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>This weekend, when I was at Beneath the Sea, I saw a pair of gloves in
>the DUI booth that were very interesting.  These were orange rubber
>gloves with latex seals, lined with Thinsulate inside.  Although
>they don't connect to your drysuit, they are dry inside.

They sound almost identical to Xerotech's so-called "Dry Gloves", that
have been on sale in the UK for several years. I bought a pair, because
I found my hands were losing feeling from cold.

When they worked they were great: my hands stayed warm and dry. Often,
however, they would flood and be no better than ordinary gloves. They
were a pain to put on (lots of talc). 

>How do they stand up to the environment (the environment
>in which I dive is full of jagged, metal edges)?

I wore mine on a 1 foot viz drift dive. Not a good idea. I had to hold a
hand out in front throughout the dive to avoid headbutting rocks, and
the drygloves didn't fare too well. I managed to patch them up using
Aquasure to make them waterproof again, but they were never quite the same.

The instructions stated that the drygloves would need to equalise below
about 20m, and suggested a length of fine-bore surgical tubing to link
the gloves to the drysuit (with the seals overlapping, to avoid leakage).
I never got this to work satisfactorily.

I found when I moved from a semi-dry to a drysuit, my numb hands problem
was largely solved. Nowadays I usually dive with gloves similar to gardening
gloves (albeit bright orange!).

In summary: I found drygloves more hassle than they were worth.

mike.
___________________________________________________________________________
Mike Salmon, Climatic Research Unit,   |
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK | SCUBA diving in the United Kingdom
m.salmon@ue*.ac*.uk*     +44-1603-592875 | http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ukdiving/

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