Needle Sports - Nuts Museum

2001 a Nut Odyssey	More Nuts' Stories	Clockwork Friends
	Early Equipment Catalogues

Bonjour,

I live in Ajaccio on the island of Corsica where I work as a photographer. I have also been a collector of climbing equipment for many years now, specializing in "artificial chockstones". As a history buff, I have founded and been running the Nuts Museum here in Ajaccio.

I wrote the article Nuts' Story: 2001 a Nut Odyssey published in the British magazine High Mountain Sports in June 2001 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the first purpose designed nut ever marketed, the John Brailsford Acorn.

My second article Nuts' Story: Clockwork Friends came out in the same magazine in October 2003 (under the title Nuts' Story: Adjustable Expanding Protection). As usual, John Brailsford translated my poorly written English into good Whymper prose.

Maybe you have spotted the poster/calendar published in High Mountain Sports in December 1999 (shown above). It was my personal way to welcome the millennium. A half of a century of "artificial chockstones" were used to write 2000 on a background, ranging from the original British machine nuts to the most sophisticated camming devices, including several rare prototypes.

I have a very large collection of climbing equipment, if not the largest, but I am still looking for a small number of hard-to-find nuts and in spite of a great deal of research, there are still few old protection devices which my collection is unfortunately missing. If you have any of these items and are willing to part with them, I would be sincerely grateful.

The following treasures would be a welcome addition to the Nuts Museum:

Any "home-made" artificial chockstones including early machine nuts. (NB If you have any of these items, or think you may have, please do not send them to Needle Sports! Please contact Stéphane direct, mentioning that you saw them listed on the Needle Sports website).

All John Brailsford Acorns, all sizes

Cheetas, all sizes: In 1966/67 along with his brother Roger and a climbing companion Colin Downer, Guy Lee manufactured wedge shaped nuts, called Cheeta, and sold them on the climbing scene in the Peak District. These nuts were used by Guy Lee and various colleagues on early ascents of routes like Mousetrap on Gogarth, and Nexus on Dinas Mot (Terry Bolger who was leading the overhang on this route fell on a Cheeta and it remained jammed in there for years).

MOAC, original chock, on wire

Parba Spuds

Parba / Troll Big-H's

Troll Wedges one hole

Troll Tee size 1 on wire

Troll Tee size 2 without lightening holes

Troll Hexagons size 6 and 7 with lightening holes

Clog Hexagons, especially the size 8 called Mammoth

Pool Tool Engineering Cheating Stick.
(Any information which could help me to locate the former British manufacturer Pool-Tool Engineering would be of real interest to me. Made in 1969, the Cheating Stiks were wedges with a two-directional taper, with a single hole drilled. A wire sling was permanently jammed into the hole and a loop was formed in the sling with a swage. Cheating Sticks were available with multiple chocks on each sling. The smaller chock was fixed on the end of the sling and the others slide freely, thus giving a wide range of possible sizes.)