While at TCI I talked with a friend who teaches climbing and rigging in the UK. Paolo has a rule of thumb that I'm adopting as time goes along. His rule is use HMS biners for all climbing. Since we tend to put more that one rope or piece into our personal support biners it makes sense having a wide area to support the load.
What kind of biner are you using as a redi, Tim? I think the largest radius HMS biner is the ISC Mongoose. They now come with a Quad Lock system and a no catch hook on the biner. Much better than the Petzl/Kong version.
http://iscwales.com/
Here is a copy of a post that I made on Tree Climbers International a few days ago,
http://www.treeclimbing.com/wwwboard/wwwboard.html
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Mark Chisholm taught me handy way of redirecting your line.
Here is what your rope path would look like. I'll describe the setup as if you are a right handed climber.
The end of eye splice of your rope goes through your friction hitch and then through the small ring of the false crotch and then out the big ring on the falses crotch. Next, the rope goes through a biner attached to the front d of the saddle. For maximum effeciency, use a pulley on this biner. Next. the end or eye splice goes through the second false crotch in the same fasion as the first one. After the end or eye splice comes out of the big ring, the rope is clipped into the front d of the saddle like normal.
If you look at the rope, you'll see that the path looks like an M with the top points going through false crotches and the bottom points attached to the saddle. When the left FC is cleared it will be retrieved at the saddle. Unthread the rope out of the FC and clear the second or go about your climb with just one tie in point.
This system uses up a lot of rope and is slow to move but is really handy. Being able to retrieve both FCs without worries of ropes jamming is another plus.
Strong limbs and single ropes!
Tom
***THE FOLLOWING PRACTICE IS NOT MEANT AS AN ENDORSEMENT OR RECOMMENDATION. MAKE THE MODIFICATIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK***
There, you're on your own now.
I took a CMI RP 110D pulley,
http://www.cmi-gear.com/catalog/pulleys/micro.asp and took out the middle cheek plate. I added a small nylon washer to take the place of the plate. Without the middle cheek, it's easier to install and remove the rope. Also, since we are using this as a redi, our rope is changing direction so the rope rubs on the cheek plates. Less cheek plate means less friction.
The nice part about this pulley is that the eyes in the cheek plates are fully parallel rather than spread out like on another brand. Also, this pulley is light and compact.
I have no clue how much strength is lost from taking out the plate. Since the pulley starts out at 7k#, I'm comfortable with the margin of safety. If you make the modification, you're on your own.
Tom