Miller

Technical details:

I acquired my Miller rope grab on eBay from Cal Manky in 2007.

The Miller rope grab resembles a twisted, cast bronze Figure-8 descender, but it has a long flat arm sticking off to one side. Overall, the Miller is 250 mm tall, 156 mm wide, and 49 mm thick. Mine weighs 715 g. The large hole has a 59.7 mm. i.d. There is a 550 mm. length of 11 mm. manila rope spliced to the large hole, with a snap hook spliced at the other end. The small hole of the "8" is D-shaped, 20.5 mm. along the straight side of the "D", and 25.5 mm. perpendicular to this. The end of the flat bar is bent upward about 25°, and has a 13.8 mm hole drilled near the end.

One side of the large hole has "MILLER EQUIPMENT CO, INC." and "FRANKLIN, PENNA." in raised letters. The other side has "MILLER ROPE GRAB - CAT NO. 1200" and "PAT. PENDING,: also in raised letters.

Comments:

Well, this is an interesting piece, and although I can see a few ways that it might be used, I'm really not sure how the designer intended it to be used. At first glance, it isn't even obvious that this is a rope grab. Cal Manky thought it was, in his words,"a type of early rappelling device, as near as I can tell," but the words on the device clearly state that it is a rope grab. This is unfortunate, since if it was a Figure-8 descender, it might be almost as old as the earliest Figure-8 that I know of, the 1963 Fisher Version A.

I suspect that this rope grab dates from about 1964 for two reasons. First, it came with a Miller Equipment Company of Canada safety belt with serial number 6/64 - which might be a date. That belt had a metal ring with "MILLER EQUIPMENT CO, INC." and "FRANKLIN, PENNA." in raised letters. Obviously the belt and rope grab went together. Second, Description 197,382 filed with the U.S. Patent Office on January 21, 1964 shows this device. Unfortunately, there is no indication in the description of how one uses this device.