Ice tool made from wood, interesting

dryicetools.com/kronos/

Quite beautiful, def interested. I would want to climb in waxed canvas with all leather boots and some steampunk glacier glasses though.

Interesting in that at one time, all ice tools were made of wood. My first axe was a 55cm Chouinard Piolet with a hickory shaft. The first metal and plastic shafted tools were both major advancements at the time.

This reminds me of going from wood to aluminum to composite hockey sticks...many advantages to the newer materials in shaft construction, but you certainly lose a lot of the feel that the wood provided. My biggest concern is how durable the shafts would be mixed climbing, and getting knicks from ice and rock, etc. Will be interested to see how these fair over the next season or two as more folks climb on them and provide feedback....could be a gimmick, or could be the next trend in tools

I think I'll keep my lightweight aluminum and carbon materials. I'll also trust my life to machined rivets, not laminated beech wood. Huge gimmick/wall decoration IMO.

I got a chance to handle (but not climb on) these at an ice fest last year. Very nice construction and super solid feeling. In terms of durability, I think these will be more resistant to actual damage like impacts and gouges than carbon fiber tools (wood and aluminum are much more malleable than CF). The surface finish may scratch more easily though.

DavisMeschke wrote:I think I'll keep my lightweight aluminum and carbon materials. I'll also trust my life to machined rivets, not laminated beech wood. Huge gimmick/wall decoration IMO.

Laminated beech wood is not so different than carbon fiber. Both are laminates made from epoxy impregnated fibers (as is fiberglass). This one happens to use wood as the fiber rather than carbon. The tensile strength isn't as high, but it has other highly useful properties for an ice tool (it is malleable and has low thermal conductivity).

If the tool/pick geometry is good (the most important factor, IMO, and one that I think would be hard to test without swinging the tools), I don't see any reason why these shouldn't be a real contender in the ice tool market against other high end tools like the Nomic, X-Dream, Cobra, and the Grivel seahorses.

Cheers,
Dan