Rebuttal:
- I have YET to see one plastic part (ie carabiner gate components, plastic sheave pulleys with _meta_l sideplates, ascender components) last under normal usage, let alone work usage. (and for the record i am not abusinve with my gear, i baby my gear and I still have had things break.)
- New Tribe saddles. Cannot comment, i dont own one. nor have i had the opportunity to field test one. sorry. I will comment that i HAVE had other harnesses/saddles for on rope use (variety of fields) and i have have had many fail at the webbing TIP's. _meta_l TIP's are simply better in every aspect. No fraying, no fuzzed webbing from carabiner movement, no wear thru. All my harness TIP's are medium _meta_l side D's, load rated at 5000lbs MBS, (tested to 9,000lbs break).
QOUTE "Can't you name even one industrial-quality device that has a plastic part? "
No i cannot, all my industrial rated gear is steel.
this is a pic of exactly Why plastic should'nt be used in our gear: (with thanks to treeBuzz for the _link_ the ot the image
^ is that something you would trust your life with? not me. Granted the gate is still closed, but why take that chance. That biner had a week of climbing use on it.
another reason plastic hasno place in our gear:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07010.htmldo you want your carabiner to accidently open while your hanging form it? i dont. My steel biners, heck even my almninum gate biners dont fail like that. PLASTIC wears out, you cannot deny that! grit, sand, bark dust is ABRASIVE. it wears plastic out. A tiny tiny bit of wear can be enough to loosen up a component, leading to a failure. Plastic has no business on any form of life support. (yea yea excluding our ropes....lol)
