Vertical caving terminology and methods > General hardware
When you just got back from swimming in the pool, and the water was cold. Do women know about shrinkage?
New ropes are sold with various water-soluble fabric conditioning treatments which allowed them to be easily constructed. This often makes them produce much less friction than normal, so they are usually soaked to remove these chemicals. When the rope is soaked, the fibres tighten, and the rope's length decreases by 10-15%. The exact amount depends on the specific brand and specific rope. This means that when buying ropes, they need to be bought with excess to allow for the potential shrinkage. Several days of soaking, refreshing the water daily until it stops turning cloudy, removes the chemical treatments. After that, the rope's new length can be measured, and used for the rope label. Failure to do this means that the rope might shrink when it first gets wet in a cave, such that it is shorter on the way out than it had been on the way in. Over years of use, the fibres of the rope puff up so the rope becomes furry, and thicker than it originally was. Mud being forced into the rope by the equipment exaggerates this effect. This causes the rope length to shrink further, by as much as another 10%. For this reason, ropes that are actively used need their lengths to be re-checked occasionally.
<< Rope label, rope tag | Furry rope, hairy rope >>
This page is not intended to be viewed this way, please load the entire article. This version exists only to make it easier for search engines to understand the contents.