Can You Drill Holes In Carabiners?

Petzl has SOME holes in their Sm'D and Spirt carabiners so can you drill holes in yours to save weight? Elliott Bernhagen sent me a few carabiners with a LOT of holes in them to see if they were super good enough. The Sm'D carabiner's hole is intended for a keeper sling to keep your microtraxion or tibloc from falling when you are installing it. See ALPINE SAVVY's article about that. The Spirit carabiner was a marketing trick more than it was a weight-saving trick. The Edelrid Nineteen G carabiner is the lightest full-strength carabiner available and weighs 19.5 grams. Elliott drilled almost 20 holes in it and only saved 1.1grams or about 5% of its weight, BUT we got around half of it's rated strength of 20kN. I don't know if that is worth it? OUR RESULTS Edelrid Nineteen G - 20kN MBS - 12.79kN Edelrid Nineteen G - 20kN MBS - 13.44kN Camp Nano - 21kN MBS - 7.76kN Camp Nano - 21kN MBS - 11.75kN Camp Photon - 22kN MBS - 10.53kN 10% Supports HowNOT2 Get light carabiners here To give context, Elliott does this to carabiners that see very little force. Carabiners, ascender eye keeper biners, ascender biners, etc. Things that rarely ever see 1kN. But if you do this to 20 carabiners, you only save enough the weight of the one Nineteen G carabiner. Then you are carrying an 18.4gram carabiner you can't use for the stuff you need bomber carabiners for. What's Next See our Carabiner show down videos to see which one lasted the longest