Emery Magic and Pratic
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Pratic
The Pratic is an articulated eight that allows one to rig without
disconnecting the eight from the seat maillon. It uses an interesting
hinge and keylock design to accomplish this. The resulting descender
is bulkier than a standard eight.
I also dislike the thick painted finish, which inevitably would
rub off onto the rope.
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Magic
The Magic adds two ears to the Pratic. These ears give the
user something new to wrap the wrope around, but I'm not sure
exactly what this accomplishes in a practical sense. The instruction
manual shows eight figures that I've copied here. The following
comments are my own:
- The first figure shows the Magic rigged using the standard
single rope figure 8 rigging.
- The second figure shows it with the standard double figure
eight rigging.
- In the third figure, one rope is flipped over one of the
ears. This provides unequal tension in the two ropes.
- The fourth figure shows two ropes rigged to separate the
outgoing and ingoing strands. I see no need to do this, and I
don't like having the two ropes run against each other in opposite
directions.
- Number five shows a single rope rigged with an extra wrap
around one of the horns. This works povided the user is careful
to keep the wrap on the horn. It isn't difficult keeping the
wrap in place, but it isn't difficult to let it fall off either.
- Number six combines all the bad features of number 4 with
doubled horn use as in Figure 5. Read my comments for number
four once and nuumber five twice.
- Number 7: This is either a weak lockoff for light people
or a pseudo-Munter
hitch for extra friction: only you can decide by trial and
error.
- Number 8: Of course you can use the Magic (or any othedescender)
for lowering things. Our Australian friends, of course, use them
to ascend (from our perspective).
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