We’ve always been great lovers of all things homemade and when it comes to things of that ilk -these wired nuts are as good as it gets. We call them ‘nuts’ since early rock climbers used ordinary engineer’s nuts – as in nuts and bolts – to jam in rock fissures to make anchors. Prior to that they used pebbles or chockstones round which they could thread a rope or sling so ‘nuts’ are sometimes called ‘chocks’ or ‘chocs’ – short for chockstones. Anyway, these fabulous nuts/chocs are of the homemade variety using wire rather than rope and we suspect they date from the 1970’s or 80’s. Engineers learnt early on how to swage wire to make a joint; a swage being a form of friction weld. Swaging requires fairly expensive equipment which is not usually available in the average workshop, so the maker of these nuts has partially spliced the wire, taped it and used an ordinary nut to hold everything in place – fabulous! We’ve taken the tape off one so you can see the system oppsosite. Our old mountain guide pal, Dave ‘Smiler’ Cuthbertson, donated them having got them from a couple of pals up at the Inverness climbing wall.