I was leading a climbing in the Catskills last year. About 40’ up casual WI3 terrain before the business began, I was weaving a tapestry of profanity, losing it trying to push a dull-ass, broken tooth screw into what should have been a quick placement. I got so wound up while my screw kept coring out, frustrated at the futility, I finally chucked the screw in a blind rage behind me, a lone piece of BD hardware soaring in a graceful arc, swallowed by a hungry, anonymous snowdrift along the bottom of the creak bed.
It took me about 25 mins of rooting around and carefully digging in the drifts to find that dull-ass screw. Because after I calmed down a bit, I remembered something: I got a guy for that…
Our friend Charles Pechousek at IceScrewSharpening.com will clean up and sharpen your screws. He uses a CNC milling machine, producing precision teeth that are often sharper than new. I have the marks marks in my ice climbing pants to prove it. At $10/screw, that’s more than reasonable for wicked, and I mean wicked, sharp screws.
And for you big risk takers, he can even make one of your beat up 10cm screws into a Super Stubby. What’s a Super Stubby? If you don’t know, best to keep it that way…
You could even go to the consignment gear shop, pickup 10-12 screws for 1/2 of what you pay for new, send them to Charles, and then have basically a brand new rack of ice screws. I wish I’d thought of it sooner.
Charles does all his work in batches, typically before the ice season, which is now for most of us. So do not wait. Get your screws out, send them to Charles, go enjoy the fall leaves, and when the ice comes in, you’ll ready for the most satisfying ice screw placements of your life. That is, till you bottom them out, but then remember, you got a guy for that!
Get all the details at IceScrewSharpening.com.