Bought two autolocking carabiners today at the local rental store that carries arborist stuff but then I get home and decide to search around and try to figure out who made them... and I find this...

http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=1898337;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;

I have a couple of Aztec steel biners from this company. I liked the triangle shape and the fact that they came with pins to keep rope and other connections from side loading the gate.

Here's there site http://fusionclimb.com/aztec.html Not too impressive.

Thanks for posting the _link_ to the rock ckimbing forum. There is some VERY interesting info on there. I have seen these products in a few arborist catalogs and stores that sell such products. I'm not sure I'll be usig the biners I have any more

Well, I went to the UIAA website (although I don't really know where they fit in with ANSI, etc) and downloaded the "approved products" list, and according to the list Fusion only has two approved products: Essence and Zoom. I believe the carabiners I have are the Essence aluminum autolockers, part number 9313-2, but the online Fusion catalog now says the Essence are rated 26kN while mine are marked 30kN. They are also marked ANSI Z359.1 but how do I find the ANSI approved products list to see if they really are approved?

Two factors figure in here:

1.You say you only believe that yours are the ones that are approved.

2. You paid very little for those "approved" biners.

There you go agin' Dave, tryin' ta save a buck 'er two. The above 2 factors alone would not allow me to climb on them 'biners. I know you might be quite the maverick, but if I were yoo, I'd cut 'em in half with a hacksaw (so no one else could use 'em ya know). Joe Six-pack would tass 'em, and git himself a coupla nice Petzl ones. OK?

(Sorry, I slipped into a little Sarah Palin there. Just saw her on TV - that accent makes me crazy.

There is no info on the Fusion web site about where the carabiners are made and there is no information about the company besides an address and a phone number. Either they're not paying attention to their public image or they're hiding something. The reported very low prices indicates they're probably outsourcing manufacture to the lowest bidder. Low bid is fine for some things but not for life support gear. If they're manufacturing and testing in a quality way they should be talking about that on their web site.

I like the designs of some of their 'biners, hopefully they'll get their act together and demonstrate the quality of their product (if it's there).

Dave, (since you have their biners in hand) it might be worth shooting them an email and asking them where they make their biners and ask them to send documentation/de_script_ion of their safety testing methodology.
-moss

moss wrote:
The reported very low prices indicates they're probably outsourcing manufacture to the lowest bidder. Low bid is fine for some things but not for life support gear. If they're manufacturing and testing in a quality way they should be talking about that on their web site.

If I had seen them on Ebay I would have been much more suspicious. I saw them for $15.30 at a local store which sells Buckingham and Samson.