We broke 12 locking carabiners all lined up from weakest to strongest. They did not break in that order though! These carabiners have different gates and we show them to you before breaking them. It's a hybrid between a buying guide and teaching what HMS lockers are and just pure edutainment. I think it helps trust carabiners you trust your life to, when you see HOW they break, not just a number printed on the side.
Our lowest broke at 20.82kN and our highest broke at 31.88kN. Please don't make strength a main purchasing decision, use and shape and function and size, etc are good things to consider. They are all super good enough!
This is a great VIDEO by Kong showing what happens if you load the gate side of an HMS carabiner.
Behind the Scenes
Due to some miscommunication, we ending up getting 36 DIFFERENT locking carabiners for this showdown type video. That is WAY to many for 1 video so we broke them into 12 videos and this is the last of the 3. You can see the previous video at the bottom of this blog. Even though it seems silly to break that many different ones, we did learn a bunch about the different locking mechanisms and how some would be functional and others wouldn't open after stressing them past their MBS rated strength.
After Posting Thoughts
Look at the Petzl carabiner in this gif. The momentum of the chain moving opened the locking mechanism and unlocked the carabiner and subsequently opened it. It was locked during this pull!
See our previous locking carabiner showdown video here.
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