Sometimes the most unlikely things can be incredibly sexy. My collection of tent pegs has been looking rather sorry for some time now so I decided to buy a few more and went for a pack of Alpkit's titanium V-pegs AKA Tikes:
http://www.alpkit.com/shop/cart.php?target=product&product_id=16259&category_id=253
I must have got one of the last sets as they appear to be out of stock now (lucky me) but hopefully they'll have them back in again soon.
As usual, the service from Alpkit was perfect with the pegs arriving less that two days after I placed the order. Very well packaged and including the usual hand-written note thanking me for my order. Not bad when you consider they don't charge for P&P. Some cynics might say it's included in the price but Alpkit's pricing is so keen I would disagree - Black sell the same pegs in packs of 4 for only a quid less than the 10-pack from Alpkit.
As to the pegs themselves, well the first thing that struck me was the weight of the things, or rather the lack of it. Hard to describe and I'm not good at visualising small weights, such as the 13g per peg these things supposedly weigh, but held in the hand they feel almost weightless even with the handy piece of red cord added to aid removal and visibility.
They also appear to be incredibly strong despite the light weight and refused to give under fair pressure from attempted hand bending. As an extreme test I decided to see how they would fair being hammered into a piece of wood, something I have never felt inclined to do with any other peg. I've got a small pile of recently-cut logs from a holly bush lying around so selected one of them for the purpose. The log turned out to be a pretty tough candidate and I had to swap my rubber mallet for a metal hammer due to lack of progress. I eventually managed to hammer the tike about 1.5 cm into the log and to be fair to the tike I gave up before it did. It did start to bend slightly at the tying notch but by that point I really was giving it welly trying to get it deeper into the log. There's no way I would ever have to subject a peg to this level of stress in proper usage so I consider it stronger than I'm ever likely to need - more than I can say for the various now-bent-out-of shape steel and aluminum pegs that I've used until now.
http://www.alpkit.com/shop/cart.php?target=product&product_id=16259&category_id=253
I must have got one of the last sets as they appear to be out of stock now (lucky me) but hopefully they'll have them back in again soon.
As usual, the service from Alpkit was perfect with the pegs arriving less that two days after I placed the order. Very well packaged and including the usual hand-written note thanking me for my order. Not bad when you consider they don't charge for P&P. Some cynics might say it's included in the price but Alpkit's pricing is so keen I would disagree - Black sell the same pegs in packs of 4 for only a quid less than the 10-pack from Alpkit.
As to the pegs themselves, well the first thing that struck me was the weight of the things, or rather the lack of it. Hard to describe and I'm not good at visualising small weights, such as the 13g per peg these things supposedly weigh, but held in the hand they feel almost weightless even with the handy piece of red cord added to aid removal and visibility.
They also appear to be incredibly strong despite the light weight and refused to give under fair pressure from attempted hand bending. As an extreme test I decided to see how they would fair being hammered into a piece of wood, something I have never felt inclined to do with any other peg. I've got a small pile of recently-cut logs from a holly bush lying around so selected one of them for the purpose. The log turned out to be a pretty tough candidate and I had to swap my rubber mallet for a metal hammer due to lack of progress. I eventually managed to hammer the tike about 1.5 cm into the log and to be fair to the tike I gave up before it did. It did start to bend slightly at the tying notch but by that point I really was giving it welly trying to get it deeper into the log. There's no way I would ever have to subject a peg to this level of stress in proper usage so I consider it stronger than I'm ever likely to need - more than I can say for the various now-bent-out-of shape steel and aluminum pegs that I've used until now.
