I’m really good at losing things. I lose biners, nuts, my keys… You get the idea. I’ve also lost several of the plastic caps that go on the ends of ice screws that protect everything in your pack from getting ripped to shreds. I’ve made replacement caps simply using duct tape. A couple of them have lasted a couple seasons now. Here are some pics:
The cap in action!
A view of the inside of the cap.
Like I said, these were made entirely out of duct tape. To start one of these, get a strip of duct tape about 6 inches long and fold it on itself lengthwise so that there’s no sticky part. Assuming you’re using 2″ tape, this leaves you with a 1″ x 6″ strip of material. Wrap this around the end the the screw and tape it so that it doesn’t unravel. Now take several strips of tape (cut in half so that you have 1″ strips) and keep wrapping around the tape that’s already around the screw. Do this a bunch of times until the tape is fairly thick (see photo). You’ll end up with a tape tube.
To make the bottom of the cap, just lay several thinner strips of tape on one end of the tape tube in crisscrossing X patterns. Once you’ve done that, finish it off with one more 1″ strip around the whole thing.
Does that make sense? If not, just look at the pictures!
