A different dry suit - don't shoot me

[PhatD1ver]

Oh, I am going to have a little fun with this...

before you mock, this is a Chinese dry suit, and the guy I talked to claims that they actually DIVE in these things... in their regular clothing (stocking feet of course), and they go down to 10 meters in some places. It's airless, so only some ambient bouyancy, and it won't provide much insulation... but it might be cool to try out...

Now I recognize if it leaks, I'm water logged, that's what a good dive knife can resolve...

But has anyone ever seen one of these?

I've been talking with a tec diving instructor at our LDS, and he says we could have a go in the pool, and walk to the deep end from the shallow end... if the test drive works, then we could play with it a little on a local trip...

Now you can shoot me, but be gentle.

 

[buddhasummer]

Taking aim...

(I'm joking by the way)

 

[David Wilson]

As a vintage equipment snorkeller (I started in the late 1950s) using a vintage-style Hydroglove drysuit to keep dry and warm in the cold North Sea, I'd be interested in knowing how the Chinese suit works in practice. I've seen such suits on the Chinese online shopping site Taobao, where there are two basic styles, one with attached rubber boots as in your image, another, pictured below with soft feet, allowing fins to be worn:

The suits have the virtue of being inexpensive, priced around $30-$60. They come with wrist and neck seals. Like the Aquala Front Entry and the Healthways Carib of the 1950s, the suits are chest-entry, access being made through extra thinner material that is bunched together and sealed with a length of surgical tubing after the suit has been fully donned. How watertight the chest entry is will depend on the dresser's skill. In the 1950s, a metal clamp was often used to effect a fully watertight seal.

I'd advise caution before submerging in such suits. If you are going ahead with it, try the suit out on the surface until you feel very comfortable using it. As there are no valves, you vent the suit by raising each arm in turn and expanding the wrist seal a little to release the air inside the suit.

Finally, you might consider reposting your message in Scubaboard's vintage diving forum, where you are likely to receive a measured response to your enquiry. I imagine that most people visiting Scubaboard's Exposure Suits forum will never have dived with a vintage drysuit and therefore will feel tempted to ridicule anything they haven't tried. To quote the great 1960s anthem "The times they are a-changing", I'd say to the sceptics "Don't criticize what you don't understand" but I'd also urge you to proceed with caution.

By the way, here's another image of Chinese divers wearing such suits:

 

[kwinter]

It's funny that you mentioned Hydroglove. I've had their site bookmarked for years as a cheap alternative to try at times (like now) when all of my drysuits are in need of attention. I never pulled the trigger on a purchase, but I'm thinking about it now.


Please pardon any typos. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[PhatD1ver]

Right, the pic of the Chinese divers is actually current. Most of these suits get used by two types of people... the pearl farmers and fishermen.

Pearl farmers generally use very inexpensive scuba gear, and as I mentioned wear their regular clothing under the 'glove' suit. They only go down to about 2 or 3 meters in their 'fields' to harvest. I've watched them surface and remove the suit, pretty amazing to see a guy in street clothes step out and put his shoes back on dry as a bone....

Fishermen use these like waders, but they use inner tubes as their floatation devices, and I've seen them in ponds, along coastal areas, and even on some open water (lakes and even in a river)... I've seen these guys get ready and go in, and the way they tie up the front is pretty interesting, in fact, one thing I notice looking at a USIA drysuit is that they could actually improve their sealing by doing a flat roll and putting a clip belt in the first fold (then it would be buried under 3-4 folds) and then wrap around and clasp on the side...

Like I say, we are going to play with this in the pool for fun, and if it works, we'll take it to the Philippines for a local shore dive to see how it works... won't keep you warm, but we are talking about using it for exposure, not warmth at this point...

 

[Akimbo]

Looks like a tan color version of the Aquala gut-entry drysuit from the 1960s. They sucked then too.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ge...ions/356091-green-scuba-gear.html#post5529701

 

[David Wilson]

Right, the pic of the Chinese divers is actually current. Most of these suits get used by two types of people... the pearl farmers and fishermen.

Thanks for putting the suit into context, PhatD1ver.

Pearl farmers generally use very inexpensive scuba gear, and as I mentioned wear their regular clothing under the 'glove' suit. They only go down to about 2 or 3 meters in their 'fields' to harvest. I've watched them surface and remove the suit, pretty amazing to see a guy in street clothes step out and put his shoes back on dry as a bone....

Fascinating detail and reminiscent too of that scene in "Goldfinger" where James Bond emerges from his drysuit wearing a tuxedo!

Fishermen use these like waders, but they use inner tubes as their floatation devices, and I've seen them in ponds, along coastal areas, and even on some open water (lakes and even in a river)... I've seen these guys get ready and go in, and the way they tie up the front is pretty interesting, in fact, one thing I notice looking at a USIA drysuit is that they could actually improve their sealing by doing a flat roll and putting a clip belt in the first fold (then it would be buried under 3-4 folds) and then wrap around and clasp on the side...

If you read accounts of the pioneer days of scuba, there was much improvising back then too with whatever was available. Suit manufacturers in those days would also stress the multiple uses of their products, saying that they could be deployed by dinghy sailors, water skiers and fishermen as well as divers. Amazing to hear about the skill involved in tying up the suit chest seal to ensure watertightness.

Like I say, we are going to play with this in the pool for fun, and if it works, we'll take it to the Philippines for a local shore dive to see how it works... won't keep you warm, but we are talking about using it for exposure, not warmth at this point...

Please let us know how you get on. As diving becomes more and more technologically sophisticated nowadays here in the West, it's important not to lose all touch with the equipment and practices of traditional divers elsewhere who still have much to teach us.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I was going to mention Gold Finger and James Bond in a tux. But instead, thought I would show you that some of us have actually used these suits. I had an Aquala dry suit in the 1970s into the 1980s, and dove it a number of times.

No, I did not get a dry suit squeeze, as air could be put into the suit in two different ways. The first is to put the skirt of your mask (without a purge valve) under the hood's rubber seal, and snort air from the mask into the hood. This was done for many years with dry suits such as Cousteau's Constant Volume Dry Suit. With that suit, the mask was an integral part of the suit, and simply exhaling through the nose filled the suit with air, much easier than my initial method with the mask under the hood's face seal. The second method was the addition of a power inflator, which the on the suit in the Clear Lake photo. You still had to be aware of too much air, and it being trapped in the legs for an unspectacular swimming upside down ascent to the surface, but if you got it right, you could be very balanced buoyancy-wise in the water.

While I was never able to get this suit watertight, even so wearing a farmer John bottoms and sweater I was warmer than with my pullover 1/4 inch wet suit (hood attached). It is interesting that these suits are still around, and being made in China. David Wilson in the post above owns several, and uses them currently (from what I understand) for snorkeling.

SeaRat

 

[Sbiriguda]

I am curious about this kind of object. Are they seamless? Perhaps made with better materials they could even be good, especially if used with some kind of undergarments

 

[David Wilson]

I am curious about this kind of object. Are they seamless? Perhaps made with better materials they could even be good, especially if used with some kind of undergarments

As the image above shows, this drysuit is "calendered", i.e. assembled from pieces of material cut out then glued and taped together. So the finished product comes with seams.

By way of contrast, a seamless drysuit is "dipped", i.e. fabricated by immersing a metal "former", or mould, in a liquid medium and coating it with multiple layers of the material. The images below show formers for manufacturing diving suit pants and hoods at a US factory using the dipping method during the late 1950s: