Fabulous little piece of rock climbing history here in the collection, dating from the 1960’s and kindly donated by our pal, Joe Porter, in the Cairngorms. Early climbers carried small pebbles/ stones around with them to place in rock fissures to make anchors. A piece of rope could then be threaded around them and clipped with a karabiner. Someone, somewhere, sometime, worked out that a nut ( as in nut and bolt) would jam nicely in a crack, and if you threaded several different sizes onto a piece of rope, you had a choice of anchors/belays. The excellent example we have here has a couple of nuts which have been filed inside to remove the thread and stop abrasions on the rope. They are threaded on a piece of Viking nylon rope which has a leather sleeve which can be slid along as required to protect the rope from any sharp rock. We suspect the sling is an old RAF Mountain Rescue version cut down – you’ll find some of them elsewhere in the collection.