I am trying to replace ankle seals for my DUI30/30. I don't which is the better way to seal with the old seal. From reading the forum and youtube, I can do one of the following:
1. cut the old seal at about 1" from the edge on the suit side. Then glue the new seal onto the old seal. This seems to be a more common way on youtube.
2. totally remove the old seal, and glue new seal onto the suit's fabric.
Which is a better way? If #2, how exactly do I completely remove the old seal? The old seals are the original seal from DUI, so there is aqua seal on the edge as well. It doesn't seem easy to remove the seal completely.
Thx,
#2 is better, #1 is "safer".
If your seal is original and from DUI, it will
almost certainly be easily removed by applying heat. A heat gun is best, a hair dryer will work too. If DUI has lined the edges of the seal w. Aquaseal, this is a legitimate problem. Aquaseal
does not react to heat. In fact, it doesn't react to
anything. It's one of those wonderful glues that, once cured, is pretty much permanent. Because you're new at this, I wouldn't mess w. the Aquaseal. I'd just leave 1" of old seal, glue your new seal onto that section and chalk it down as a good exercise.
Regarding why the glue "will almost certainly" come off with heat, the reason I say that is because
that's the magic of drysuit glue. You *could* buy a can of DAP Weldwood contact cement at any hardware store for $6.00 and use it as drysuit glue. It works just as well as any regular drysuit glue (the red Weldwood, not the less flammable green one). *BUT*, DAP Weldwood does not "unglue" when heated. And there are two
huge drawbacks to this:
1) With drysuit glue contact cement, if you apply your two pieces together and you accidentally screw it up and introduce a wrinkle or a bubble, all you have to do it heat it up slightly and "iron" out your mistake. If you really screw it up you can do it all over. But with something like DAP Weldwood contact cement, you're screwed. You get to start from square 1. Maybe even a little before square 1.
2) The other reason you use drysuit glue instead of DAP is so that when it does come time to replace your seals, all you have to do is heat up the seals again and off they come. Then you have a complete and perfect surface to which to glue your brand new seals.
This is why instead of going to our local hardware store, we go somewhere like DRIS and pay much more for actual
drysuit glue. Believe me, it's worth it.
I should note that *if* DUI used Aquaseal as the
only glue with which to attach the seals, you're pretty much stuck w. option #1. I hope for your sake that not what they did.
