Thursday 29 September 2011

DMM offsets. Am I missing something?

My rack consists of a hodge-podge of gear, especially my wires. I mean they seem to consist of a wires picked up from here there and everywhere. I think something like a third of them have actually been found rather than actually brought. I think the problem began when I first started buying a rack and I brought something like 1 or 2 nuts each week in a effort to build it up with each paycheck. At the time I didn't really know any better and a nut was a nut as far as I was concerned. Over time my rack grew and I eventually forked out for a set of decent nuts, metolius curve nuts. Not the lightest nut on the market (at the time) but they looked different and I was willing to try them out (plus they came with a free nuts key, back when they were cheap). Having used both DMM wallnuts and WC rocks before it was a welcome change to use the curve nuts.

Over time my rack grew still. I doubled up on a few sizes of curve nuts and replaced things a I dropped, bailed or welded them into place. Eventually my defining feature for what nut I'd buy was the price because well curve nuts had gone expensive and wallnuts/rock were cheap. My rack of wires now sits at around 40 depending on the last count. At least 9 of these nuts have been found over the years and at least 9 are also small wires, either made in brass just really tiny (that are sub about 3kn). 

I actually own a few specifically offset nuts, 3 brass offsets (the smallest sizes) and a yellow alloy offset. Again price was the defining feature in thier purchase (alloy) and because I couldn't find anything smaller (brass). But I've still never found myself wanting an offset nut. What am I missing? Offset nuts seem to have a sort fo cult following in the British climbing world. I know quite alot of people who swear by them. In fact it really annoys me when people start recommending them to new climbers, raving on about how awesome they are. I think part of the problem (my lack of offset nut love) comes from having WC single wires (slightly offset in shape) and the Curve nuts that make for the basic of my rack. 

I'm still not sure whether I'm missing out of something revolutionary, but with 40 wires on my rack (that I can't seem to trim down) I can't really afford to add another 5 heavy offsets. 

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