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euphoriagtrst
Feb 25, 2007, 7:00 PM
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Taking the advice of everything I've read about placing heads, I've been practicing on the ground on some nearby granite boulders. The problem I have is that for about 2/3rds of the heads I attempt to place, after several seemingly good blows, I'll hit it once, the head shifts and either falls out or I can pull it out with my fingers. When this happens, there is always white, powdery dust underneath where the head was and further attempts to place a head there yield similar results. The process I've been using is: clean the spot with a wire brush, set the head with the end of a "wedge" Lost Arrow, paste it with the bigger punch in the Fish headmaster kit beginning in the center, working out to the sides, then the ends, and then "rock it" with the punch.
Is it the placements I'm selecting, or a problem with the technique, or is it normal to have that many placements not want to stick? A lot of the fixed heads I've seen where I aid climb (Looking Glass) seem to be placed in very unlikely spots yet are solid when weighted. A lot of them are also "time bombs" with rusted, frayed cables which is why I want to get better at placing them.
I don't know anyone who's experienced enough to show me how they're placed. Any good advice would be appreciated.
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giza
Feb 26, 2007, 2:59 AM
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bump
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holdplease2
Feb 26, 2007, 4:35 PM
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Hey:
Here's something you didn't mention, but may be doing...
Don't forget that you first need to shape the head to nearly match the size/shape of the placement. Do this by rotating it and hitting it gently with the head of the hammer against the rock. Think like a blacksmith, the head may even get kinda warm as you rotate it and beat it into shape.
If you are just start beating on a head that isn't pre-shaped, all of that pounding and forcing it into place and shape right on the placement you plan to use will probably pulverize the rock under the placement, which could explain the white powder.
Also, if you use a head that's too big for the placement that's not good either.
Other good advice I've heard is not to strike it too many times once you think you have it set. After a certain point, you are weakening the placement, the bond between the cable and the swage.
I pretty much avoid heading at all cost, in part because its pretty destructive and the placements don't last forever. (the other part is because I suck at it, so take the above advice with a grain of salt) Many folks fill perfectly good beak placements (even beat out secure ones) with heads. This is bad practice, so be sure that you are learning beaking skills hand in hand with your heading skills. :)
-Kate.
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euphoriagtrst
Feb 26, 2007, 11:22 PM
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Thanks- I'm like you- I avoid placing heads if at all possible. I feel pretty solid with beaks and RURPs. I've noticed that I have less success with the bigger aluminum heads. I haven't done much with pre-shaping the head. Is that something that takes a while i.e. 50+ hits and do most "experts" expend a lot of effort preshaping the head before they paste it?
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stymingersfink
Feb 26, 2007, 11:59 PM
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just enough to warm it up a little (you may not be able to feel the warmth, but it does become more malleable) and approximate the shape of the void to be filled. not so much that you waste time doing it or destroy the head.
think about bending a coat-hanger into submission... 5-6 bends and it starts to bend a little easier, ten bends and it's warm to the touch and getting weaker, 15 and it's ready to break. heads aren't really that much different
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euphoriagtrst
Feb 27, 2007, 2:03 AM
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Thanks, this is the kind of information that you can only get from talking to someone or watching someone place them- it's not anywhere I've read.
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rocknice2
Feb 27, 2007, 2:15 AM
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I agree with holdplease2 preshape, don't over hammer and size does matter.
In reply to: A lot of the fixed heads I've seen where I aid climb (Looking Glass) seem to be placed in very unlikely spots yet are solid when weighted
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stymingersfink
Feb 27, 2007, 3:47 AM
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euphoriagtrst wrote: A lot of them are also "time bombs" with rusted, frayed cables which is why I want to get better at placing them.
these timebombs also make pretty good placements for beaks too. Just gently tap the beak into the top (not the outside) of the blob of metal. If it holds, use it... if it pops the deadhead out then half the cleaning work is already done.
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ptpp
Nov 1, 2007, 9:55 PM
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DR. PITON’S HEADING TIPS
Placing your own heads, and placing enough to actually get good at it, is something that you may not learn for quite a while along in your wall career. This is because the easier and hence more popular routes you will first be climbing are almost always equipped with fixed heads - some bomber, and some terrifying timebombs! Believe it or not, I think I had climbed about nine El Cap routes - including a couple A3's and two A4's - and didn't have to place more than two or three heads total, because all the heads were fixed. #10 or so was Reticent Wall, and it had almost no fixed heads. I had virtually no heading experience, so I kinda had to learn quickly!
Since then, I have climbed a bunch of harder routes and obscure routes, many of which required a ton of heads. So here is what I can tell you:
Heading isn't hard, it's easy! And not only is it easy once you get the hang of it, it is totally bomber. I have placed literally hundreds of heads, and I can think of but a single head I placed that failed, and that was because I bounce tested it too aggressively.
STUFF TO KNOW:
- You can get good at heading, and you can get good at it quickly
- Before long, you will trust your own heads far more than you will trust anyone else's. If you are reading this post, chances are at present the converse is true. Nowadays, I frickin' hate fixed heads, and get spooked by them
- I love heading, and I'm good at it. It is possibly my strongest aid discipline. I am far better at it than nailing, even though they call me "Pass the Pitons". However my nailing has really improved, and I'm not so lame at it these days. Plus I have a musical ear being a trombone player, and I listen to the tone of the piton I am nailing. As you nail, the pitch becomes higher because the amount of pin vibrating gets shorter. When the note remains exactly the same after two consecutive hits, stop nailing – you’re done. Any more and you’ve over-driven your pin
- Heading is destructive as Kate points out, and you should try to place a beak-type piton whenever possible before you place a head. By this, I mean any one of the three sizes of BD Peckers, including the huge, the old standby A5 Birdbeak which are superb if you can find them, and the two newer styles made by Vermin
STUFF YOU NEED:
- The right head for the right placement. Copper heads are harder and stronger than aluminum, so use them in the small placements. Aluminum is much stickier than copper, so use them in the bigger placements, or placements that are more marginally shaped
- Use copper in #0 and #1 sizes only. Use aluminum in #2 sizes and up. I have a few old #2 and bigger copper heads sitting in a bag somewhere, you can have 'em if you want 'em cuz as far as I'm concerned they're useless
- You need a Yosemite hammer by Black Diamond, the opposite end of which is superb for placing heads
- You need a big-ass punch [like the one Batgirl dropped for me, mwah-ah-ah] for placing the things, one about a foot long and an inch or so in diameter
- You don't need a dulled chisel - the hammer plus punch is better
- Get a wire brush, too - a small one, like a toothbrush
- A Fish Beef Bag to put the things in. Otherwise the head cables snag on everything on your rack
- Make sure you trust your heads! Don't buy heads from the Mountain Shop! Ask Batgirl about that....
- Fish makes arguably the best commercially available heads. I like the heads made privately by Bryan Law [copperhead = minerals] and Eric Kohl [Klaus]
- You will use almost #2 and #3 aluminum heads exclusively. Get a few #4, and a handful of #1 and #0 and you're good to go. I like the double-heads in the #1 and #0 sizes, too, but not so much in the bigger. A few equalizing sliding-cable #2's can be useful sometimes, but not as often as you would think
- You will rarely use circleheads, and almost exclusively in horizontal placements. You will use five or ten “straight” heads for every circlehead
THE BUTTERKNIFE - YOUR MOST IMPORTANT TOOL
- Chances are, your first head placements will be on Trade Routes where you need to replace some manky timebomb with a near-busted cable, or remove a "deadhead". Accordingly you need the right tool for the job, and this is a "Butterknife".
Wow, when I see the closeup, this one looks to be a triple-header - two copper deadheads above an aluminum deadhead. This was on the Ranch above a very nasty ledge fall. I was not about to climb on fixed mank!
The Butterknife you see above is a real beauty made for me by Bryan Law - it is a chisel sharpened to a point [on a grinder, I assume - be careful not to overheat it and wreck the temper of the steel]. It is rounded on the top side you see, for hammering and prying behind the heads. The edges are honed razor-sharp – it is a ferocious device, and you will need to make a cardboard sheath for it
- Removing heads is difficult and time-consuming, but hella easier with this device
- The Butterknife can get up under the head. Pry it gently from the top and bottom, and try not to wreck the rock, not only because you want to conserve the resource, but more cuz you want to conserve the placement!
- Removing deadheads is usually the way to go. Not only is it a service to your Fellow Climber, but chances are the deadhead is in the best placement which you want to use, and what's left isn't as good
- You're nuts to go on a big wall heading route without a Butterknife. But if you do, your big long punch can be used, though much less effectively, to get behind deadheads and pry them out
GETTING STARTED
- You're looking for the right placement. While heads will fit almost anywhere, what you want is a placement that most closely resembles a stopper placement, but isn't quite good enough for a stopper. You will be molding the metal to fit the shape of the placement. So look for something that is wide at the top, and tapered towards the bottom [duh]
- Clean it well with your wire brush, and try to blow out the dust [hard cuz it is usually over your head and out of reach]
- Enhancing placements with your chisel or punch is most assuredly cheating. If you are making a first ascent, this may be preferable to bolting, however. I have done this very very few times on blown out placements where I removed a deadhead, but it is almost never necessary. Don't cheat - find something that works
- Get the right head for the placement. Don't use big copper or small aluminum
Pay close attention to this next bit! Did you even know that this was so?
- Look at your head, and figure out which side of the head the cable is coming out of. The cable that you hang from goes into the head on one side, does a 180-degree bend at the top of the head, and returns along the other side which I will call the "free end" side, because the free end of the cable is buried in the head where you can't see it. The cable does not go into the centre of the head, it goes in one side. So there are four orientations - two "sideways" and two "straight in".
- Orientation #1 straight in has the cable you hang from facing out towards you, and the free end facing in against the rock. This is the WRONG way to place a head, because of two problems: the first is that the part you weight is outside not in, thus increasing the bending moment and leverage to pull out the head. The second and more important problem is that you can ding the cable while placing it, which you must be very careful never to do. Ding the cable badly, and you’re buggered
- Look at your head sideways, and figure out which way is which. You MUST get the orientation correct!
- Holding your head sideways against the rock to get the orientation right, tap it with your hammer to pre-shape the head to the placement you have chosen. Do this carefully, and gently. It will take you ten to twenty hammer swings. Just tap it, not bash it. You need to pay special attention to the ends of the head to pre-shape it, because these are the parts of the head that give you the best “bite” against the rock. Imagine a stopper in a placement and you will “get” what I mean. And whatever you do, don't ding the cable!
- Place the pre-shaped head against the placement, with the cable you hang from against the rock, and the free [hidden] end of the cable facing outwards towards you
- Remember - there are four possible orientations of the head, 90 degrees to each other, and three are wrong. Get it right!
- Tap the head with your Yosemite hammer enough to get the head to stick in the placement without you having to hold onto the cable, and now you're ready to place it
- The bigger the head, the more you can hit it with your hammer. The smaller the head, the more you have to use your punch
- Start hitting that bugger right in the middle to push it deep into the placement, and then once done, work the top and bottom. Be careful it doesn't "rock" when you hit the top or bottom - if it does, paste it more in the middle
- Now being very careful not to ding the cable with either your hammer or punch, go to town on that puppy! Whip the snot out of it, paste the shit out of it
Batgirl writes,
"Other good advice I've heard is not to strike it too many times once you think you have it set. After a certain point, you are weakening the placement, the bond between the cable and the swage."
Well, yes and no. You really want to paste the livin' bejeepers out of your head, and really mash it into the crack until "It's 'welder', man!"
I will start with my hammer, do some fine tuning top and bottom with the punch, and then finish it with huge, powerful, but carefully aimed blows of the hammer.
Caveats:
- make sure that when you are really pasting it, you don't over-paste. If you start to see the aluminum separating from the cable, it's time to stop
- and did I mention not to ding the cable?! Sheesh.
Another trick I like to use is to pay special attention to the top, bottom and sides of the head with my punch, putting the punch right on the very edge of the head, and pressing it in against the rock, so I get a bit of a "pinch" against the rock right at the edge of the head
POTENTIAL PROBLEMS:
- White powder? Hmmm - you must have sloppy technique. The white powder is rock, and you must have hit the rock instead of the head with your hammer or punch. Clean it out better with your wire brush and start again
-AIM, dammit!
- You will need to hit the head a bunch of times before it sets in place enough that you can let go of it – perhaps four or five taps
- Euph, heading is easy! If your heads are not sticking, you are choosing too marginal placements to practice on. Instead, choose a placement that is almost good enough for a stopper, but not quite
- There is nothing wrong with learning to use super-marginal placements, but in hundreds of head placements, that rarely is required. Usually you can find something decent, which when properly used is superb
- When you do have to make marginal placements, make two head placements close together, and equalize with a very small sliding X. If you don't think you'll fall on it, tie the [untied] sling through the cables. If there is risk of whipping, add carabiners, even though you lose height. And of course a Screamer or Scream-Aid, depending on how marginal. A #3 head with a Screamer will hold a huge fall, incidentally. So will a couple #0’s or #1’s equalized with a sliding X, and with a Scream-Aid.
- Usually these sliding-X’s are very close together, making tying a knot in the X impossible. Bring 2- and 3-foot hunks of untied Supertape webbing for this purpose, lightly tied in a knot so you can clip them to a crab for storage
- Scream-Aids are great to use on smaller heads or manky heads, but be sure to use a carabiner. I didn’t, until Kate taught me the hard way not to girth hitch the long sling on the Scream-Aid directly into the head cable
- I prefer head cables that have a big enough swaged loop to fit two carabiners - makes it easier to fiddle the pro in when you're on it, or vice versa – to get on it after you have fiddled in the pro
GETTING ON THE THING
- If you have not placed many heads, this will be scary. After you have placed lots, you will feel amazingly secure, because you will have the confidence to know that your placement is the bomb, and not a bomb
- Test from as low in your aiders as possible. Phrases like, "Dude, I'm testing this thing and stepping down, so take in a couple feet of slack" should become part of your repertoire
- Make a gentle bounce test in your aiders, enough to tell you it will hold you. Maybe 2x your body weight force, except on those #1 and #0. When using the #0, you will almost always equalize with a second, and as for #1, you will always try to use a double one.
- Don't overbounce. An aggressive bounce-test can generate forces in excess of a thousand pounds, enough to blow out a perfectly good head placement [my mistake that one time on Sunkist]
- Step up in confidence, knowing "It's welder, man!"
YOUR DR. PITON BIG WALL TIP OF THE DAY
When standing on manky or small heads on low-angle terrain, try to place the sticky rubber of your shoes against the rock while you are standing in your aiders, so all of your weight is not on the head – some of it is actually being taken by the friction of your rubber on the rock.
Get yourself a third adjustable daisy, and use this to simultaneously and equally weight three manky heads at the same time!
TO CLEAN OR NOT TO CLEAN
That is indeed the question. Usually, you will KNOTT clean your head, mostly because you pasted it in there so well
- You can clean a head if you don't over-paste it. Do one or two only[!] GENTLE funks with your hammer, up and out on the head cable. Watch the cable where it comes out of the head - if it starts to rip through the aluminum, leave it. The head will either come very easily with one or two funks, or it won't. Don't try to remove it if it won't come out easily, because you will just bust the cable and leave a deadhead
- The shape of the placement will often determine if you think you can clean the head or not. Look to see how much resistance to upward and outward pull the rock will create - some placements are more "open" than others
- Cleaning your heads will allow you to examine the cleaned head, and show you just how little of the back of the head is actually in contact with the rock – you will be amazed! Truly! When you have seen this a few times, you will realize I wasn’t kidding when I told you how hard you have to paste the things, and how you should try to pinch the edge of the head against the rock for a little extra bite
-On Reticent Wall, we brought too many copper heads and not enough aluminum. We were also way short on heads for the whole wall. I have never done a route before or since that required so many heads – we made a fairly early ascent, and there weren’t many fixed heads. Consequently, we had to re-use heads again and again. By about the third or fourth time placing the things, you have pretty much destroyed the malleability of the metal, and the things are neither strong nor sticky – quite terrifying!
- So if you remove a head to re-use it, leave it in the rock the second time you place it. You don’t want to keep reusing the things, that’s for sure
TRICKS, MYSTERIES, AND SECRETS
- I never use a chisel to make X's in the head like you see in the old textbooks, a punch is fine
- The old texts had this joke where you were supposed to "sniff" the head after you placed it, and "if it stinks, get off it!" I thought they were serious, that if you made a bad placement the head would "oxidize" or something and you would smell something "bad" - and this thought came from a graduate chemical engineer! What the heck was I thinking?
- This goes to show you can have a university degree, and still be stupid. I can show you other examples of my stupidity. Flying pigs come to mind.... [ahem]
- A really dirty trick is to leave a timebomb - this is where you purposely place a head just enough so you hope the next person gets on it long enough to climb up a bit, then the head fails. This takes practice, and a mean and deceitful heart. If you do this, don't do it anywhere you could get someone killed! I fell for that trick once and only once on Jolly Roger – the crafty bastard!
- Sometimes first ascensionists will duct tape the clip-in loop of the heads they leave behind, in order to prevent someone from using a cheat stick to clip 'em. Clever, eh? They don't clean the heads for the reasons explained above, but neither can you cheat your way up. I have never done this, however
- As far as I am aware, it is impossible to overheat your head by hitting it - sheesh
FINAL THOUGHTS
Right then, grab a bunch of heads, and "head" out to some lump of rock somewhere that nobody cares about, and nobody climbs on, like a quarry or road cut, and give it a go.
Practise, practise, practise! Test your heads by getting on 'em, and bounce testing. Get you and your friend to both stand in your aiders and test it with the both of you. Learn what holds, and what doesn't. Learn what you can clean, and what you can't.
Do the world a service and climb some Trade Routes, and use your butterknife [or your punch] take out a few deadheads. Not only will you replace them with new heads, but you'll learn how to do it so sometime when you really have to place a head, you will know how to do so with confidence.
Heading is easy, heading is fun. While it is quite satisfying to hear the sound of steel upon steel when nailing pins, and that beautiful ringing tone as you make that perfect placement, it seems even more satisfying to paste those little buggers into the rock.
So there you are, hanging two thousand feet off the deck, your life on nothing more than a tiny blob of metal glued into the rock, and you’re thinking, "Ain't I just bitchin'?!" Life is grand on the big wall......
And if you have any further questions, ask your Wall Doctor.
Cheers,
[the formerly diabolical] Dr. Piton
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kimgraves
Nov 1, 2007, 11:37 PM
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"He's back!"
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tallsailor
Nov 2, 2007, 12:34 AM
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kimgraves wrote: "He's back!"
I couldn't be happier! Great post!
John
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euphoriagtrst
Nov 2, 2007, 2:51 PM
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Thank you- that is hands down, the most comprehensive heading tutorial I've found anywhere. How's that?
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wanderlustmd
Nov 2, 2007, 3:45 PM
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Holy shit!!!
PEEEETTEEE!
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microbarn
Nov 2, 2007, 4:11 PM
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I am not even interested in aid at this point in my life, but I really enjoy reading these posts. Thanks so much for taking the time to explain it so well. I noticed your posts in other threads too. They are all great, well informed, and descriptive.
Thanks again
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reg
Nov 2, 2007, 4:21 PM
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i'm printin that out for the three ring binder! and i don't even aid - yet - thanks
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flamer
Nov 2, 2007, 4:48 PM
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Well that is a far cry from the old Pete.
Turned over a new leaf My friend?
If that's the kind of stuff you're posting these days I say welcome.
josh
P.S.
If I can find it you might just get that hook back after all!
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ptpp
Nov 2, 2007, 8:17 PM
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Hey Josh,
I would happily trade you a few beers for the hook I accidentally dropped on your finger. Sorry about that, dude.
However I will attempt to blame someone else! Sort of..... I was up on The Prow with Chad [is he still around?] while Tom and Richard [spike] were fixing the first six pitches of Bermuda Dunes. I had left my hooks with them, in a ratty old bag with lots of holes.
I got up on my first lead of the Dunes, and there was some hooking. I remember being pretty nervous - I usually get scared my first hard lead! - and reaching for the hooks. Now normally I rack my hooks on a crab, and put the racked hooks inside the bag. The bag is just to keep them tangling.
Well, as Ricardo has remarked, "Uh dude, some of your gear is pretty ghetto....." and my bags are no exception. I have ten-year-old Fish bags that seem to have more patches on them than bag any more. Anyway, there was a hole in the hook bag, Tom or Richard weren't aware of it and didn't know to clip in the hooks, and when I reached for it, one fell out.
So sorry about your finger, dude - I definitely owe you a beer for that one. I'm definitely about reconciliation, dude. More than my hook, I would love to get back my stolen big wall crab Wee-Wee. It has been two years now, and I think it's about time he returned.
Turning over a new leaf kind of implies a sudden and rapid change. I had a few personal issues going on back then which have thankfully resolved themselves, and if you follow my writing over at McTopo you will see that I have mellowed a bit. Generally I am not the type of person who feels better by putting other people down, it's not my style. But I am a bit of a smart-ass at times, and I have this character flaw in that sometimes I'm not content with who I am, and seek external stimulation in the form of attention. So in my weakness, I kinda overdid the attention thing over here, and ended up ruffling a few feathers. If I could access my old account, I would remove a lot of stuff, especially the bold text!
I still love being a Wall Doctor, and teaching people how to climb. I'd rather be recognized for this in Yosemite, than recognized for being a wise guy on the internet. The whole website-forum thing was in its infancy back then, and I didn't really get what was appropriate and what wasn't.
But things seem to have lightened up around here. I see you can spell out "fuck" in posts, and what's this about NSFW? Do people post nudie shots here or what?
Anyway, I have a lot of climbing info to share, how-to stuff, beta. Man, if these guys give me access to the El Cap section - formerly the website's most visited climbing area - I'll have it cleaned up in a heartbeat. It's a total clusterfuck now, too bad, as it could have been the world's foremost source of beta on El Cap. I could make it that way - gimme a week or so.
But there is a hunger in the RC.com aid climbing forum for people who want to learn, and you don't see this hunger on any other website anywhere. I wonder why? I can post technical stuff like what you see above on Mctopo or at Middendorf's website, but nobody goes to bigwalls.com very much, and there's too much other crap going on at McTopo, political threads and stuff. I've been begging Chris Mac to separate the place into a climbing and non-climbing forum, but he prefers to leave well enough alone.
So it seems like this is still the best place in the world to share technical big wall climbing info. Obviously people read my old stuff, even if they have to struggle through the atrocious lettering now that all the coding changed in the forums. My Index to Dr. Piton stuff has 36,000 hits, which is quite amazing to me!
Watch and see what happens. Watch this forum come back to life. Watch the hits come in. If the owners are trying to make money by attracting climbers and advertisers, having Dr. Piton on board to answer a few questions now and then will accomplish this. Watch the aid forum hits increase tenfold or so in the next month, maybe more. We shall see.
In the meantime, I've just been skimming through old posts, and chiming in where necessary. The bases are well covered with the likes of other big wall pros like Kate, but I think there's a place for me here. I look forward to my first Ask Dr. Piton post - it's been a while.
Thanks everyone for your positive feedback - that's the sort of thing that keeps me writing, not to mention a few free beers in Yosemite from time to time. I actually do meet people in Yos. who print my stuff out and stick it in a binder. Reg, you have taken the first step in a downward bound spiral from which there is no return. Next thing you will be old and fat like me, retired from free climbing, and sitting on your portaledge drinking beer every night.
Cheers,
Pete
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flamer
Nov 2, 2007, 8:46 PM
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ptpp wrote: Hey Josh, I would happily trade you a few beers for the hook I accidentally dropped on your finger. Sorry about that, dude.
I never thought you did it on purpose!
We all get more mellow with time...myself included.
I'll see if I can dig up your hook.
I'm off to the Fisher Towers in the morning and will be digging through my aid stuff so i'll look tomorrow.
josh
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mawk
Nov 2, 2007, 9:27 PM
Post #19 of 34
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Registered: Apr 3, 2007
Posts: 5
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Wow this is great. I'm going to leave work early, go home, get a few beers handy and start reading.
Beats the heck out of raking leaves!
There's a faint tugging sensation I feel at times coming from the West. Mostly at night as I'm falling asleep thinking about moving up in my aiders, pulling down on the adjustable daisy, pretty sure this piece is going to hold, scanning ahead for the next placement. Is that something like the "downward bound spiral" you mentioned.
Can't wait for springtime and our next big wall adventure.
It's obvious you put a lot of time into writing this stuff; for that I say a big Thank You.
Cheers...Mark
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tomtom
Nov 2, 2007, 11:15 PM
Post #20 of 34
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Registered: Jan 9, 2004
Posts: 366
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Pete,
Can we get a couple better pics of the butterknife? Looks useful.
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madbolter1
Nov 13, 2007, 12:05 AM
Post #21 of 34
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Registered: Jul 28, 2006
Posts: 37
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This post will probably produce screams of outrage from traditionalist head-placers, but I have never resorted to the traditional method for the thousands of heads I have placed, ranging from #00 to #6 (both alum and cop).
I use solely the pick of my hammer to place heads. Now, I have been using one of the old-style Chouinard hammers with a very elongated pick (which you can't find on modern big wall hammers, more's the pity). The amount of force you can generate with a direct blow from the hammer pick far exceeds what you can deliver through any impliment.
So, if you can practice your hammering enough that you can get the precision you need, you will find that you can almost always "seat" that head with one blow, and then work all over it (except on the tiny ones, of course, which don't need such work) using just the hammer pick.
Of course, the one downside to this approach is that if you DON'T have the necessary precision, you have a much higher risk of destroying the surrounding rock and rendering the placement useless, which is, of course the reason why the traditionalists will be howling here. (Did I mention practice?)
Shaping is critical, and cleaning the rock prior to placement is useful, but just NAILING that head with one good hammer-pick blow can't be trumped. Unless you are using #1 or smaller, even the ungainly picks on modern hammers will work. Again, practice for precision!
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yetanotherdave
Nov 20, 2007, 4:14 PM
Post #22 of 34
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Registered: Mar 19, 2005
Posts: 243
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welcome back, doc!
That butterknife looks like a pretty killer tool, any chance you could post up dimensions? I'd love to add one of those to my rack - there are a ton of timebomb heads on squamish walls...
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microbarn
Nov 20, 2007, 4:34 PM
Post #23 of 34
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Registered: May 12, 2004
Posts: 5920
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yetanotherdave wrote: welcome back, doc! That butterknife looks like a pretty killer tool, any chance you could post up dimensions? I'd love to add one of those to my rack - there are a ton of timebomb heads on squamish walls...
he got rebanned. Check out his email in the profile if you want to contact him. He won't be posting here any more.
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jajen
Nov 20, 2007, 6:43 PM
Post #24 of 34
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Registered: Jul 6, 2006
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How (and WHY!) did he get rebanned???? With all the psychosis and bullshit on this site, what could he possibly have done that is so unforgivable?
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microbarn
Nov 20, 2007, 8:13 PM
Post #25 of 34
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Registered: May 12, 2004
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jajen wrote: How (and WHY!) did he get rebanned???? With all the psychosis and bullshit on this site, what could he possibly have done that is so unforgivable?
mods are closed mouthed about it in general, but as much of an answer as possible can be found here:
http://www.rockclimbing.com/...post=1714366#1714366
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