Force Fin Designs

[Bob Evans]

Wasn't the first design a bit cumbersome to dive with ? The last picture reminds me of the Cousteau team's helmet with integrated dive light.

Funny how some people can have the same ideas, without knowing about it. Turns out their were many Patents on the Deep Water Desal project. Susanne and I came upon a big problem dealing with the depths we need to process. More on this later under my othe post. CHESS+EVANS LLC

 

[Bob Evans]

Another big leap took place but not with out the support of the Meistrell Family. At a point my cash flow went dry and Patent cost were adding up quickly.. But for now we were on the road to a final product.

 

[Bob Evans]

Wasn't the first design a bit cumbersome to dive with ? The last picture reminds me of the Cousteau team's helmet with integrated dive light.

JMBL, look what I just found. My Dad diving in the Redondo Beach Submarine Canyon. Here you can see the light we made together shinning on a Tube Worm.

 

[Bob Evans]

Bright yellow and looking more like a Force Fin. Another design innovation was the leading edges. Laying next to the upper portion of the fin blade. They helped bring the water flow direction into the low pressure area of the flapping wings. But after testing we made several changes to these leading edges.

 

[Bob Evans]

Jimmy Gray " Grey Ghost " laying out our next steps on shaping. We both did drawings of many of the major changes we made in fin designs. In side the 28 Anacapa Street, work shop. Early 1980's. We need a way to make this foot pocket come apart in tooling with out the hammer action and super glue to put pieces back together. Here is the begins a new chapter in Tooling.

 

[coldwaterlloyd]

It must of taken hundreds of man hours to do all this … very cool

 

[Bob Evans]

It must of taken hundreds of man hours to do all this … very cool

I have offten wondered how many hours spent with this fin project. You could look at around 9-10 hours 7 days a week for around 26 years.some time off. This is one reason I get so @#!%^^$# when I hear negative comments..but I am different now with so many happy customers and friends. I will be 70 next month, so don't let small things get me anymore...here is the Bondo Board and me mixing up Bondo for shaping. The red stuff is the agent that makes it all go off in about how much to add, so you learn real quickl. Hot Batch or slow rate. Gloves were my best friend and I used thousands of them, felt like a Doctor.

 

[Bob Evans]

Before we kick to far ahead, need to tell you about Laddie Handleman. Lad became my mentor at the time, while he was President of Oceaneering, having founded with several Commerical Diving friends. . I was at lost at the time with many persoanl issues. In 1980 we sat down for 5 hours working out my future. You can see the direction went towards Force Fin. I was smart to have him sign his notes for history. Here Laddie is working on a Abalone Reseeding project off San Nicolas Island. (copyright Bob Evans Designs Inc.)

 

[Bob Evans]

Once we had a Poly-Urethane Force Fin we could go to town with a big industrial grinder ( our PolyUrethane is 6 times more abrasive resiistance than steel ..really, we can saw other fins in half with in minutes. Did this for years at trade shows) to reshape as we water tested. We used a local hotel pool and just walked in with bathing suits, white towels and Force Fins and our 8mm underwater camera system. But one day we got caught, but was sure nice to test in clear warm water. Sterns Wharf was a bit cold and dark. These next photo's will show how we increased the split. I wanted to activate the flapping foil wing tips. At this time we were working a rapid pace being funded by the Meistrell Family. The son of Bob, Robbie was our biggest fan, along with Bill Jr....this story would take months, so I will pop them into the design story as we go along. We removed the leading edges since they were capturing air while surface swimming. My drawings of the changes made to reduce side leading edges...

 

[Bob Evans]

Adding to center V area really did the job, like a pack of horses running free once the gates were open. Not sure if I had solved the foot pocket molding issues..more on that subject later..Next Force Fin Plug and mold and another bright Yellow Force Fins. You can see the Body Glove Logo on the top of the mold..still using brass inserts and plenty of screws to hold mold together. PolyUrethane besides bing real hot in production is like motor oil and till the reaction takes places it can run out any possible way. Besides being super expensive you cannot make fins with molds that leak. You can see the drippings of colors we used on the outside of the mold.