Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
I am sorry if I sound silly or antiquated, but are there still many or any divers out there who make their own diving suits (wet or dry)? I started diving in the late 1960's, and in the club I joined, suit-making sessions were routine; the club got neoprene sheet (double-skin, unlined) in bulk, and they spread it out on the diving clubhouse floor and with advice from the club's experts cut out and taped and made their own wetsuits. The diving centre in Swanage in Dorset (UK) that I mentioned before: in the late 1960's I had a diving course there one year (including a dive on surface demand (an aqualung regulator fed from the surface) bottom-walking with `a lot too much' waist weight, and ankle weights instead of fins.) They also made their own wetsuits; the suits that they let visitors use got so battered after a season's use that next winter they cut them up for unworn parts to make hoods and bootees for next year's wetsuits. I read in one of Cousteau's books that once the men sprayed each other with layers of some sort of rubber solution until the layers built up enough; then they cut and peeled it off themselves, inserted zips etc, result was perfectly fitting wetsuits! My first wetsuit was double-skin unlined, and it got very patched over many dives, including a long horizontal rip across the fronts of the hip joints and the groin. Finally I sold it to a fellow club member, who cut its arms and legs off and used it as an undersuit. My second wetsuit had nylon towelling lining. It came as two-piece, and I suffered so much from cold water flushing in and out at the waist where the towelling inside of the body refused to make a watertight seal against the outside of the trousers, that I converted it to single-piece. What is other techdiver members' experience of that nuisance with two-piece wetsuits? (I also needed a bit less weight after that conversion.) My third (present) wetsuit is made-to-fit, and I ordered it as one-piece. But the bootees that came with it are so heavily hobnailed that I can't get my fins on over them, and I used the bootees of my second suit. My second suit suffered badly from cold water pumping in and out of a hollow that developed in each armpit when I moved the arm out sideways and the rubber took the straight route across well below the hollow of the armpit; I soon learned to keep my arms against my sides when possible while diving. Finally I put the suit on indoors, cut it across each armpit, raised that arm, and measured the resulting hole at maximum stretch. Then I took the suit off and filled the holes with pieces of rubber that size cannibalized from the rubber that I had cut from the top of the trousers as I converted it to single-piece. I used oxygen rebreathers a few times; I found that with the bag in the UK naval position on the chest its movements kept pumping cold water through my wetsuit. That is one time to prefer a drysuit. Although I have used a wetsuit for most of my dives, even with an inch of ice on the water.
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]