Front View	Rear View	Side View

Front View: Open for Rigging	Rear View: Open for Rigging

Technical Details

I acquired this bobbin from Vladimir Kisseljov and Ilia Alexandrov at the 1994 Old Timer’s Reunion.

This bobbin is 195 mm. tall, 45 mm. wide, 32 mm. thick, and weighs 353 g.

This bobbin is essentially a copy of the Petzl bobbins, but features a spring wire gate. The disc that the spring is attached to is slotted so that it straddles the frame It is held in place by the ends of the wire spring.

The main bollards are turned from aluminum and appear to be well-made. The bolt for the top one is off-center, and there is a second tapped hole so that the upper bollard can be reversed when worn. The lower bollard bolt is centered, so this one can be reversed also. The bolts are about 1.5 mm. too short to extend completely through the nuts. The top post is stainless steel. It fits through a stainless steel washer on the back side of the frame and is staked in place.

The pivoting plate has the Cascade logo (a stylized script Д).

Comments

I feel that the spring wire gate works better than the stamped gates on my Petzl bobbins. The finish is a bit crude, but from a functional standpoint, this bobbin is fine.

I have a similar stop bobbin with the same logo. I asked Артём Бабин if he knew who the manufacturer was, and on January 11, 2021, I received the following reply:

Hello, Gary! I found out whose logo it was. I was prompted by Andrey Ponkratov, director of the company Orion-Alp, in general, this equipment was produced in the mid-90s by Mikhail Dyakin [Михаил Дякин], a speleologist from Moscow, a programmer by profession. He released only 3 things, 2 of them you have and still produced a copy of Petzl Shunt.

Артём met Михаил Дякин in September 2021, and provided this additional information:

Hello, Gary! Today I met Mikhail Dyakin, he is alive and well, now retired and lives outside the city [Moscow], we agreed to meet in October, there will be an interview, I will ask him about his equipment….

Dyakin’s firm was called Cascade (Каскад).