Man I love these things.
[This is my second installment in the "Gear From the Crypt" series about gear no longer made, the first one being about Splitter Gear 2-Cams.]
Man, I wish these bad boys were still made. Also known as “rigid Friends,” these are (were) the ORIGINAL cam. Inventor/hardcore climber Ray Jardine first came up with the idea of a camming device in the early 70s, and the Forged Friend is the continued incarnation of his original design.
The original Forged Friends were all silver (see an example in the pic to the right), then the next generation had black stems and silver lobes, followed by a generation with black stems and red lobes, and then finally, silver stems with colored lobes.
Why do I like these so much? They’re just, well, bomber. They just feel solid. They last forever, as is evident by the number of climbers that still climb with them. Mine are probably 20 years old, and I still think they’re in good enough shape to keep using. These cams are also really light.
There are some downsides to these cams, though. The stem on them is thicker than most cam stems, and this has gotten in the way of placements a few times. Also, placing them in horizontal placements where the stem is sticking out of the crack is bad because of the leverage a fall can place on the stem. In practice, though, my horizontal placements have almost always been entirely in the crack. Only a couple times has the stem poked out of the crack. You can do a “Gunks tie-off” to make the Forged Friend the ultimate abuse-taking cam for horizontal placements, but I haven’t felt the need to do that yet.
I have a couple sets of these cams and still love them. I recently got them reslung and they’ve even more awesome and sexy now. If you can find these cams, get them. You can often score them for pretty cheap (I’ve gotten some for $5 and others for free!), and they’re good for doubling (or tripling or…) up oft-used pieces on your rack.
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Bleh. I climbed with them a couple of times and hated them: hard to place, hard to clean and very small range compared to camalots. I will leave them in the museum and happily keep climbing with my modern double axle flexible stem cams, thanks very much
On a sidenote, I have seen a new set of those on sale in one of the London climbing shops. Probably some inventory clearing, but it could be worth researching if you really want them.