A while back a friend of mine who works at a gas station brought home an entire display container of key chain carabiners. They were pretty good quality (more so than the couple I already had) So I took 35 of them to find uses for.
This is my list.

1 - My cell phone's lanyard clips into one that stays on my tengu harness, right next to the accessory gap in the waist strap that my cell phone holster is clipped into.

2 - The tail end of my throw line is tied onto one with an anchor hitch. This usually is clipped onto the tag in the bottom of my throw line cube to prevent disappearing throw lines. However, when I want to attach the tail of the throw line onto the weight, to isolate a branch or other reasons, I just clip it to the loop on the bottom of the throw weight. If I think I need extra weight to overpower the friction when isolating a branch, I clip my extra throw weight, and sometimes creative bits of extra weight right to the key chain 'biner

3 - One stays stored on the handle of my throwline cube that is used to pull my climb line up and over the branch, I just clip the eye splice right to the bottom loop of the throw weight and pull it over. 99% of the time it pulls over just fine. No problems setting the cambium saver. Even when things kinda got stuck, I tied a loop in my throw line so I could sit in it and bounced my full weight to break the rope free. The keychain carabiner was barely bent. I had to chuck it in the trash but it got the job done.

4 - When quickly flaking my throw line back into the cube I will run the line through the little carabiner like a hand held redirect, so that it doesn't rope burn my fingers.

5 - One stays clipped to my camelbak to keep the tube from getting pinched between the saddle's waist strap and my waist, causing water to flow, and me to look like I wet my harness.

6 - Another is stored on my camelbak's shoulder strap as an extra for whatever random need may arise. They make a great extra set of fingers when you just gotta hold three things for a second.

Those are the standard uses in my climbing system nowadays.
I have also used these little carabiners in place of a micro-pully in an attempt to improvise a hitch tending method. It worked, but not well.


Anyone else use these things, or have other ideas???

Carl

They're handy. They tend to die pretty quickly as the gate hinge and spring is usually poorly made but they're cheap enough to replace. Kong makes an excellent carabiner same size as a key-chain biner but is rated and is bombproof for its size, very well made. Unfortunately they are very difficult to locate. If anyone can find a U.S. source please let me know. I grabbed a handful for cheap from a local arborist supplier and they don't seem to know how they got them and have no plans to restock. I gave most of mine away because everyone who saw them wanted one. I only have two left, the other holds my throw bags for my in-tree throwing kit.

It's the little biner holding up the Croll in this well-used photo:


-moss

Could this $6 biner be the one?



buy it here: http://knradventuregear.com/Carabiners/kong_biners/kongaceDbnt.htm

Dan

Ah yes, the keychain carabiner. Ordinarily I am opposed to taking something into the tree that is not rated...I mean you never know what will happen! Of course on this day of climbing I was trying to wrestle a beat sheet into the canopy... what is a beat sheet? Well I wanted to collect insects and one great way of doing it is to whack the branches and see what falls off. If you stick a white sheet or a white tray underneath the branch you will catch all kinds of amazing insects crawling around.

I was climbing a hemlock in Georgia and quickly abandoned my original idea of a traditional beat sheet for an improvised solution... an umbrella. I used a keychain carabiner to clip the umbrella to the hemlock branch (placed the biner through the umbrella hand strap and around the branch). I was sampling for some predatory beetles that feed on the hemlock woolly adelgid. The umbrella worked great and so did the keychain carabiner! You never know when inspiration will strike. I even found the beetles I was hoping were present. The pic doesn't really show the biner but hey, how many times do you see an umbrella in a tree!

James

Is this the little guy?

http://www.patrollersupply.com/equipment/item_1860.asp

Baker wrote:
Is this the little guy?

http://www.patrollersupply.com/equipment/item_1860.asp

That's it! Note that they call it a keychain biner but it is rated at 6kn (1350 lb.) and it has a keylock gate. It's a strong little thing and is good for holding stuff secure (throw bags etc.) on your harness.

I got mine for less but that's because they'd been sitting in a box on the counter for months and the supplier was happy to get rid of them.

Thanks Baker!
-moss