FAQ | What is normal versus evidence of tampering?

[Cannon]

We have been asked many times if there are ways to tell if a gripper was tampered. I think the community in general would benefit from this information. The bottom line is there are things you can look for, but many concerns people have are actually normal details. And even if you know what to look for, you are not likely going to see the evidence on video. You really need to have the gripper in hand and maybe be allowed to take it apart or take measurements in a rating device.  

Worth sticking around for. 

When we were developing Standard grippers, Tom and I struggled to find a suitable glue. It was pretty clear that the industry standard was a thick 2-part epoxy. And we knew there had to be some that worked well because EVERYONE glues their handles. The problem we encountered was that once you put the thick epoxy down in the gripper handle, it is almost impossible to push the spring in the hole. The glue immediately creates a vacuum inside the handle and acts like a tire pump. So we realized we either had to oversize the handle holes so that air can "burp" out past the spring during assembly, or we could find thinner glue. We decided to find thinner glue and settled on cyanoacrylate. That is called CA glue for short, or more commonly "super glue." There are thousands of types and different blends and we used methyl-based cyanoacrylate from Permabond. It was expensive and meant for metal-to-metal bonding. 

 

Mind the gap.

 

Two things I know about IronMind's gluing strategy just from observation are that they use a thick epoxy and also oversize the handle holes so that assembly will go easier with less mess. When the thick epoxy burps out the top of the handle it can get everywhere. On the spring, on the handle, everywhere. Ideally you just want no mess and no clean-up so they seem to generously oversize the handle holes. I have attached some pictures which show the resulting normal gaps visible at the top of the spring. I tried to find extreme examples and usually the spring is centered a little better. This gap is totally normal and common on factory-made untampered grippers. 

 

 

 

 

Glue mess is a sticky subject.

 

It's hard to work with glue. It's messy, hard to clean up, gets on everything and in a production application you want it to tack up fast. So it's not surprising that some grippers will have a small amount of glue mess. It's unavoidable.  Sometimes it is just a dot of dried epoxy. More commonly there is a ring of epoxy visible at the top of the handle hole where overfill squished up. The squish can be a little worse than in these photos, but not much. The worst ones I've seen are still a donut of cream-colored epoxy in a ring right around the spring at the top of the handle. Visible glue is totally normal and common.  

 

 

It's not easy being clean. 

 

As I mentioned earlier, we glued Standard grippers with thin CA glue. Early on, Tom was not very good at this. I don't have a lot of 1st gen grippers around anymore, but found a Tungsten with a small amount of CA glue mess. It dries white and dusty-looking almost like a powder that won't wipe off, or as a clear smear if the quantity is higher. If you did a very bad job of gluing with super glue... the mess might look like chalk and oil on the spring leg. An amateur assembler will almost always push the handle too far and then have to back it off which leaves a glaze of glue on the spring. CA glue is runny like water and gets away quick. Unlike epoxy which will just defy gravity and sit in place. 

 

 

 

Stick to the facts.

 

If an IronMind or GHP gripper had CA glue mess, that would be out of place. The problem with using this as evidence for tampering is that it will be indistinguishable from chalk and probably impossible to distinguish from the right glue on video. There is just no way to check for this unless you have the gripper in hand. Anything less would be totally irresponsible to pass judgment. No matter the glue type or amount of mess, you are not likely going to be able to identify tampering via glue mess from a video. 

 

It's actually kind of hard to get gripper handles to be even. There are a few ways to do it, but if you're an amateur saboteur this is a likely place to misstep. It would be irresponsible to point to uneven handles as proof of tampering. But it is hard to get handles perfectly even and it is uncommon for handles to come uneven from the factory. For example, if CPW happens to notice handles that are uneven then we will set the gripper aside and sell it in the used section where we can denote the uneven mount.  

 

Remounting handles also is not good bang for your buck if you're trying to make a gripper easier.  

 

Burning questions. 

 

It is possible to ruin a gripper by heating the spring. We are not experts in metallurgy, but my understanding is that springs are tempered during manufacturing. They are heated to a low temp and then cooled quickly. The process of annealing is different because the heat is higher and the metal is allowed to cool slowly. Annealing a spring will ruin it and effectively make it "not a spring" anymore. Outwardly, the appearance might not change.

 

Requests to have someone touch a spring to prove it's not hot display a fundamental misunderstanding of this issue. There is no need for the spring to currently be hot. And aluminum is a fantastic conductor and the handles are going to be just as hot as the spring which goes down through the center. If a spring was torched it would be done some other time and allowed to cool, not just before hitting record on a video.

 

Probably the only indicator of a torched spring will be a drastically different spread before and after. Most grippers, especially those from China, will lose some spread on the very first close. This can be up to a centimeter. (Ratings should be taken after this loss in spread.) A heated spring is going to loose more than that. It's quite easy to pull the spring open to a normal width. You can do this with your hands even on a heavy gripper. But the next time it's closed it will lose a LOT of spread. Most normal grippers if they have been closed even once should not lose any spread during normal use. They will over time, but not measurably on any single close. 

 

If the torching was "well done" then possibly the only indication would be that the gripper is slightly narrow. But of course many grippers are narrow anyway. It would be irresponsible to decide a gripper was tampered just because it was narrow. The best defense against a heated spring claim would be to measure the spread before and after. The measurement really should be the same or VERY close unless it was literally the first close. 

 

Bond. Community Bond. 

 

Tampering accusations from video evidence will always be shaky ground. The goal of this post was to talk about details which should be considered normal. If you're looking for evidence of tampering in a video, I would say you're wasting your time. A good fake will be impossible to detect. You will learn more by talking to people, asking about their training, considering their other lifts and certifications, and appraising their contributions to the community as a whole.