumables, and you'll be replacing them sooner or later, why not start off with brand new slings on your consignment score and then you'll spend less time worrying about it!

Mike Larson wrote:

This would also be my concern, but a minimal one. One of the great myths that will not die in climbing is that nylon ages. It does not. Not a scale relevant to climbers. Wear, UV, chemical exposure -- these are the things one has to worry about. 

If someone handed me a 30 year old rope still in the packaging that had been kept in a dark closet, I'd use it without a second thought. Same goes for these cams. Things is with these, there is a non-zero chance they just hung out in a somebody's garage for 25 years near where a battery was stored. But I'd put that at less .1% chance, so personally I wouldn't bother reslinging.

https://anmyda.com/factors-weaken-nylon-webbing-strength/

According to this article from an industrial manufacturer of webbing, nylon does indeed lose strength just from age even under ideal conditions - molecular aging. 5% per year is not insignificant over 20 years. This is probably where the lore of replacing nylon components at a max of ten years comes from.

The linked article also enumerates all the more well known factors leading to deterioration.

I personally would never use soft goods with unknown history. My vote is to resling the bargain cams. 

Ithink that climbing goods have some kind of shelf life. I also think that the manufacturers have an incentive to get people to buy new stuff regularly.

When I buy a sling, it has a manufacturing date on it. But this is not the date the raw material was created. If those ten years where so important, the manufacturing date of the raw material would be put on the sling.

I also think that anmyda.com (link above) pulled that 5,5 percent number out of thin air. They are not even saying if the sling loses 5,5 percent of its absolute strength per year or 5,5 percent of its relative strength and don‘t use a source.

The 10 year-thing seems like a climbing-specific dogma to me. 
A seatbelt isn‘t made out of nylon, it‘s made out of polyester. In some aspects still similar. Nobody in their right mind would think about changing their seatbelt after 10, 15 or 20 years – they would change it when it is worn out.

Michael B wrote:

 Nobody in their right mind would think about changing their seatbelt after 10, 15 or 20 years – they would change it when it is worn out.

Well, full disclosure, I do buy a new car every ten years (lol). Somebody else is out there using my 20 year old seatbelt...

I think my perspective comes from the fact that I was a biochemist/molecular biologist and did bench experiments for many years.  Experiments can last days or weeks or months.  Time and huge amounts of money wasted if the experiment or analysis is bad. So people tend to be very vigilant about age of the reagents we used for the experiments and the analysis. Every reagent was marked with the date it came into the lab and the date it was opened. Every chemical I bought came with a Safety data sheet specifying handling, storage and shelf life under the specified storage conditions. Sure you could ignore it but most good scientists trust the manufacturers to gove them valid info. I (and a lot of other scientists) would routinely throw out our bench reagent solutions on a self-imposed schedule and make fresh ones.  You didn't wait until it looked cloudy or started growing mold.

The cost of slings is actually fairly trivial. The OP is asking about sling with zero information about handling or history. In this particular circumstance, I stand by the opinion that it's worth re-slinging.

Race car seat belts are good for either 2 years or 5 years and you wouldn’t reuse them if they were actually used.

On the other hand, industrial rigging uses nylon straps that are not retired after a set period, but they are intended to be inspected before each use and retired if there is any indication of being compromised. 

Things is that the manufacturers information is not worth a lot.

https://www.siebert.at/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Masterarbeit-22-english-comments-v2.pdf

According to this thesis from 2016 the manufacturers have vastly differing opinions on the longevity of their product.

The number in the last column is important „nie benutzt“ – „never used“. Skylotec used to say that you should throw your soft goods out after 4-6 years. Everyone else said that it is ten years. Beal said that it can be 15 years. Does that then logically mean that Skylotecs gear is bad and you should‘t buy it? And that Beal is superior to everyone elses stuff?

A lot of these numbers have changed as far as I am aware. I couldn‘t find the 4-6 year number from Skylotec anymore.

On the topic of battery acid: I think this is largely a bogeyman. I don‘t have battery acid at home and I don‘t know anyone that stores the two together. And even if it is damaged: just take the two pieces out to a crag, place them above a bolt and fall on it. If the sling is damaged, it‘ll break – if it doesn‘t, it is fine. Or do you think that there is an edge-case where there has been contact with an acid that has damaged the sling in a way that it doesn‘t break under a normal fall but will break it in a larger or harder fall?

In all storage-related cases that I can think of, the interaction between the sling and an acid should be a prolonged one. In that case the sling should be fully damaged and break under bodyweight – like in Matthew Bells example.

I‘m also not a big fan of the idea that you should just replace it if you are uncertain. I‘ve met people that thought their rope has to be replaced after 7 falls because the manufacturers standart-fall-number (not sure if that is the right word – normsturz). Replacing a rope after a few falls is obviously not right. Replacing a perfectly fine sling is obviously not right (to me) either. Only difference between the standart-fall-example and the longevity-problem is that the manufacturers are – as far as I know – not testing for longevity. The backyard-science (not meant in a disrespectful way) done by people like Ryan Jenks suggests that soft goods last much longer than ten years and don‘t in fact loose a lot of strength.

After a lot of rambling, this is probably the big difference between my opinion and phylp phylp: the question how we deal with this uncertainty. Usually Americans are more on the liberal side of dealing with danger and Europeans are more conservative. This time it seems to be the other way around :D to the OP: if you‘ve got too much money then resling. If you‘re broke, then take a practice fall on it.

phylp phylp wrote:

https://anmyda.com/factors-weaken-nylon-webbing-strength/

According to this article from an industrial manufacturer of webbing, nylon does indeed lose strength just from age even under ideal conditions - molecular aging. 5% per year is not insignificant over 20 years. This is probably where the lore of replacing nylon components at a max of ten years comes from.

This is straight up false information by Anmyda. Manufacturers continue to perpetuate this myth no doubt because it is in their economic interest. 

This is a fantastic recent study done for the International Rescue Symposium 2025 on old unused ropes and webbing. Every sample they tested tested higher than the catalog-listed MBS. HowNot2 has plenty of anecdotal testing as well. Even a 50yo unused Goldline tested well. They also link to the older studies on this issue, including UIAA study that is rightly trotted out every time this issue comes up. They even are able to trace where the "retire at 10 years" myth likely arose from.

Nylon does not lose meaningful strength through age alone on the timespans climbers care about. Period. This myth must die!

Another reference,

https://blackdiamondequipment.com/blogs/stories/if-this-gear-could-talk-the-cams-and-hand-sewn-slings-of-paul-piana?country=US

Under lab conditions: "we estimate that a tensile strength loss of 50% takes on the order of 70 years" from Nylon 6.6 accelerating aging studies: II. Long-term thermal-oxidative and hydrolysis results by R. Bernstein*, K.T. Gillen, Polymer Degradation and Stability 95 (2010) 1471-1479. See Figure 3. Be sure to store your ropes in the lab...

It's not just the climbing community that makes up longevity numbers. Consider the parachuting community. Some of them like taking their vintage WWII parachutes out for a spin. But parachutes have similar shelf life/retirement recommendations to climbing nylon. I think the USAF throws their parachutes in the dumpster after 13 years.

There are a handful of curious "old" nylon climbing equipment failure incidents. The number is a fraction of the number of rope cutting incidents. Relative to belay and rappel failures, we've all got something better to worry about. 

The "magic" to 10 years is as much about record keeping and liability insurance as the Arrhenius activation energy. 

How many climbers live in a building with a jug of muriatic acid in the garage/basement/workshop?