With advance apologies to @Eric Sedletzky and all of the FP minimalist purists ... I do really love the FP as art.
Background:
Eric put up a few spec-built, thin, stainless, bare (no rails and wedges weren't out yet) FP Contours and I thought that would be great for a travel rig so I snagged one.
I can't help myself, I'm a tweaker
- wait, that might be a poor choice of words.I see everything as raw material waiting to be bent towards my will .... hmmmm, not much better.
I like to customize stuff.
(that seems safe enough).Scope: I want my rig to be able to be configured for everything from a shallow, leisurely, daytime drift dive in a rashguard to a deep, night, black-water, (limited) wreck penetration dive in a drysuit while slinging a couple bottles. (OK maybe not night and wreck penetration at the same time).
Goals:
- Adjustable plate weighting that can be reconfigured toollessly, on the fly, on a dive boat for trim and total weight.
- Add a tank spacer/stabilizer at the bottom of the plate for clearance and to prevent wobble when using un-self-stabilizing wings.
- provide for attachment points for DSMBs, reels, lift bags, buttplates, etc.
Here we go in pictures (note the actual work was done a while back, I did a teardown today to clean some things up and mount a new wing so, pictures):
All stainless hardware. Washers are stainless over EPDM. Nuts are Nylock. Weld nuts w/ ground wrench flats. Not shown in this picture - Wing bolts (upper shortened) and Tinnerman type press retainer washers for same.
I rigged up a jig to mount the FP on my CNC mill and cut some squares out for carriage bolts then filed the corners and wire-brushed it smooth. (Note to self: use a stainless wire wheel from the start, knucklehead
) TaaaDaaa ...12 Carriage bolt holes around the periphery."Free" wedge/stabilizer using an old plastic weight belt buckle (note retaining washer and slightly relieved areas for grommet clearance):
Detail of captive, shortened upper carriage bolt and retaining washer. You can't see it here, but the carriage-bolt square-shoulder had to be thinned to get the bolt fully seated AND the retainer all of the way down since this is a thin/LW plate.
For the weighting pouches, I used the inexpensive ones from DGX (thin with velcro closures), mounted on super-stiff webbing, and positioned with slightly oversized tri-glides.
Here I show the webbing with tri-glides mocked-up on the plate for easier viewing:
Pouches mounted on the webbing strips:
Here is the plate with everything mounted up but the wing (that is a lift bag in a ouch, mounted with split-rings)
Detail of upper wing bolt with wing retained by the inverted weld-nut - super low profile:
I use an H-harnness with QD shoulder straps. The waist belt is split and has a QD attachment to the plate so I can move it back and forth with my doubles plate. D-Ring and connection detail below (tails are dressed back through the inner slot of the plate - see above):
