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All this talk about going weight beltless has motivated me to try it myself and make a P/V weight. That plus the fact last year my wife lost her weight belt because of wetsuit compression while doing a drift dive in a 2 knot current. I spotted her floating in the water column with her belt around her knees trying to maintain neutral buoyancy. I had to guide her to a rocky crevace and get her weight belt back in place all while fighting the current as she held on to the rocks so not to drift away from me. My wife was fine but, needles to say I beat myself to a snott in the 1-2 minutes it took to get everything sorted out. Over all I believe that weight belts are more of a liability, then diving without a weight belt and using a properly weighted rig. I took a look at the Trimix site and the directions on making P/V's, however, not all my question were answered. So............... I am planning on using a Coleman camping stove that uses camping fuel. Is this going to be good enough? Lead melts at relatively low temps but how do I know it is melted enough? Does it bubble and splatter all over the place, or is it just good and runny? I have some old lead that has a coating of orange paint on it. Should I scrape the paint of first or does it really matter? I am still in the process of DIR-ifying my gear and currently using twined AL80's with a manifold which are positively buoyant when close to empty. I have a home made aluminum backplate which does not add any real weight to the rig and a Viking rubber dry suit with 1/4" Thinsulite undies. Currently I have about 16 lbs on my belt and 4 lbs of ankle weights. So is there a generally accepted weight criteria for the P/V when diving a rig like the one mentioned above? (ie) The P had to be 5 lbs and the V has to be 7 lbs or something like that. From the web page it is not obvious if the V weight is connected to something or does it just go in between the tanks+bands and is held in place by the back plate? If the V is not connected to anything I assume it is trimmed to fit perfectly between the tanks+bands so not move around and make annoying noise. I plan on using an old cast iron skillet as my smelter. Is this a safe enough pot to use.? Being a frying pan type pot is it necessary to use a pot with higher sides? Is there a simple formula that will let me know how much weight to melt? (ie) Melt 10 lbs of lead to get a 5 lbs P weight, etc. Sorry for the long post, and thanx for any info, Paul -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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