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FTOR
Sport climber
CA
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Mar 23, 2009 - 12:07pm PT
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as long as we're setting historic records straight, just want to mention that the true designer behind our small 3/4 size was eben stromquist. while altman sparked the building efforts, his desires were to produce half size units between the then only available 1, 2, 3, and 4. it was clear that those sizes were needed to fit the full range of yos cracks. by that and reasons of virtual poverty dave hand built his entire rack of friends. eben was a builder of custom homes who had a shop down on the bay. he had recently added a milling machine and lathe to his tool collection and was building custom film editing devices among other things. we all climbed together. eben was an extremely gifted designer who came up with the unique small stem used in our 3/4. i jumped in and pushed the efforts into going to one size smaller, a true half, and we pushed on to going larger as well, building the first quality larger sizes, 5, 6, and 7. we built ours using the same materials (or better) than commercial friends and did some rudimentary testing. about this time eben scored a job at lucas and was involved in designing and building a lot of the inner workings for the special effects models used in the early starwars movies, in short, a real job. i supported a couple of seasons of being a climbing bum by spending countless hours in the shop. dick made a couple of bucks selling these too. hey dick how's it going?
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couchmaster
climber
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Mar 23, 2009 - 12:37pm PT
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Jardine stole it and modified it a bit from Greg Lowe if you want to really get it right there BJ. Steve Byrne invented the 3 cam unit, and was selling them under the table as he used the Jardine patented cam design that Lowe originated as well. Lowe may have seen a Russian version of something similar I believe, but maybe Jeff Lowe can address that better than anyone else as he posts here.
Good story on these cams.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 23, 2009 - 12:43pm PT
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Jeff has related that story in fine detail elsewhere here on the forum.
I do not recall which thread holds that post.
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FTOR
Sport climber
CA
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Mar 23, 2009 - 01:47pm PT
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never claimed any originality. we were just filling in the blanks. pretty much just for ourselves, with quality stuff we would trust our lives to, at a time when there was nothing else out there. we discussed experimenting with wire stems too, but never pursued it.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Mar 23, 2009 - 03:27pm PT
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This is like the History Detectives: Climbing Edition. I love it.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 25, 2009 - 05:01am PT
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From Stephane Pennequin of the Nut Museum. He sometimes has Internet/email trouble their in Corsica and asks me to relay post or email for him. Like I said, he's pretty serious about researching entire stories - the lineage, history, events, climbs, people and their motivations are what I think makes it all interesting for him. Whatever it is, he's a pretty thorough chronicler of our story as seen through the lens of our equipment - sort of the Ken Burns of climbing even if only from that one unique perspective.
FTOR, in this case - and beyond just the possibility of snagging one of the cams you guys were making - it sounds like he'd like to know a lot more about this under-the-radar half-size operation you guys had going on...
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Dear Joseph,
I read your forum thread “Two Walt Shipley-made cams on ebay” on supertopo with a great interest. In fact, when I sent you the link to these two original cams made by Walt Shipley, I must confess that I was more interested in their shape than that they could have been made by a Yosemite famous aficionado.
None of the early rigid friends 1/2” and 3/4” in my collection has an aluminium alloy stem with the upper part machined with such a reduced thickness (beautiful and really interesting!):
 Malcolm Matheson (Horsham Bruce), Australia, HB Cams (1st generation, 1981) #1/2 & #3/4, with a Stainless Steel rigid stem. These HB Cams are the very early models. Malcolm Matheson changed the brass washers for Stainless Steel ones and put a knurled surface on the end of the titanium shaft on later models.
Steve Byrne (Wired Bliss) 1/2 inch "Friend", with a Stainless Steel rigid stem, one of the first batch made at Central Oregon Community College in 1982.
Wild Country Baby Friend or Half Size Friend (1st generation, 1986), with a thick titanium stem.
Wild Country Baby Friend or Half Size Friend (2nd generation, 1986), with a thin titanium stem.
Please Joseph, did you contact Rob Orovitz (“FTOR”), and have you got his email? I would be pleased if I could correspond with him and, maybe, get one of his magnificent small cams.
Thank you in advance…
Stéphane
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Mar 25, 2009 - 05:32am PT
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> Lowe may have seen a Russian version of something similar I believe, but maybe Jeff Lowe can address that better than anyone else as he posts here.
Jeff Lowe has addressed this on other threads here. The Russian "Abalakov" cam shown in the AAJ article by Alex Bertulis (Soviet climbing exchange to US) came out in 1975, after Jeff showed the Russians his prototype Tricams during a climbing exchange visit to Russia in 1974. The Russian cams did not even have a proper spiral - they were cut from a circular flywheel.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=268925&tn=20
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=269620&tn=40
Alex Bertulis' article in the 1976 AAJ:
http://books.google.com/books?id=HkalBpP35cQC&pg=PA340&lpg=PA340&dq=%22Alex+Bertulis%22+Abalakov&source=bl&ots=56e8Q-Yo5t&sig=z9vqc0bqrzruHzKWIyTrf-sQxUM&hl=en&ei=rP3JSZvkFJK2sAOF6ojoBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA343,M1
Alex Bertulis' article in Off Belay, 1976
and followup in 1978 where Bob Dill explained a real spiral
http://www.deuce4.net/web/OffBelay.pdf
I believe it was in these articles where people started to believe Abalakov had invented this, instead of actually copying it from Jeff Lowe.
The wikipedia article is way off, and it is really just quoting John Middendorf's article without any citation - probably time to fix it (I could fix it, fairly easily).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_loaded_camming_device
http://www.bigwalls.net/climb/mechadv/index.html
(sorry about the thread drift - the above concerns a single passive cam and the constant-angle-cam design).
I'm glad to see Stephane' likes Rob's small cams (4 cams on solid shaft), and I'm sure he will be able to get some (as well as other similar early small camming devices, such as the ones in this recent ebay auction).
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dickcilley
Social climber
A cova Dos Nenos
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Mar 25, 2009 - 10:01am PT
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Doing great Ftor,Six new crack boulders yesterday and all harder than Bachar crack.
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FTOR
Sport climber
CA
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Mar 25, 2009 - 12:40pm PT
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hey dick, good to hear you're cranking harder than ever. i barely climb at all, drifted off in to mtn biking, a little skate skiing, and a real job. Stephane Pennequin can email me here through the taco. be happy to provide him with any info, cams, etc. our little units were the sh-t back then, but the window was brief. hats off to whoever cam up with the wired tri cam designs, clearly the way to go with these smaller sizes. but ray was the guy who put it all together, regardless. my understanding of what he patented was the trigger system used in conjunction with the opposing cams, not the camming priciple per se. the very real fear of patent issues kept us out of mainstream markets, but as i said, it was never a desire make a lot of money that got us into this, we wanted these smaller cams for our racks.
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Mar 25, 2009 - 05:38pm PT
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The Russians I've been in communication with (one of whom quoted in another Supertopo post) still defend Abalokov as having come up with the cam as protection for climbing some years prior to 1974, but I have not seen any definitive proof (though in the past I took them for their word).
The Russians I've been in communication with hang out around this site:
http://www.russianclimb.com/odintsov.html
Jeff and Greg Lowe say otherwise, so I take them for their word at this point. The Lowe version has definite proof that they conceived it by 1974--there's a patent! There's nothing from Russia to prove earlier provenance, though I'd be interested to hear if they are still claiming the origin of the idea.
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nutstory
climber
Ajaccio, Corsica, France.
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Mar 26, 2009 - 12:45pm PT
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FTOR, I have just sent you an email...
Again, I thank you for all your interest in "my" Nuts' Story!
Stephane / Nuts Museum
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nutstory
climber
Ajaccio, Corsica, France
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Hooray…! After a great deal of research, this morning the Nuts Museum has just been enhanced with an Associate, as Dave Altman, Rob Oravetz and Eben Stromquist used to called their little wonders. Not only it is in a perfect condition, but there is important information stamped on the back of the rigid stem: the Associates were also called Micros! Please FTOR, could you confirm me that you and your friends produced this magnificently crafted little cam? I suspect that two “generations” were created. The one with the hexagonal swages (as your oversized cams) would be the first, and the other with rounded swages would be second generation.
FTOR, the cam that truly would delight me now would be a 3/4 and I believe that, without your help, I have a very tiny chance to visualise one this century…
Edit: This Micro is not an original Associate! It is one of the later copies of the Altman/Oravetz/Stromquist design.
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scuffy b
climber
heading slowly NNW
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I think I have a 1/2 and a 3/4 made by Rob, which have neither "Micro"
or "Made in USA" stamped or engraved on them. Bought direct, genuine.
The 1/2 held a pretty good fall one time. I was fortunate that neither one
ever got stuck.
Will search.
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nutstory
climber
Ajaccio, Corsica, France
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Thank you scuffy b!
None of the Associates posted here and there on supertopo has "micro" or "made in USA" stamped on the stem.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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I'm with scuffy, I had one of those cams (3/4 Friend size), with no stamps. It was the best cam I've ever had, smooth, smooth action.
I loaned it to a buddy, along with a bunch of other gear. They were climbing at Sugar Loaf, (Sugar Bun, to be exact), and when he left, he thought his partner had the rack.
Never to be seen, by me, again ...
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scuffy b
climber
heading slowly NNW
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Mar 12, 2013 - 07:18pm PT
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 12, 2013 - 08:30pm PT
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I am sitting here looking at an old ice screw that I shook out of a haulbag full of old junk.
Back during the cold war, it wasn't easy for the eastern european climbers to go climbing in Chamonix. There was some kind of black market going on where workers at a factory were churning out gear on the sly. Take it to Cham, sell it, and it paid for their trip.
It is made out of pure titanium, is about 10" long, and was built beautifully on a lathe. It is a work of art and weighs about 4 ounces max. Titanium is very light. It was actually a strategic metal for airplane manufacture. Russia is blessed with a lot of titanium, and it is scarce in the U.S.
Anyway, it is a damn cool piece of history. I'd give it to the Yo climbing museum if they had any use for it. It is early eighties vintage. I'll try to post a pic.
Back to Walt. He wrote tons of letters and was evidently short on paper, because they all seemed to be on the backs of topos from the old Meyers green binder. The sentences would wind around and around until every space had been used. I only have a few, but others have huge numbers of his letters.
I have no idea why Walt was so special. If you climbed with him you wouldn't get blown away, yet he put up some incredible routes later on.
Why WAS Walt so special?
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telemon01
Trad climber
Montana
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Mar 12, 2013 - 09:09pm PT
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I have this cam that says "micro 3/4" on one side, and "made in usa" on the other. Is this the 3/4 cam you were wondering about nutstory?
I picked this up in Joshua Tree in April 1986. I always wondered who made these. It's a sweet little cam
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Mar 12, 2013 - 09:31pm PT
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Between climbing and death there lies collecting memorabilia.
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