Pick Modification

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Mountaineering : One Thread

In the Recent Rock and Ice (Jan.98), there was mention of modifying the tip of your ice axe pick. The picture and instructions were not perfectly clear. Can anyone explain this a little better?

Thanks.

-- Mark Toru Iwaasa (iwaamt@uleth.ca), January 16, 1998

Answers

The most important modification is to hook the tip of your pick. File the bottom of the tip in a straight line from the top(deepest part) of the first notch behind the tip to the point. This drastically improves holding power, especially on shallow placements and hook moves. Another useful modification is to bevel the back edges of all the teeth. This is really hard to explain, but if you look at the Black Diamond picks, it is done already and should be helpful. This improves holding power and makes it easier to remove the placement. Some sources say steepening the "nose" of the pick is helpful, but there are mixed opinions around about weather it is really useful. Personally, I don't think it's a great idea.

-- Steve Waydo (waydo@u.washington.edu), January 17, 1998.

"Standard" modification implies low durability of the tip. This is an particular issue in dry tooling. If you leave 2-3 mm of the tip unmodified i.e. flat it still offers improved holding strength combined with the possibility of a few rounds with the file when dull. Making an aditional edge on the top side of the blade eases removal in very cold conditions aswell as giving you another mean to get a selfinflicted wound... Jone Segadal, happy ice novice.

-- Jone Segadal (jone@hotmail.com), February 27, 1998.

Here is how I shape my picks. I use BD Stingers and they already come beveled on the bottom teeth. This is to help in removal not holding. The top of the pick needs to be kept sharp. This also helps in the removal. The top of the tip needs to be rounded off. Do this a little at a time. This will greatly affect the performance of the pick. This also helps in removal but too much will make the tip of you pick weak. As you can tell everything is for removal. The shape of recurve picks is what holds them in the ice, not the teeth. For mixed nasties the bottom of the tip can be made to bite better on rock and thin ice by making it more of an acute angle. One big tooth at the tip. This will make picks weaker and stick more in fat ice. This year I have Aermets from BD. Haven't broke one yet and they don't dull as easy but are harder to file. They are easy to over stick because they are thinner.

-- JEB (High Ice AK@aol.com), March 23, 1998.

I have an old F. Ralling Hammerwerk wooden-handled, hand-forged head axe. Haven't managed to break the full-length handle in years of abuse, and it is weakened [slightly] by a setscrew a foot from the end of the handle so my prussik-knot wrist strap won't slip off. The head of the axe is a brutally simple work of the smith's art and, no doubt, a lot of trial and error by alpinists. The axe blade is curved seen end-on [as if you were the ice in a swing] and rounded seen from the top, and the blade shoulders are tapered back from the cutting edge and simultaneously rounded into its body, so it bites very hard ice and has no weak edges or corners. I tried to put a hook in the tip of the pick, because I thought it was too straight from the shaft to the tip, when I first traded for it [can't buy one, they aren't made any more, not that i've heard- though i'm no alpinist antiques expert]-- but the metal is too hard for four hours' "cutting" with a brand-new file to do more than make a visible groove in the surface. I would not use a power tool on such a blade, out of respect for the quality of its temper displayed in maintaining and attempting to "improve" it. Sharpening the blades of the pick and the axe can be done easily-- with a couple hours' cheerful patience, very firm pressure [lots of rest stops] with a very clean and very new file, and an immovable mount so no effort is wasted following a wiggling blade with the file and trying to keep the cutting angle right. The blade of the pick, having such a hard temper, is strong enough that its original smith could cut it back at a sharp enough angle that it drives into very hard ice, if swung with authority-- the head/handle combination transmits little vibration from a big swing into hard ice, so you're not afraid to put all you've got into it.

I'm sure the latest axes are far superior, being adapted to specific uses, with multiple attachments and substitutable picks, and more easily modifiable to sub-genres and for personal preferences [with steel you may have to sharpen more often, but which you CAN modify]. Nonetheless, it's comforting to recognize the not-so-old tradition of alpinism, in developing tools fairly early in the history of the sport to which you would trust your life and your ability to secure the lives of others, and coming up with something you could use pretty much everywhere for everything-- and you would never have to take off your gloves and find a small tool to mess around with your axe in the middle of a long hard patch, or even in the middle of a cold night in a bivvy....

-- michael finley (mmfinley@earthlink.net), July 24, 2000.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ