At 60 years old, my Dad broke his own cardinal rule, never use some one elses gear. We had a climber no show on a job. Dad was running estimates in his car so he didn't have his own gear. So, he grabbed the other guys gear and we ran over to another job close by so the day wouldn't be a total loss. The rope broke and he fell about 30 feet. He broke his left ankle, hip, wrist, and shoulder. He also landed on his chain saw and it fractured several vertabrae in his back. All of his internal organs were bruised and swollen. His intestines were so swollen that food couldn't pass through them. He got a 4 hour pass to come to my wedding in a wheel chair.
One of our safety rules was a visual inspecton of your climbing rope before every climb. As you were uncoiling your rope you had to run it through your hands from one end to the other and recoil it on the ground and then climb. The climbing line looked fine. After his fall we took the rope and ran it through our hands and squeezed real hard and found several spots where the inner core was severed. We think the climber had blocked out a big tree dropping the chunks on his rope. The sharp edges must have hit on roots and pinched the inner core of the rope.
When you work for Uncle Sam and he tells you to jump out of a plane, you jump out of the plane. When we tell you to save and buy new gear, and you laugh and say you'll just trust us, you're not being very bright. A sucessfull business is going to use it's gear to the point that they through it away. If they have old stuff laying around, why do you think it's laying around?
Just because you have to take chances in the military doesn't mean you have to as a civy, Joe.
