The first commercially produced wedges for protecting rock climbs appeared in the 1960’s with the U.K. based companies of Troll and Clog leading the field. Climbers had been using nuts – as in nuts and bolts – threaded on a length of rope to jam in cracks prior to this and the early commercial wedges used the same hexagonal nut shape which gave rise to the generic term ‘nuts’ for all types of protection for decades to come. Hexagons or ‘Hexes’ ruled for a decade or so until American climbers, Yvon Chouinard and Tom Frost, altered the angles of a Hexagonal to produce a Hexentric in 1971. Swedish climber,Tomas Carlstrom, refined the angles a little further in 1973 to produce the Polycentric which Chouinard acquired and patented in 1974. While the basic Hexentric/Polycentric design has remained to the present day, there have been numerous minor tweaks to the end product. Many of these are reflected in the fine set we have cobbled together here in our collection which span a couple of decades. They came from various sources, but mostly from the rack of our heritage collection’s founder member, Mick Tighe.