I have personal experience with a quality rope manufacturer (more than one) and have family members who actually did rope testing in that manufacturer's facility and know for a fact that there are guidelines followed and that testing is accepted worldwide. (Except here apparently.)
Acceptance of mediocrity doesn't elevate it.
Of test reports that I've seen from various places,
there is a lot left to want :
1. clear specification of the tested item (the common example
I keep pointing to is the
fig.8 eyeknot, where structure
isn't shown but just presumed known(?!).
2. details of where the knots break (some marking method
seems like the best method to determine/guesstimate this).
3. testing in different conditions of loading (as Inkanyezi once
remarked, the standard straight-gradual-pull loading is often
least likely to occur in practice!)
Instead, we see little more than hints of repeated, vague testing.
--maybe %-strength figures are based on ratings, maybe on
actual testing of the line. (Maybe a later edition of a book will
contradict earlier-edition-published values ! --think, CMC Rope
Rescue (4th vs. 3rd editions).)
Dave Richards did some testing in a trio of common kernmantle
nylon ropes --12.5mm low-elongation ("static"), 10.5mm dynamic,
and 7mm low-elongation ("accessory cord")--, and then his report,
though suffering my listed faults, disappeared from the caving-org.'s
hosting just because of a confusion of tables, wrongly misunderstood
as some profound confusion of results (vs. an A vice B swap)!
.:. All of this points to a lack of care & attention to knotting, IMO.
(And yet, life goes on ... .)
--dl*
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