My drysuit neck seal, was finally getting to the point where no amount of Aquaseal could keep it alive any longer so I decided I would try replacing it myself instead of having the shop do it.
Dave at Ocean State Scuba was very helpful in telling me what I needed to know to do it, however, he didn't have any seals in stock so I went up to Giant Stride a relatively new shop in Warwick (by relatively new I mean it was the Scuba Depot, changed owners and became Epicenter Dive Shop, then changed owners again and now it is Giant Stride Dive Shop). The guy at the shop was incredibly helpful, to the point where he pulled out the forms he had made to mate the suit and seal smoothly to show me how to make my own. They had all the required stuff for me to do it in stock so I was ready to go home and make a huge mess with all sorts of glues and solvents!
By the way, let me just say, Giant Stride has the best laid out retail floor I have ever seen in a New England Dive Shop. The new owner, Red, has really taken that place up a few notches from its previous incarnations. He has a huge selection of gear in stock. For example, he has tanks of just about every size imaginable in stock, Worthington X7 80, X7 100, X7 120, X8 119, X8 130, good old AL80s, AL 63s, Pony and stage bottles from 19 all the way up 45 and for most of them he had more than one in stock. He had tech gear like manifolds and tank bands. He sells full backplate and wing systems and has pretty much every wing Dive Rite makes. Prices looked reasonable too. If you need something, he'll probably have it.
Anyway, back to my DIY project. I was successful, but it was a pain in the butt! Now that I have done it, I have to say that I'll probably just pay the shop to do it for me next time!
Step 1 is taking the old seal off. I was able to peel it free fairly easily. Dave suggested using a heat gun or hair dryer to soften the glue although he warned me you have to be careful not to get too hot or you can damage the suit. Luckily as it turned I was able to do it without heat so I didn't have to worry about that danger.
Step 2, prepping the surface. This is a HUGE pain, and is where most of the time is spent. Basically you have to remove all of the old glue from the suit and clean the surface. I accomplished this with a combination of sandpaper as well as some aggressive scrubbing with a Cotol 240 soaked cloth. Get the big can of Cotol you'll need quite a bit of this stuff, and it is nasty so I'd recommend gloves and some real good ventilation. The guy at Giant Stride also suggested using a dremel with a sanding disk, because the heat from the sanding disk causes the old glue to melt and come off in little balls. Sadly I didn't have a dremel so I had to do it by hand. You also want rough up the inside of the neck seal with sand paper and then clean it with Cotol.
The next part is more tricky. Mating the surfaces and gluing. There are a bunch of different ways I have been told to do this. The way I did it, which both Dave at OSS and the guy at Giant Stride suggested, was to make a circular disk that fits under the opening in the suit to keep it flat and even. Then you make another disk with a donut like hole in the middle for the seal itself. The donut ring sits on the part of the seal to be glued and mated to the suit. This lets you keep the two surfaces straight when you line them up and press them together to glue them. I used double sided tape to keep the suit and the seal stuck to the forms. Do a bunch of dry runs to make sure you get everything lined up properly before you do it with the glue for real because after that there is no turning back.
I'll admit, I made a bit of a mess during the gluing. You apply the contact cement to the surface, then press the two surfaces together using the forms described above. Of course, when you press them together the excess cement squirts out the edges, and I was a bit liberal in my use of contact cement, so now I had all these blobs of blobs glue oozing out all over the place.
I tried to clean the excess blobs off with a paper towel, but ended up smearing it around more than cleaning it off so really I just made a bigger mess. However, I did succeed in gluing the two parts together. After the cement dried Ihad to go back and clean up the mess from the excess.
Finally last step was to aquaseal around the inside of the seal where it joins to the edge of the suit to make doubly sure it doesn't ever leak. Project complete! All told I think it took me about 4 hours not counting the drying time.
Oh and one last piece of advice if you try this. Trim the neck seal before you glue it on. It is a lot easier than doing it after. Plus if you screw up at least you can just get a new seal without having to glue the whole thing again!
Dave at Ocean State Scuba was very helpful in telling me what I needed to know to do it, however, he didn't have any seals in stock so I went up to Giant Stride a relatively new shop in Warwick (by relatively new I mean it was the Scuba Depot, changed owners and became Epicenter Dive Shop, then changed owners again and now it is Giant Stride Dive Shop). The guy at the shop was incredibly helpful, to the point where he pulled out the forms he had made to mate the suit and seal smoothly to show me how to make my own. They had all the required stuff for me to do it in stock so I was ready to go home and make a huge mess with all sorts of glues and solvents!
By the way, let me just say, Giant Stride has the best laid out retail floor I have ever seen in a New England Dive Shop. The new owner, Red, has really taken that place up a few notches from its previous incarnations. He has a huge selection of gear in stock. For example, he has tanks of just about every size imaginable in stock, Worthington X7 80, X7 100, X7 120, X8 119, X8 130, good old AL80s, AL 63s, Pony and stage bottles from 19 all the way up 45 and for most of them he had more than one in stock. He had tech gear like manifolds and tank bands. He sells full backplate and wing systems and has pretty much every wing Dive Rite makes. Prices looked reasonable too. If you need something, he'll probably have it.
Anyway, back to my DIY project. I was successful, but it was a pain in the butt! Now that I have done it, I have to say that I'll probably just pay the shop to do it for me next time!
Step 1 is taking the old seal off. I was able to peel it free fairly easily. Dave suggested using a heat gun or hair dryer to soften the glue although he warned me you have to be careful not to get too hot or you can damage the suit. Luckily as it turned I was able to do it without heat so I didn't have to worry about that danger.
Step 2, prepping the surface. This is a HUGE pain, and is where most of the time is spent. Basically you have to remove all of the old glue from the suit and clean the surface. I accomplished this with a combination of sandpaper as well as some aggressive scrubbing with a Cotol 240 soaked cloth. Get the big can of Cotol you'll need quite a bit of this stuff, and it is nasty so I'd recommend gloves and some real good ventilation. The guy at Giant Stride also suggested using a dremel with a sanding disk, because the heat from the sanding disk causes the old glue to melt and come off in little balls. Sadly I didn't have a dremel so I had to do it by hand. You also want rough up the inside of the neck seal with sand paper and then clean it with Cotol.
The next part is more tricky. Mating the surfaces and gluing. There are a bunch of different ways I have been told to do this. The way I did it, which both Dave at OSS and the guy at Giant Stride suggested, was to make a circular disk that fits under the opening in the suit to keep it flat and even. Then you make another disk with a donut like hole in the middle for the seal itself. The donut ring sits on the part of the seal to be glued and mated to the suit. This lets you keep the two surfaces straight when you line them up and press them together to glue them. I used double sided tape to keep the suit and the seal stuck to the forms. Do a bunch of dry runs to make sure you get everything lined up properly before you do it with the glue for real because after that there is no turning back.
I'll admit, I made a bit of a mess during the gluing. You apply the contact cement to the surface, then press the two surfaces together using the forms described above. Of course, when you press them together the excess cement squirts out the edges, and I was a bit liberal in my use of contact cement, so now I had all these blobs of blobs glue oozing out all over the place.
I tried to clean the excess blobs off with a paper towel, but ended up smearing it around more than cleaning it off so really I just made a bigger mess. However, I did succeed in gluing the two parts together. After the cement dried Ihad to go back and clean up the mess from the excess.
Finally last step was to aquaseal around the inside of the seal where it joins to the edge of the suit to make doubly sure it doesn't ever leak. Project complete! All told I think it took me about 4 hours not counting the drying time.
Oh and one last piece of advice if you try this. Trim the neck seal before you glue it on. It is a lot easier than doing it after. Plus if you screw up at least you can just get a new seal without having to glue the whole thing again!
