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microbarn
Oct 29, 2007, 11:20 AM
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Sweet, those were the kinds of answers I was looking for. Thanks guys.
stymingersfink wrote: If you think a piece resisting a tug tells you anything about the piece's ability to hold a fall, I would think you're gravely mistaken. What it may tell you, but not guaranteed to tell you, is the gear's inability to hold a fall.
This is a different way of wording my thoughts about tugging. If it holds a tug, it could hold a fall. If it didn't hold a tug, then I need a new placement. It does serve some purpose for me.
I like that you said it that way. Perhaps all the people that say "tugs are worthless." Are just not completing the whole thought as you did above.
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granite_grrl
Oct 29, 2007, 12:14 PM
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tradrenn wrote: I like to test all my pieces, mainly cause I started trad in Ontario. I don't see anything wrong with setting your gear, except the fact that it may take longer to clean it.
Ah Wojtek, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. Part or being a fast efficient leader is placing gear that is easy for your second to clean. Giving a death yard to every singe placement does not allow for quick cleaning ever. Not such a big deal on single pitch stuff, but you get to stuff that's more than 2-3 pitches the time it takes cleaning can really slow you down.
So that being said, I only tug on gear as much as I feel I have to. If its a maginal placement that will be garbage if it walks, I yard on the thing (and then sling it long, etc). If its in a nice bottle neck I just pull it enough to make sure it's sitting okay. I apply this to passive gear.
Cams I rarely pull on, and I think in good rock in a good placement there isn't much pulling on a cam can tell you. Also, unless there are no other gear options, I'm usually placing cams because they are quick and I'm getting pumped out or in a percarious position. Yanking on a cam in these situation isn't always viable.
But if you are warry about the rock quality (which normally wouldn't be rock that I'd push myself on anyway) pulling on a cam to verify that the rock could be too slick or made too slipery is a very good idea.
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cracklover
Oct 29, 2007, 1:19 PM
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Good topic.
First of all, the force generated by a sharp tug on a sling is tiny. The realization of that fact is key to any further discussion on this topic. Generating significant force is not such an easy thing to do (not talking about funk devices).
When I decided to test my suspect Aliens (stick with me here - I'm not going off topic) I figured the easiest thing to do was to bounce test them. But having a scientific mindset, I wanted to make sure I wasn't over-stressing them. Or under-stressing them, for that matter. I figured the best way to tell how hard I could bounce on them was to add a screamer or two to the mix. You see a screamer is a load-limiting device. The important thing for this discussion is that it activates at 2kN. I knew that if I put two screamers in parallel and bounced, they'd rip a little at 4kN. Well guess what I found out?
I could not get a single screamer to rip. Not with my hardest bounce, not a single stitch. So that means I could not generate 2kN (450 lbs) of force by jumping hard on static nylon aiders.
Now I'm a lightweight, at only 150 lbs, so maybe some of y'all could do better. But my point is - a 2kN force is very easily attainable in a short fall. But even with the harshest bounce, I could not test my gear to that. You think you can give your gear any kind of useful test with the weight of your HAND?
For a small cam in a poor placement, tugging on it in an odd direction can generate enough torque to rip it out if it's no good. I've done that lots of times. Otherwise, hand-tugging on a cam is indeed useless. If you place a cam in a polished flaring crack and pull straight out, it will hold your tug every single time. Whip on it, and it will rip out 9 times out of 10.
What you need to do is understand what holds and what doesn't*, learn to recognize that visually, and place gear accordingly. Even so, the only guarantee is to not fall.
I won't comment on the utility of tugging in order to set gear - that's a completely different matter.
GO
* I wound up using a better method to test my Aliens. It generated 3-4kN of force. I was surprised that my first few attempts at testing with my new method failed - because the cam ripped out of the rock before it got to the required 3-4kN of force I was applying. After a few tests, I recognized the better placements from the worse, and only had one more (in about 10+) cams rip out.
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microbarn
Oct 29, 2007, 2:13 PM
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finally, it looks like one of the naysayers joined in  Glad to see it.
Have you read Chossy's TR where he got hurt? http://www.rockclimbing.com/...post=1708704#1708704
I don't know his experience, but he seems to have a bit of gear climbing under his belt. Chances are he has more than I in any case. He judged 3 pieces in a row to be pretty good. The fall he took was still below the highest placement. He doesn't really know why the three cams failed, but he threw out a guess of maybe some slime on the rock. What is your reaction to that? Wouldn't a little tug have identified slime on the rock (if indeed this was the cause)? Perhaps a tug will not always identify slime, but there is a chance the tug will identify it.....doesn't that still help the leader know he needs a new placement?
The other tangent I disagree with you on is the force generated by a tug in relation to the expected fall forces.
First, I will define my method of tugging on gear. I pull the sling up into the air, and I yank down. So, my tug is similar to a mini-funkness device. I test gear from the shoulder because I was taught by my mentor that this moves a person off balance less in the event of placement failure.
You seem to be saying that you were doing even more dramatic jerks on the screamer, and you could not get 2kN of force. Well, that is about three times your weight. I am willing to believe that 3 times your weight is difficult to generate from just one arm's movement. However, I have a hard time believing that a fall most of the way up a 40 foot climb with slack equivalent to top rope slack generates three times your weight. Therefore, a tug *could* approach similar forces as that fall.
Even if your potential fall is 4kN, it would be nice to know the placement won't hold a tug of 0.0001 N. It would prompt me to look for actual protection rather than believing the junk piece will catch me.
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vegastradguy
Oct 29, 2007, 3:14 PM
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microbarn wrote: I am willing to believe that 3 times your weight is difficult to generate from just one arm's movement.
perhaps you should read this again (emphasis added):
cracklover wrote: I could not get a single screamer to rip. Not with my hardest bounce, not a single stitch. So that means I could not generate 2kN (450 lbs) of force by jumping hard on static nylon aiders.
and this:
cracklover wrote: But even with the harshest bounce, I could not test my gear to that. You think you can give your gear any kind of useful test with the weight of your HAND?
i think he was pretty clear on this point.....
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microbarn
Oct 29, 2007, 5:51 PM
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You are right. I still think the next sentence stands:
In reply to: I have a hard time believing that a fall most of the way up a 40 foot climb with slack equivalent to top rope slack generates three times your weight.
If he couldn't get that much force with a static sling bounce test, then the fall described above would still be less.
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chossmonkey
Oct 30, 2007, 12:50 AM
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microbarn wrote: You are right. I still think the next sentence stands: In reply to: I have a hard time believing that a fall most of the way up a 40 foot climb with slack equivalent to top rope slack generates three times your weight. If he couldn't get that much force with a static sling bounce test, then the fall described above would still be less.
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cracklover
Oct 30, 2007, 1:22 AM
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Just did, thanks for the link. Scary stuff! Glad to read that he's mostly okay.
In reply to: I don't know his experience, but he seems to have a bit of gear climbing under his belt. Chances are he has more than I in any case. He judged 3 pieces in a row to be pretty good. The fall he took was still below the highest placement. He doesn't really know why the three cams failed, but he threw out a guess of maybe some slime on the rock. What is your reaction to that?
A number of folks in that thread are saying that cams in limestone can be very fickle, and should not be expected to hold in parallel sided cracks. I have pretty limited climbing experience (maybe a dozen pitches at most) placing gear in limestone, and I was climbing way below my limit. So I don't have anything direct to add about the solidity of cams in limestone. Perhaps folks who do a lot of climbing in the Dolomites (uasunflower?) have a better developed eye for what holds and what doesn't in limestone.
In reply to: Wouldn't a little tug have identified slime on the rock (if indeed this was the cause)? Perhaps a tug will not always identify slime, but there is a chance the tug will identify it.....doesn't that still help the leader know he needs a new placement?
There's a chance, yes. But in my experience in placing cams, if it's such a poor placement that a tug in the direction of the stem of the cam would rip it out, it is a very very obviously poor placement to the naked eye.
In reply to: You seem to be saying that you were doing even more dramatic jerks on the screamer, and you could not get 2kN of force.
I was bouncing in aiders.
In reply to: Well, that is about three times your weight. I am willing to believe that 3 times your weight is difficult to generate from just one arm's movement.
No, it's not hard, it's impossible. Try putting 450 pounds on the ground, put a sling on it, and then "tug" on it. See if it raises up even a little.
In reply to: However, I have a hard time believing that a fall most of the way up a 40 foot climb with slack equivalent to top rope slack generates three times your weight.
Why do you have a hard time with that? Rgold has shown mathematically that merely sitting back on a rope generates a peak force double that of the weight of the climber. And that's just in the climber side of the rope. The top piece experiences that force, plus 2/3 of that force from the belayer side (remember, we lose some force due to friction over the top biner). So just from sitting back on the rope, you should expect the top piece to see 3 1/3 times the weight of the climber.
In reply to: Therefore, a tug *could* approach similar forces as that fall.
You've lost me there.
In reply to: Even if your potential fall is 4kN, it would be nice to know the placement won't hold a tug of 0.0001 N. It would prompt me to look for actual protection rather than believing the junk piece will catch me.
If a cam placement looks like crap, it is crap. If it doesn't look like crap, but it actually is (such as in this poor guy's case), I do not believe that a tug will be particularly enlightening. But again, my experience with limestone is very limited.
Beyond the physics of the matter, I wonder if what's really going on here is that you're looking for a higher level of certainty - a better "test" than is actually possible. Gear judgement is just that - a judgement call. Not until you fall will you know for sure. And even then - plenty of people have fallen three times on a piece, and then the fourth time it failed. All you can do is learn to judge a piece as well as you can - and experience will help.
GO
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stymingersfink
Oct 30, 2007, 2:50 AM
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cracklover wrote: Why do you have a hard time with that? Rgold has shown mathematically that merely sitting back on a rope generates a peak force double that of the weight of the climber. And that's just in the climber side of the rope. The top piece experiences that force, plus 2/3 of that force from the belayer side (remember, we lose some force due to friction over the top biner). So just from sitting back on the rope, you should expect the top piece to see 3 1/3 times the weight of the climber.
Sure about that? Maybe you should think a minute about the words you're trying to put into RGold's mouth, cause I doubt he'd agree with what you's tryin to say he said.
Sure, the top piece will feel 2x the climbers weight, but with friction loss the belayer will feel 2/3's the climbers weight. That's just a static "take". In a fall change "weight" to "Force" and it would still read the same.
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moose_droppings
Oct 30, 2007, 3:33 AM
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Maybe some of it depends on the rock your placing a pro into that guides your preference. Our granite out here is far from smooth. Its covered with little crystals and irregularities. The lobes don't sit in full contact with the rock, usually its in contact with tips of tiny crystals or some other small nubin, unless your on a trad route thats been worn. The crystals are very brittle, a good tug on the cam will settle it in.
Gear routes tend to weave around out here. If I fall on my top piece, even with good slinging on a wandering route, the other pieces below are going to get a rope tug. I sure hope all the passive pieces have been set in case I need the next one down too.
But, all the bolts here are smooth and theres a million of em.
Maebe sum day I'll learnt what thays fur.
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dominic7
Oct 30, 2007, 3:41 AM
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chossmonkey wrote: microbarn wrote: You are right. I still think the next sentence stands: In reply to: I have a hard time believing that a fall most of the way up a 40 foot climb with slack equivalent to top rope slack generates three times your weight. If he couldn't get that much force with a static sling bounce test, then the fall described above would still be less. Its likely the first cam wouldn't have held body weight. That still doesn't change the fact that all a tug does is proves the gear would hold a tug. In my case it may or may not have held a tug. If it didn't I guess I wouldn't have been as quick to keep climbing upward. If it had held a tug I think I still would have hit the ground.
Speaking from a nasty experience I had similar to Chossy's (around the time Rebecca fell) -- I placed a cam blind, gave it a couple of good tugs and clipped it at chest height, then fell on it while moving over to look at it. It popped and I fell.
As a result, I don't bother tugging on active pro anymore. I visually inspect the placement, I wiggle the sling up and down to see what they'll do after I move on - but from my rather painful experience, tugging on cams doesn't do anything to enhance my comfort level. As always, your mileage may vary...
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gramps
Oct 30, 2007, 4:43 AM
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I'm surprised to see so many people talk about tugging on gear. I'll set a nut placement some of the time, but I hardly ever pull on a piece to "test" it, and I don't think anyone I climb with does either. If the placement is so marginal that you think a hand tug might rip it out, why are you bothering placing it in the first place? I have confidence that every piece I place will hold a hand tug, so I consider it pretty useless to me to "test" it in that way. If the placement looks so bad that I'm wondering if it will hold a hand tug, the odds are really bad that it will hold a fall, so I put it back on my rack. There have been times where I've been desperate and left a bad looking placement in for a little psychological pro, but I'm hardly in a position to give it a good tug when I might peel off at any second. So yeah, if I saw anybody consistently tugging on their placements, I'd wonder where their head / knowledge level was at.
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ajkclay
Oct 30, 2007, 5:31 AM
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The amount I tug on gear is proportionate to the chance of it coming out without "seating."
*note* I don't climb crap rock, there's too much good quality here for that.
I never tug on cams, visual inspection is generally sufficient.
I will tug on passive gear only hard enough to make it bite a little if I think there's a chance that friction will pull it out.
I climbed with a guy once who tugged so hard on every piece that seconding him was the biggest pain in the butt ever! Every damned piece needed to be bashed out... screw that, if you're too scared to trust your own placements I reckon maybe you've found the wrong sport.
My 2c
Adam
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andypro
Oct 30, 2007, 6:36 AM
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A curiosity currently on my mind: What kind of rock (be it type or general condition) did everyone learn to lead on?
I cut my teeth on Ontario slimestone. I'm a tugger. but that's within reason. In Yosemite, I almost never tugged. But in Tahoe, I found myself feeling better if I did tug. Sandstone is another one where I may or may not tug. Limestone I pretty much always tug. I don't yard on it, just a little yank to make sure it's staying put and blocks aren't going to catch up to me on the way down.
Where did you all pay your dues? do you think that would have anything to do with the tugging habit or not?
--Andy P
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notapplicable
Oct 30, 2007, 11:13 AM
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I learned gear at Seneca mostly, with a little SC granite and New River sandstone for variety. Although the rock at Seneca is not especially soft (like sand and lime stone) it has a tendency to be very polished (imagine placing a cam between two panes of very hard glass) and sometimes brittle. I would say that I do tend to test gear alot more at Seneca than I do at the New or Red River (man is it nice to have solid, hard as nails sandstone to climb on!).
Edited because I forgot a word.
(This post was edited by notapplicable on Oct 30, 2007, 11:14 AM)
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cracklover
Oct 30, 2007, 12:01 PM
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stymingersfink, you are mistaken in a variety of ways. I think I spelled out the forces pretty well in my post above. It doesn't seem to be an issue of you not getting it, but not even trying to. For that, clarifying my points will do nothing, so I'll leave it alone.
Cheers,
GO
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roclmbr
Oct 30, 2007, 12:14 PM
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I think a simple physics lesson will tell you that tugging a piece of pro will not give any indication about whether it will hold a fall or not. The forces in a fall vary a lot, but can easily reach over a 1000 lbs, with a theoretical limit towards 4000 lbs. This is the force on the top piece. This is about the weight of a car. Now image yourself hanging off a cliff by one hand and pulling on a sling with the other. How close to lifting that cat off the ground do you think you will come. Tugging is only good to check whether the piece is well placed and this would be better served by gently pulling and watching to make sure it is seated well.
If you want to learn about pro placement try aiding. When you aid a route you get to see how every piece reacts when weighted. It is amazing how the pieces will shift and seat themselves, and this is only under body weight.
I have seen 4 people hit the ground in falls. In all cases they had several pieces of pro in good quality rock. They hit the ground because the system failed and the direction of the forces caused the pro to pull out. I saw one fall where the top piece held for a brief time, allowing all the pieces below it, from the first piece upward, to pull out. Then the top piece failed and the climber fell 40' to the ground.
I place gear with the intention of it being there when I need it. My gear generally stays in place, and is often hard to remove. I never tug on it but rather rely on looking at the crack and building a good system that will work in the correct direction of the force. This being said, I am not above placing a 'slow me down' piece if it gives me the confidence to get up a route.
Tugging should be avoided since it serves no better purpose than a simply pull and it places the climber in a potential situation where they could be put off balance should the piece pull out. Climbing is about control and tugging is wrong.
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stymingersfink
Oct 30, 2007, 12:51 PM
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cracklover wrote: stymingersfink, you are mistaken in a variety of ways. I think I spelled out the forces pretty well in my post above. It doesn't seem to be an issue of you not getting it, but not even trying to. For that, clarifying my points will do nothing, so I'll leave it alone. Cheers, GO
sure, the piece at the top will experience 2x climbers weight (the weight of the climber + the counterweight necessary to hold him there.
this 3 1/3 x climbers weight thing tho? ... huh.
"I do not think that word means what you think it means."
*Shrug* I'm off to work. good day.
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microbarn
Oct 30, 2007, 1:35 PM
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notapplicable wrote: I learned gear at Seneca mostly, with a little SC granite and New River sandstone for variety. Although the rock at Seneca is not especially soft (like sand and lime stone) it has a tendency to be very polished (imagine placing a cam between two panes of very hard glass) and sometimes brittle. I would say that I do tend to test gear alot more at Seneca than I do at the New or Red River (man is it nice to have solid, hard as nails sandstone to climb on!). Edited because I forgot a word.
This is my essentially my experience. I climb at Seneca, NRG, and other similar places to the NRG. The polish that occurs on some seneca placements is amazing. The placement could be textbook, but the polish on the rock will not allow the cam to hold. No slime is required to make the placement more slippery.
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microbarn
Oct 30, 2007, 1:39 PM
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cracklover wrote: stymingersfink, you are mistaken in a variety of ways. I think I spelled out the forces pretty well in my post above. It doesn't seem to be an issue of you not getting it, but not even trying to. For that, clarifying my points will do nothing, so I'll leave it alone. Cheers, GO
I think Sty is right.
I would like a link to rgold's post that you referred to or a better explanation. You are just giving the jt512 validation right now.
(This post was edited by microbarn on Oct 30, 2007, 2:16 PM)
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microbarn
Oct 30, 2007, 1:43 PM
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roclmbr wrote: I think a simple physics lesson will tell you that tugging a piece of pro will not give any indication about whether it will hold a fall or not. The forces in a fall vary a lot, but can easily reach over a 1000 lbs, with a theoretical limit towards 4000 lbs. This is the force on the top piece. This is about the weight of a car. Now image yourself hanging off a cliff by one hand and pulling on a sling with the other. How close to lifting that cat off the ground do you think you will come. Tugging is only good to check whether the piece is well placed and this would be better served by gently pulling and watching to make sure it is seated well.
I don't claim that a tug is going to be that strong.
In reply to: Tugging should be avoided since it serves no better purpose than a simply pull and it places the climber in a potential situation where they could be put off balance should the piece pull out. Climbing is about control and tugging is wrong.
How is this so hard to follow? If the piece pulled out with a low force tug....doesn't that mean the piece was crap? Wouldn't you rather find this out with a tug then climb another 10 feet and fall onto the crap piece?????
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microbarn
Oct 30, 2007, 2:14 PM
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cracklover wrote: In reply to: Wouldn't a little tug have identified slime on the rock (if indeed this was the cause)? Perhaps a tug will not always identify slime, but there is a chance the tug will identify it.....doesn't that still help the leader know he needs a new placement? There's a chance, yes. But in my experience in placing cams, if it's such a poor placement that a tug in the direction of the stem of the cam would rip it out, it is a very very obviously poor placement to the naked eye.
I suppose I am just trying to learn from others' experiences. Right now, I am hearing that good looking placements fail sometimes under low loads. I gave you the example of chossy's thread, and I can dig up another example of a leader that was at Seneca earlier this summer. That leader was hang dogging on their piece.
Everyone that says tugs are worthless hasn't had any reasoning to back that up. The most that I am extracting out of the posts here is that some people haven't ever pulled out good looking placements. However, the people that never pull out good looking placements are also the ones that never tug on their pieces. I wonder if there is any correlation... Maybe some of the untested pieces were worthless, and you never knew.
In reply to: In reply to: You seem to be saying that you were doing even more dramatic jerks on the screamer, and you could not get 2kN of force. I was bouncing in aiders. In reply to: Well, that is about three times your weight. I am willing to believe that 3 times your weight is difficult to generate from just one arm's movement. No, it's not hard, it's impossible. Try putting 450 pounds on the ground, put a sling on it, and then "tug" on it. See if it raises up even a little. In reply to: However, I have a hard time believing that a fall most of the way up a 40 foot climb with slack equivalent to top rope slack generates three times your weight. Why do you have a hard time with that? Rgold has shown mathematically that merely sitting back on a rope generates a peak force double that of the weight of the climber. And that's just in the climber side of the rope. The top piece experiences that force, plus 2/3 of that force from the belayer side (remember, we lose some force due to friction over the top biner). So just from sitting back on the rope, you should expect the top piece to see 3 1/3 times the weight of the climber. In reply to: Therefore, a tug *could* approach similar forces as that fall. You've lost me there.
All of the above logic is why I was hesitant to believe your figures earlier. I believe it is possible to generate 3 times my weight with a sling. You didn't, and I don't have a screamer to test my theory.
You were bouncing on a screamer with an aider. This means NO loss of energy, and it means any impact force is worse then on a rope. The fall in Chossy's thread had lots of rope for energy absorption and probably less slack then you can generate by jumping in an aider. His piece was subject to a doubling of the load though.
Perhaps we should go dig up rgold's force calculations, and then we can prove it with numbers? Probably not worth the effort. This is a branch of the discussion that doesn't really even relate to the thread. The only important part is that I don't think a tug approaches three times our weight. It definitely would be much less.
I think we both agree with that.
In reply to: Beyond the physics of the matter, I wonder if what's really going on here is that you're looking for a higher level of certainty - a better "test" than is actually possible. Gear judgment is just that - a judgment call. Not until you fall will you know for sure. And even then - plenty of people have fallen three times on a piece, and then the fourth time it failed. All you can do is learn to judge a piece as well as you can - and experience will help. GO
This thread is here to get a feeling for others' experiences. I have seen yourself and others saying that tugs are worthless. I am hoping to understand your reasoning. After I understand it, I may or may not change my ways. Right now, I believe there are times when a bomber looking piece will fail under a tug. I would rather expend the effort and find out sooner rather than later.
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chossmonkey
Oct 30, 2007, 2:15 PM
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microbarn wrote: roclmbr wrote: I think a simple physics lesson will tell you that tugging a piece of pro will not give any indication about whether it will hold a fall or not. The forces in a fall vary a lot, but can easily reach over a 1000 lbs, with a theoretical limit towards 4000 lbs. This is the force on the top piece. This is about the weight of a car. Now image yourself hanging off a cliff by one hand and pulling on a sling with the other. How close to lifting that car off the ground do you think you will come. Tugging is only good to check whether the piece is well placed and this would be better served by gently pulling and watching to make sure it is seated well. I don't claim that a tug is going to be that strong.
You pretty much did in your first post by putting a sharp tug just below a hard fall.
In reply to: In reply to: Tugging should be avoided since it serves no better purpose than a simply pull and it places the climber in a potential situation where they could be put off balance should the piece pull out. Climbing is about control and tugging is wrong. How is this so hard to follow? If the piece pulled out with a low force tug....doesn't that mean the piece was crap? Wouldn't you rather find this out with a tug then climb another 10 feet and fall onto the crap piece?????
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wanderlustmd
Oct 30, 2007, 2:18 PM
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Registered: Oct 24, 2006
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If a piece is bad enough to pull out under the force of a tug you'll probably (read: should) be able to tell visually before it happens.
Now, of course, I see what you are saying. I was aiding the other day and placed a nut in flare that was obviously a bad piece. I gave it a tug prior to bounce testing and it flew right out. If I was free climbing, I'd have never placed the piece in the first place because it was obviously garbage.
Conversely, I placed a tricam a few feet higher and it felt great when I tugged. It was a blind placement, so I gave it a good bounce test and it flew right out. Like CL outlined, there was no way I could have matched the bounce test with a tug, and the piece would have failed under the load of a fall.
Like I mentioned above, I do tug on pieces, purely to set them, test the fall direction and to make my head happy. My seconds have never had a problem cleaning my gear, so I don't see this as a "bad" thing.
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microbarn
Oct 30, 2007, 2:23 PM
Post #50 of 96
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Registered: May 12, 2004
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chossmonkey wrote: microbarn wrote: roclmbr wrote: I think a simple physics lesson will tell you that tugging a piece of pro will not give any indication about whether it will hold a fall or not. The forces in a fall vary a lot, but can easily reach over a 1000 lbs, with a theoretical limit towards 4000 lbs. This is the force on the top piece. This is about the weight of a car. Now image yourself hanging off a cliff by one hand and pulling on a sling with the other. How close to lifting that car off the ground do you think you will come. Tugging is only good to check whether the piece is well placed and this would be better served by gently pulling and watching to make sure it is seated well. I don't claim that a tug is going to be that strong. You pretty much did in your first post by putting a sharp tug just below a hard fall.
I placed it higher than low fall factor falls. This isn't enough to activate a screamer or move a truck. I don't think it is essential to my point either way.
In reply to: In reply to: In reply to: Tugging should be avoided since it serves no better purpose than a simply pull and it places the climber in a potential situation where they could be put off balance should the piece pull out. Climbing is about control and tugging is wrong. How is this so hard to follow? If the piece pulled out with a low force tug....doesn't that mean the piece was crap? Wouldn't you rather find this out with a tug then climb another 10 feet and fall onto the crap piece????? I think most people are insinuating that they can tell by eye when a piece is crap enough to pull out with a tug. There will always be exceptions to this and in the odd situation tugging might give you a warning. This is why 95% of the time I don't tug. I think in large most people feel it is a waste of time and effort.
This is what I had gathered, and everyone else's posts are confirming it so far.
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