When it comes to the history of rock climbing gear, this is it. Early climbers wedged small stones in rock fissures, threaded a piece of rope around them and made an anchor or belay – they called the wee stones chockstones. Come the 1950s/60s and some one worked out that engineers nuts (as in nuts & bolts) would wedge in a crack better because of the hexagonal shape, so they threaded nuts onto a rope, often several different sizes to cater for different sized cracks, and called them ‘nuts’; along with chockstones or ‘chocks’ the two names have become collectives for all kinds of rock protection. This fabulous wee selection of ‘nuts’ was kindly donated by Ken MacTaggart, who tells us he bought some of it from a guy called Tudor back in 1978, seems like Tudor had been making his own gear since the 1960s. As for the big cog thingy, here’s what Ken has to say: “I threaded the big cog for a laugh, but it did occasionally work.” Fabulous!