What an insight we had at DMM Professional. Who would have thought the amount of work that it takes for the humble karabiner to be born!

From a very innocuous, and dare I say, boring piece of aluminium to the shiny and tactile karabiners that we all know and love, all in the stunning location of Llanberis North Wales.

Starting with the straight piece of aluminium this is initially bent in to the appropriate basic shape of karabiner that it will eventually end up, Ultra O, BOA, Perfect O, Sentinel, Revolver etc. The karabiner is then hot forged and pressed. From the forge karabiners are then pressed again to remove the excess aluminium which is recycled into tin cans.

Further along the line the karabiners are heated to temperatures of over 500° and then cooled down under extremely controlled conditions this is to create the strength of the karabiner, which up to this stage is still pliable.

The ‘rough’ karabiners are then ‘rumbled’ a process that smooths out the karabiners removing the roughness and creates the tactile karabiner we are all used to.

At every single process in the production of the karabiner there are strict and stringent checks carried out to ensure that nothing has gone awry in the process.

From what felt like being under the Misty Mountains of Middle Earth in the mines of Moria the karabiners then move to the hi-tech area to be precision drilled by a machine previously used in the process of building F1 racing cars for McLaren!

Once all the components are completed the karabiners are then individually hand assembled! From each batch karabiners are then randomly selected to be destroyed in the testing department.

Finally, once each batch has been tested, they are then laser etched their individual serial numbers.

Seeing the process from start to finish was a total Greg Wallace moment Whoa!

A big thank you to Dave Garry and the team at DMM International what a day.

For the full range of DMM karabiners and associated items click here or contact us on 01373 475540.