Bolt Buster - ⅜” zinc plated red heads - climbing and highline bolt break test

Do you want to see how strong a tiny 3 8 inch zinc plated redhead is when we pull it in sheer in our concrete tests? Check it out on this episode of How Not to Highline. Hi I'm Ryan Jinks and welcome to Bolt Busters where we break everything you can think of climbing bolt related in every possible scenario because we're super curious. And the redhead 3 8 inch zinc plated wedge bolts that look just like this. I don't have any more because they're so worthless. I don't want to keep them around but it looks very much like this are basically the worst thing you can put in. One, it's too small. Two, it's zinc plated. And three, they're redheads. It's the cheapest brand out there. But sometimes people don't know what they're doing. They buy a cheap concrete bolt and stick it in thinking they're going to go climb something. And we're going to find out on this episode how strong they are. While I'm on the zinc plated kick, just so you know, zinc plated will rust in just a few years. And especially if it's near the ocean or a corrosion prone area. It's very important to use stainless steel anytime you're outside. What's the difference you ask? One looks shiny, zinc plated shit looks like a nickel a quarter. It looks shiny, super shiny. And this has more of a dull, a stainless steel look just because I know what it looks like. But you can see here that there's a color difference because if you're not sure you will be able to just look at it and tell. Now, you don't want to take in this case, this is a stainless steel wedge bolt and stick it. Well, you've got to take the head off. If you do this, this is even worse than using zinc plated everything because you get galvanic corrosion or bimetallic corrosion. Whereas, uh, I'm not gonna pretend how I know it works. It speeds up the process of corrosion. Um, so zinc plated is two metals, zinc on top of normal steel. And what happens is the zinc is a sacrificial coating. So the zinc rust first protecting the steel underneath because the lower the metal on the chart, the top one's going to corrode first. Anyways, the point is eventually the zinc rust all done. And then, and then the steel underneath rust. Well, the same thing's going to happen here. This whole thing is going to rust significantly faster. I mean, because this is stainless, um, and you get bimetallic corrosion. Another thing is wedge bolts. They only have these two contact points right here. Uh, as this sleeve separates as it goes over the batter cone at the bottom. And you can do that in granite, uh, maybe not in three eights. Uh, but you definitely cannot do that in sandstone. We are going to break test it in sandstone just because we like to break everything we can think of, but you want, if you have a softer rock, you want a sleeve bolt because there's a little bit more contact than just these two little points right here. So we installed these in three eights inch or 10 millimeter holes. And we use fix hangers from fix hardware that are rated for 30 kilonewtons, but they probably break around 40, 50, or 60, depending when and how we tested them and other tests. And on our first test, we got 20.5 kilonewtons. And on our second test, we got 22.24 kilonewtons. And then we got our lowest test was our third one at 19.22 kilonewtons. And they all basically snap the head off. There's just not a lot of metal there and it's not going to come out of the concrete, which is nice to know that wedge bolts are, I'd say pretty good considering they're not slipping and coming out of the hole. However, 19 kilonewtons, I mean, in a climbing scenario, you're not likely to achieve that much, but especially the redheads, they will corrode quickly and maybe five or 10 years down the road, they might only be worth 10 kilonewtons. Now, three eights inch wedge bolts are not the end of the world. Just make sure they're not zinc plated redheads. Uh, we are going to be testing, uh, more of these and we are going to be rewriting the bolting Bible on slackademics.com, which is where you can learn how to install mechanical bolts like this and glue and bolts. And if you follow along with this series, you'll see that in a few months, we will be rewriting the bolting Bible with all of our break tests, included the whole chart. And all of these episodes will be integrated into it with all new sorts of information that we've collected over the last year or two, since we've written the bolting Bible. So make sure you're not just watching one or two episodes, but you're really engaging with the project we're doing here as we are collaborating and collecting everything. Everyone knows about bolts and putting it in one place so we can put the best bolts around the world and not be replacing them every few years and possibly risking people's lives with bad bolting practices. We do put it out an episode about bolt busters every week. So make sure you like, follow, and subscribe on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube because we're always putting out cool, fun break tests. 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 a hundred 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.