In a last few months one of our projects has been related to the materials for safety holds. By safety holds we consider holds made from material strong enough to survive normal daily usage for a few years, and most importantly, material which is not falling apart when subjected to extreme compressive strength. Insimply words, climbing hold can be broken/material may failed, but not failed apart and create dangerous pieces coming down from climbing wall.

Of course,this problem can be avoided by changing the holds on regular basis, but it is difficult to believe that every climbing holds consumer is actually doing that.One single accident caused by broken hold sharp pieces, is one accident too much.

Even strongest materials can be broken (in material science there is a term "material fatigue", which can play an important role when speaking about climbing holds), and any type of climbing hold definitely not belongs to the?strongest materials? group.

HRT is a climbing manufacturer with some work in this field - as stated at their website, HRT use ?a net of composite fibres? in order to create safety hold. By all respect to HRT work, we see a problem in a fact that there is "a net - giving safety" part , and "a hold material" part - the net is not natural part of climbing hold.

In the last few months, we have tried to create a material in which "giving safety" part of climbing holds is homogenous part of the climbing hold in total.

Short summary of our research:

By using modificated and reinforced composition based on commercially available polyurethane-epoxy-silicone resins and some natural polymers, excellent results were obtained. Composition after polymerisation has yielded in hard and light material, which, most importantly, was not created flying sharp pieces when broken.

Holds made from this material type ("Greengrip safety hold" material GSH01), were tested together with some commercially available holds (we had polyester and polyurethane holds from 4 different climbing hold manufacturers).

Compressive stress was applied to climbing hold until the material was failed completely.

All commercially available holds failed in the very similar way - sharp pieces were everywhere.

Our epoxy-silicone-natural polymer material (GSH01) was not failed apart.

In addition, even after extreme compressive strength, and significant damaging the hold, it was still possible to attach it to the wall in a one single piece. From safety point of view, it means that there is no danger of sharp pieces of broken climbing hold coming down.

Holds are currently on testing, if interested in topic (or testing), please contact us by e-mail - info@greengrip.org.

GSH material (blue) - the only one survived extreme compression - material with

"elastomeric memory", can withstand considerable deflection (intension or compression) without permanent deformation.