So both sets of my titanium bucks are in the machine shop gettin modified.
Leaving me a bit anxious that the bat phone'll ring, and I'll have to footlock my next removal. Then I remembered sacrificing my oldest set of steel buck pole gaffs a few years ago on this round gaff project, getting the gaff angle too steep, pretty much ruining them, hanging them in the garage rafters as an expensive failure.
These old steel bucks with the hammer n pin replaceable gaffs are older than my tooltruck, 32 years, and were modified to take lower strap pressure off my left foot tendons going to my toes, following a horrendous motorcycle crash that severed those tendons.
A few years later after healing up, I cut the lower strap modification off the left gaff, pounded in some long tree gaffs, bought a new set steel buck pole gaffs, pretty much retiring the old set for use on thick barked conifers up in the mountains.
Having a set of the old hammer in pole gaffs gathering dust, I decided to attempt resurrecting my old 32 plus year old friends from their mutilated sleep in the rafters.
After considerable cutting, grinding and filing, I've managed to get them back to their original stock condition, at least pretty close anyway.
Many climbers like to razz me because I wear my lower gaff straps backwards, with the buckle end around my Achilles' tendon, rather than the top of my foot. I do so because that buckle puts pressure on the exact part of my left foot where all those severed tendons were sewn back together with permanent nylon sutures.
At any rate, should my bat phone ring in the next few days, my old friends and I are sharp n ready to rock.