BoltBuster - Split shaft climbing bolts break tested in slow motion

Would you like to see 3 8ths inch split shaft bolts break in tension and in shear? Check it out on this episode of How Not to Bolt Bust. I'm Ryan Jinks and welcome to Bolt Busters where we break anything and everything bolting related because we are nerds and it's quite fun to do so. Today we are going to test the split shaft design that Greg Barnes donated to us a couple of these 3 8ths inch threaded top split shafts. Greg Barnes is in charge of the ASCA and they replace bolts to keep our climbing area safe and he gave us some of these to test because they end up replacing I guess quite a few of these. A lot of button heads that you see that have buttons on the head, there's no mechanical magic underneath. They're split shaft and they're usually this short, this scary, and this thin. This is a quarter inch split shaft. This is a 3 8ths inch and you can see that it is not as scary as long. The quarter inch button head that I have here is one inch of engagement in the rock and then some room for the hanger and of course the head. As far as what is in the rock on this 3 8ths bolt is about two and a quarter inch. So you've got twice as much going for you and the diameter is quite a bit bigger. Now you'll see here in our install video that Bobby has to pound for days to get the damn bolt in the rock and Bobby's no small dude and his arm was pretty tired when he was done putting that in. I also haven't seen them to be a very popular bolt. The quarter inch bolts are they were in what the 50s probably maybe in the 70s for uh when they were creating bolt ladders. If they're trying to do blank sections and they just want like quick access up things they would just put in a bunch of these shit pieces and if one broke wasn't the end of the world to them. Of course you don't build anchors with shit button heads. Now of course I think we've evolved a little bit past using these unless you're doing some weird brand new A5 routes. Because we only had three of these we did one in shear and then two in tension because the tension ones were quite interesting because nothing keeps them in the rock other than the fact that it's pushing against the edges. So when we pulled our sample in shear we got 37.50 kilonewtons. That is a lot of kilonewtons. That's pretty good results because the shaft of the metal the three-eighths inch shaft is pretty strong considering it is zinc plated and a Dewalt's three-eighths inch stainless steel uh wedge bolt is breaking in shear around mid-20s. And a Powers bolt plus a three-eighths inch one in shear is also in high 20s. And then Titan HD the threaded concrete screws that we like to use for a lot of our our tests was um they're pretty strong in the fact that they snap when they snap in the low 40s. So this is basically almost as strong as a threaded concrete screw because a Powers bolt doesn't have a solid rod going through. It's got all the sleeves and all the shit around it so the actual rod that you're pulling against is like half the diameter of this. Even though I'm impressed by the result we did get it uh is zinc plated so over time we don't know how long it'll maintain such strength and um if the rock moves if their water gets in there if the ice if it freezes and thaws freezes and thaws um we don't know the longevity of them. I haven't pulled out a bunch of these so I don't know. However when we were able to test these in tension we got the bolt to snap at 22.52 and 17.12 kilonewtons. Now that is pretty encouraging numbers considering you pulled it straight out and the design of it is good enough that it did not pull the bolt out. Assuming you have a perfectly new hole in perfectly good rock in a perfectly fresh bolt. Who knows what happens over long term. Now the way to remove a quarter inch button head is to use a tuning fork. A tuning fork you stick um you just kind of start getting it under there and you basically wedge it out of there and you just take a hammer and that way you can do it without power tools. It's pretty convenient too. It doesn't take much to pull these out. However um if this was new I don't know if a tuning fork would pull these out. If you have removed these in the past and have video of it or know any links of videos online of this I would love to see uh some removals of this. Because the head snapped off when we pulled it straight out and I'm assuming that a tuning fork would do something similar. Unlike a power's bolt where you can pull out some of the bolt and then the sleeve and then like twist nuts down there or whatever. You can't really do any magic downstairs to make this release easier. If you want to learn how to install bolts you can go to The Bolting Bible. We have lots of resources on there and we are going to be updating it this winter. If you have thoughts that you'd like to have us add to The Bolting Bible we are more than happy to do so because it's everyone's knowledge in one place. That's the goal. We are going to break lots of bolts. We've already broken lots of bolts. Make sure you like, follow, and subscribe because we are posting every week results that we have gotten over this last year. And the whole point of Bolt Busters and The Bolting Bible is please don't bolt if you don't have to. And if you install bolts please don't put stuff like this in. Please put in things that are going to last a long long time. Cheers. Hey thanks for watching but don't be an idiot and try highlining without going with somebody who knows what they're doing the first time you go out. We actually have available now the Highline University International which is A to Z everything you need to know before you go highlining. This teaches you how to use a highline that's already rigged. So let's talk about some leash management. That's the H0 course which is out right now and available at hownottohighline.com. It's over 100 videos with quizzes, PDFs, illustrations, and it comes with homework and teachers that you submit it to. It's a very interactive online school so you get to learn in person online.