Since we are talking about a piece of (relative) safety equipment, the question you pose a difficult to answer. There is the absolute "will it work?" (ie: assume Wild Country was conservative in its rope tolerances and the 8.3 is a go), and there is the "it kind of works" (ie: it will take a bite of rope but there is little to no camming action taking place).

The bottom line is this, 0.2 mm is very small, and this great hidden gen of hardware could likely be a great addition to your kit. So, I wouldn't be afraid to buy one here on BackCountry, and check it out at home or at the gym where you can safely test it out. Heads up though, DO NOT load it with any substantial weight before checking out the next paragraph

The FIRST thing you want to make DAMN sure of is that there is that the cam is sufficiently displaced so that when you place a load on the rope man that the cam is in place because of the pinching force on the rope and not because the cam lobe has hit the stops. This is critical because you don't want to be climbing your rope with just the little teeth. That would be, one, horribly unsafe and, two, probably destroy the rope.

When used properly, in my experience with it, this device does not shred the rope at all, and is safe.

I hope that answers your question enough. I can only testify for as low as 9.8mm with this device, but if you look for the things I mentioned, and everything checks out, you could be the proud owner of a Ropeman MkII. If you find that this device does work for you, I almost guarantee you will buy two.

Climb On.

It will *probably* work. Each rope is built a little differently and depending on the core:sheath ratio, the amount that it compresses will vary. Chances are you're fine, but I would test it, and if it doesn't work, there is always backcountry.com's awesome 100% return policy!

no, absolutely not. in fact when ropes are wet they swell up and can actually add more friction to ascenders and descenders

yes

yes

These are much better than the tibloc for this situation. The tibloc will just tear up your rope and may not catch. This being spring loaded means it may have a little more drag but it will catch the rope. These are not as light either but they are not bad and are very small.

I have only used the tibloc. The way this thing looks though makes me think there is a spring involved? If there is then i wouldn't work as well. Not sure though. Don't know if this helped?!

You don't really need it, but if you're going to be ascending a lot it'll probably help.

Prevents locking mechanism from flipping over and load freewheeling down to earth.

It is actually just a back up so you don't drop it while trying to put it on the rope. The Ti-bloc by petzl has the same thing, but you have to tie your own cord into it.

It clips into the carabiner so that the locking cam can't come completely open and drop the rope when you slide it up.

The Mark 1 DOES shred your rope's sheath. I use it to set up long slacklines and on 11 mil rope it barely fits and shreds the sheath. Though this is with a 2-1 multiplier and me pulling as hard as I can. I don't own the Mark 2 but other people use it with success.

None at all, it pinches rather than digging in with little teeth like other ascenders. Theoretically, the camming action means that rope failure would come before slippage, but either way there is no way to generate enough force to cause either slippage or rope failure while ascending. DON'T try to use it as a belay device, that's where the danger would come in. And as long as you stay within the specified rope diameters, the rope you use shouldn't make a difference.

The axle strength is listed on Wild Country's website at 15kn (3,360 pounds of force)

It would work for that purpose, definitely. If you need to do a lot of jugging, you'll be much happier with a more burly ascender. But if you're just climbing a rope here and there, this thing will do the trick.