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I think most people are thinking most of those chemicals would weaken the rope over time, the acid is pretty immediate, but you should put the other chemicals on and bag and tag them in the closet away from light for about 6 months, then redo these same tests, that is what I'm worried about, I'm sure many people have used sunscreen, deet and other similar stuff in the summer, then put the ropes away for about 6 months till the weather improves the next spring, then they take them out and notice discoloration and the smell and thought "would I whip".

Ryan, you need to remind folks that IPA made the rope break 1kn higher!

What about the chemicals used to wash ropes like detergent ? !! This is a huge topic for debate and it would be great to see if natural soap flakes vs standard laundry liquid detergent with chemicals in it weakens a rope !

I think I knew nylon had pretty good chemical resistance, and I think this would have been a lot cooler test to see on the knots themselves because the mechanical properties of the rope probably are effected more by the contaminants. if they make it easier for a knot untie itself, or if the lubrication helps the knot stay cooler while being pulled and keeps material from welding, or if it makes stress concentration more efficient. I think any of these things probably make the rope weaker if anything, but its also possible it could be made stronger in some cases.

So far I mainly learned from this channel that climbing stuff is so ridiculously over-engineered that you can abuse the shit of your rope and gear and it will still protect you.

So if I recall from my chemistry classes the chemical-based sunscreen that reacts under UV light reacts only with itself and the result chemicals are the same as those that go into the reaction, the reaction that happens is in effect work done, it simply rotates a symmetrical part of the molecule through 180 degrees releasing heat so there's no chemical reaction with the skin and no chemical reactions with the rope... though the rotatey section does eventually break off by random chance, which is why it doesn't last forever.

Please test with the opposite of Acid = Alkaline. Know that Polyester lifting is weakened by basic substances more than acid. Would be interesting to see how the rope behaves. Regards / Micke

That handling of HF was pretty reckless, hopefully your lab isnt too contaminated now. HF isn’t that strong of an acid but is insanely toxic, and it absorbs through skin. It’s chemical that pretty much every chemist hates working with most for the reason

“That’s not DOGE coin, that’s my rope”. I felt that.

Yesssss now this is fucking content. The canyoning guides are A+ beta but this type of shit is bingeable

I did not note any info on the time elapsed . I expected the acid to weaken (but geez, 10 kn!) but I cannot help wondering if for example, if the DEET had been left to do it's thing for a long (I'd suggest like a month or so) period might not have demonstrated an negative effect. Great video- sharing it with my colleagues ( we work in Camp/Climb at that really, really big store with three initials)

As to the battery acid, I worked at a battery store, those with cotton pants had holes, ripstop nylon showed no signs of damage. But we didn't put our pants in a pull test machine lol

Great vid. Wasn't expecting the coincidence , need it this weekend.

good video. maybe try some chemicals that are used in rope access. like the acid to restore windows, or silicone remover, concrete remover.

Been waiting for the Purcell video!!!! Hopefully it comes out soon!

Acid can take time to damage nylon. I would like to see the results 5-7days after the contamination.

Good that you're testing these things. Could you do petrol/gas too? I know that petrol/gas dissolves bitumen. It would be good to know if it affects nylon rope.

I think the “here’s doge coin!!” Joke was super underrated

Best close-up ASMR ive seen this year,

You should do the same test but wait a year before testing . It will give the time to the chemical to interact with the rope

Thanks, Ryan & team!

Great video. Would you consider testing contaminated ropes again, but this time with a friction hitch to see how well a contaminated rope will hold. I would imagine oil will make ropes more slippery, but might contaminated ropes get weaker when there is a fiction hitch? Maybe the friction hitch will bite the contaminated ropes better than a non-contaminated rope. I think the results may be interesting.

Some of my ropes died because of battery acid. But now my question: Why not to buy a cheap rope on Amazon? Please test these "climbing ropes".

I think you should test them after long time exposure, like at least a year or two

People really avoid wearing sunscreen because they worry about rope integrity? Damn, if so, thanks for saving a couple of lives by protecting from cancer…

I'd love to see gasoline and diesel tested. Especially a mild exposure (couple drops) with a time delay

5:58 had me dying 🤣🤣

Time from applying chemical to testing is probably important

I'd say for this kind of test, it'd be better to test the "full strength" instead of knot strength, since if a rope is exposed to chemicals in a work environment, there's a good chance you're going to put knots in the potentially compromised area, further reducing the strength. Anyway, it's easy enough to see what can and cannot damage the rope chemically, just compare the material (Nylon most of the time) chemical stability against the agent used, most nasty stuff stuff you'd expect to damage ropes is surprisingly harmless. As for oil, Iapart from making the rope slippery and attract dirt, which is not ideal for anything really, some oils have softening agents, which in the short term won't do anything, but prolonged exposure will swell and destroy the fibres.

5:27 that sounds like such a good idea

Me reading *acid* getting all hyped and stuff, left dissapointed at the end xD

That's so funny.. The oil hahahaha

Wouldn't the test be better if the rope were folded in half with the fold point being the damaged area. A control test could be done on an undamaged rope and it would hopefully break at the bend point of the rope. Then we could see how much weaker the damaged ropes are numerically rather than knowing if it weakens it more or less than the knot. Wouldn't this also be more realistic as the peak force in a lead fall is on the quickdraw where the rope bends rather than in the knot?

This really means nothing except for the obvious acid result. Ropes are used for years with sunscreen etc on them. A more valid test would be to apply some of these things on ropes then store them for 6 months, apply again and then wait another six months. Perhaps moving them around every few weeks to simulate use. Same goes for your previous sharpie tests.

Tests pretty much had the results that I expected- Oil wouldn't do anything to a rope since the rope is made of oil, DEET was tested by the germans about 15 years ago by soaking it in a tub for a couple of days and then testing it over time and there was no effect on the rope, acid of course does bad things. Never heard of sunscreen being an issue, so that's probably a good thing to test. Fun to watch, regardless!

I’d like to see chainsaw mix gas fumes, and actual mix gas on the ropes performance.

Deet does a good job of melting that blue, braided, polyprop, floating rope. I used it to stop Australian beasties crawling up my tarp line and it melting the knot into a nice little blob 😂

0:02 can you have too many dabs of acid? Lmao 👌

Im sure this has been mentioned, but id love to see if contaminating the knot will maie the knot weaker! Maybe have 1 knot contaminated and the other clean and see which side breaks?

Something that is damaging to a chemical compound may have no interaction with another. It is not true that if a chemical is damaging a rope that it also for sure would damage your skin

I spilled a DEET bug spray in my car's cupholder. It meltrd the cupholder. DEET is anathema to synthetics.

Do bolt glue (A7, AC100, Sika AF2)!

You should try gasoline, Arborist have it around our ropes all the time

Great video, been wondering about these questions for a while. I’m wondering if it is conclusive proof that the rope is/isn’t weaker with the presence of various chemicals. If the rope breaks in the knot, the contaminated part could still be weaker than the rest of the rope. Maybe it would be good to take one rope, cut several samples from it, dip some in their entirety into the chemical and run the samples. In a real world application, the knot might the contaminated part?

I'm actually a bit relieved to see that Deet didn't damage the rope. In the tick-infested Northeast, I kind of decided I'd rather die than have ticks on me, but I'm glad to know that's not a choice I have to make.

Did you do Adblue (diesel exhaust treatment)? A document from about 30-40 years ago in the UK suggested that the two things most likely to reduce the strength of your rope were loading over sharp edges and exposure to urea which of course is at a level of 10% in urine but also now 30% in AdBlue. Ropes could be exposed to human urine on long climbs, mouse urine in their shed, or adblue in the boot/trunk of their diesel car.

What about rat or mouse urine? Have heard it can break down ropes. Thanks for your good work.

What if the contaminated part is in the knot? What the section is inside a grigri or other belay device/descender?

You should dip ropes in colour paint and then break them! Rainbow SlackSnap

Love me some good old kilonewtent

Samson Rope's technical guys have in interviews unofficially endorsed using diesel fuel to clean pine rosin off climbing ropes, so the oil results are unsurprising to me. Love the tests!

Great video. I would have liked to see a gasoline test too though. I feel like gasoline spilling onto ropes is a common thing especially for paragliders and paramotorists. One time my paramotor tipped over and some gasoline leaked out of the tank and onto some of my lines. I was worried that it damaged it.

Would be better if the contaminated area was instead bent over a carabiner, while yes we weaken the rope with knots, that contaminated area could very well end up over a carabiner or edge highlighting the weakness. While pa66 is well studied for chemical resistance to things like, bleach, hydrochloric acid and deet, I do still appreciate these tests.

You should try putting gallium on aluminum carabiners and see how soft and spongy they become

Can you test the cross load strength of a double bowline on a 10mm sling? ie. the strength of the loop without anything clipped to the single loop tail.

"Acid Not LSD" that clarification tho 😂

I don't think people specifically choose where to put contaminants in their ropes and totally contain them to the mid section, away from knots, bends etc. Why don't you do some tests with the acids, oils etc in the knotted sections and see what difference it really makes?

What about chemicals that ropes and harnesses get exposed to frequently by work at height people? I’m thinking chainsaw bar oil & 2 stroke fuel/Arborists, stain & paint/Painters, grout and hydraulic oil/High Scalers and Rockfall Techs.

Have you tried testing ropes that have gotten really hot? Like if you left them in a widow of a car on a hot day. Maybe take it to the extreme by baking some for a while or something

I think maybe the sunscreen rope should have been left in the sun, if the chemicals react with the UV light

Curious if a 2” pvc around the rope with a clear slot for camera footage would be workable to prevent spray when the ropes break

"I'm sure they can figure it out..." He's not wrong 🤷🏼‍♂️

Great videos keep up the good work. Is it possible that some contaminants do weaken the rope but not to the extent that the knot reduces the strength. Would contaminating the rope inside the knot give you a different result. 🤷🏻‍♂️

What about using an oily rope in climbing? Is it more slippery? Would it weaken the knots? Would it reduce the forces on a climber during a fall?

Acetone could probably damage rope... I mean it is very very unlikely, but someone could think to use acetone to remove stains from their rope, or from something that then gets in contact with the rope

Oh Snap!

Loads of people get oil on ropes, like inspecting oil tankers' tanks at sea. You want to go up your rope?.. jumar it, you want to go down a rope?.. down-jumar it. PITA

I had some deet bug spray leak on to my sleeping pad. It undid part of the internal baffling on my thermarest neoair.

I'm a bit worried, that they have a barrel with old oil in their backyard :D

What about tree resin ..I had that on my rope

Would more time make a difference?

Was the oil used motor oil? I’ve read that used motor oil can contain carbolic acid.

Hi Ryan - for sunscreen, deet, and oil, someone’s concern might be that it was on their hands and then they transferred it to the rope. Which mean that it would get transferred directly into the knot. If this is the case then the knot strength would decrease. In other words, this test determined whether the chemicals decreased the strength more than a knot, but in many cases we would want to know how those two effects would add up.

Gasoline?

Is it that big of a surprise that the acid that came in a plastic jug didn't weaken it that much? 🤣

If dropping acid, don't get it on your safety lines.

10:49 it's at least iron and carbon. The rest can vary wildly 😏

awesome!

It's not the acid on the rope that is the immediate danger. It's the fact that you are dangling over a tank full of sharks with frikin laser beams on their heads that gets ya...

Were these static ropes? Would be interesting to see if the chemicals affect the dynamic properties of the rope (i.e. they become more or less stiff).

Try gasoline or different kinds of detergent/soap.... more realistic scenario I think.

that acid mixture contained Hydrofluoric acid... that stuff is NASTY. it will bind to the calcium in your bones and soften them, you should avoid contact with it at all costs.

If the chemical sunscreen works by absorbing UV light, and most people climb during the day... Wouldnt it make sense to expose it to the sun for a few hours before testing?

So I shouldnt go coating my ropes in battery acid before climbing? Damn

Дзякуй!

I bought some rope clamps a while back to use for making a dock line for a small boat just to try something different. I never got around to using them as they didn’t seem up to the task even though they’re advertised for it. Any way I can send them to you to break test?

Hey Thanks , what about gasoline ? (asking as a arborists )

I had a dog once peeing on my rope. A friend said it will lower the strength significantly . So i did throw it away. Now I wonder if that was true. So please test it with pee!

Vinegar or lemon juice? I don't actually think they're strong enough acids, just the strongest things I figure your rope could see on a "normal" climbing trip.

My guesses before viewing the tests: 1. I believe nylon is a highly chemical resistant plastic, so I think all ropes will still break above 12 kN 2. Deet is really nasty stuff, I think it will do the most damage 3. Second most damage will be done by the acid 4. Oil and sunscreen won't weaken the rope significantly.

Is the guy at 1:16 okay?

I hear you’re supposed to retire soft gear that has come into contact with cat pee… do it for science!

Have you done any snap tests on knots like the super 8 or figure9? Interested in how much strength I can retain with those knots.

How many dabs of acid is too much acid? 😵‍💫😵‍💫🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

Good video per usual. Surprised deet didn’t do more damage. While chemical sunscreen may not damage your rope, it’s very hard on your skin, increasing your risk for skin cancer nearly as much as overexposure to sun. Chemical sunscreen also contributes to air pollution as it off gases contributing to voc concentrations in the atmosphere. Always recommend mineral based sunscreen over chemical based.

just like that guy from South Park says MmmmmCable

Holy crap, i wouldn't mess around with hydrofluoric acid, that stuff is evil. Seriously, hydrofluoric acid can seep through the skin unnoticed, because it interferes with the nervous system and blocks pain, doesn't leave a mark at first, has delayed symptoms, creeps through the tissue and then attacks bones and causes heart attacks. It's quite weak, but very toxic acid. The sulfuric and nitric acid are very tame in comparison. You guys may want to go check yourself out with a doctor or something. Not to mention, the cloud that the acid rope made when snapping possibly contaminated other ropes in the garage. I don't think this was well handled experiment.

everything is a chemical even minerals ;)

How about exposing the knots in the stuff? I’m not sure that you are proving they are full strength here, you are proving stronger than knots. (~>50%) You wouldn’t be able to detect something say 30% weaker. The best way is to expose the rope then tie a knot or dip a knot in the material, then, (when it breaks in the knot because of course) see if the forces are the same or lower