Best 2" webbing waist mountable knife for cutting webbing

[happy-diver]

 

[Daniel M. Thomas]

Paranoia I can certainly understand. And given this is SB you may want to delete that last post cause likely several will jump in how you should either be able to swim up your rig or be able to reach a valve to open it if closed, not to mention the wisdom of no ditchable weight.

As to your concern, I assume you have used a DIR style harness for your backplate? Even so you should be able to ditch the rig simply by releasing the waist buckle.

FWIW I put a quick release on my harness to ease donning and doffing because of shoulder issues. Then changed the harness completely with added T sliders and will never go back.

Yes its a DIR style harness, I already have the Agir brok adjustable harness things, never saw the T slider's until i just googled it and found the 'subgravity harness slider 2.0', the plastic t sliders actually look like a better idea as they won't dig into your back. Might have to check them out.

What brand of T sliders do you have? I have only found a youtube video showing a plastic set that i just mentioned, no option to purchase from anywhere.

Never looked into quick releases either, i'm going to do that now. What brand/style do you use? i thought they were frowned upon in the direction i am going with my rig as it adds another failure point, although i may be wrong? I'm still a DIR newbie.

 

[Daniel M. Thomas]

Maybe i'm being too cautious and should just go for a genuine trilobite, and practice getting in and out of my rig.

Ahhh decisions decisions.

I really like the idea of the cold water diverite Z knife because it has an easy-to-grab handle, more so than the trilobite, but i don't want the huge bulk of it to be an annoyance.

I think some experimenting is in order.

 

[Daniel M. Thomas]

This is what i have on my harness right now

 

[Daniel M. Thomas]

And this is what i'm now considering "upgrading" to.

 

[johndiver999]

This is what i have on my harness right now

Well than, it sounds to me like your priorities are skewed. If you have sliders on the harness, you should be able to pop out of the rig in seconds, and if you can't now, you can practice without chopping up a bunch of belt. You should be able to get out much faster than accessing a cutting tool and then cutting.

Also, if you are trying to be safe, placing all your lead on the plate and making it unditchable is counterproductive, if you know you can not swim the rig up. You would probably be a lot safer with 6 or 10 lbs of lead on a weightbelt.

 

[Daniel M. Thomas]

Iv'e just bought the plastic sliders i linked below, i think the difference is (other than the possibility they could be felt on your back) that the harness can be moved easily in any position, with the metal type i have currently it requires you to pull the webbing downwards to adjust it, which makes it kind of awkward. It's something you wouldn't know about unless you use one and try it and realize the harness gets stuck in place and isn't quickly/easily adjustable.

The video of the subgravity plastic harness makes it appear to look a lot easier to adjust.

 

[Daniel M. Thomas]

Well than, it sounds to me like your priorities are skewed. If you have sliders on the harness, you should be able to pop out of the rig in seconds, and if you can't now, you can practice without chopping up a bunch of belt. You should be able to get out much faster than accessing a cutting tool and then cutting.

Also, if you are trying to be safe, placing all your lead on the plate and making it unditchable is counterproductive, if you know you can not swim the rig up. You would probably be a lot safer with 6 or 10 lbs of lead on a weightbelt.

I don't plan to ever get in a situation where i would need to ditch my weights, but as we all know sometimes things can happen unexpectedly. The reason why i have opted to put all my weight on the backplate is because 1, i dont plan on ditching it, but mostly because i find wearing a weight belt uncomfortable and cumbersome. It's much nicer having it all in one neat package.

I'm going to install these new plastic sliders and have more of a play around getting in and out of my new harness, iv'e only done 1 dive on my new BP/W system, and it was only for about 30 mins.

I don't know enough about the release systems on the market to know if they are a good idea, or not.

 

[uncfnp]

Quick releases on backplate harnesses are certainly not the norm but conforming is not in my nature but they are certainly not for everyone. I just used the standard plastic quick releases availability most everywhere.

The T sliders I used are a bit different and completely change the routing of the harness significantly enlarging the shoulder area.

2

If you are using sliders that allow the webbing to reposition I wonder if that might be part of the problem and allowing your webbing to tighten when it’s not wanted.

BTW. I am not suggesting my harness modifications as a solution to your concern. Just things I have done to aid donning and doffing that have worked for me.

 

[lowwall]

How about putting some of that weight in trim or dump pockets on the harness weight belt? I can easily pull out the weights from my trim pockets and dump them if I need too. The rest of the rig is still negative, but I can swim it up.

Alternatives or additions to the above are:

- practice getting out of the harness underwater by undoing the waist buckle instead of cutting your webbing

- carry a medium to large DSMB that's already attached to a spool and practice quickly deploying it and using it as a secondary source of buoyancy