kavka
Guest
Did anyone try to make his own BC?
Home made BC?
- Thread starter kavka
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Bob3
Contributor
I used to use a 5 gallon pail inverted, does that count?
ut:
ut:Aardal
Contributor
Does two 5 gallon garbage bags count? You filled them with your reg when you needed a little more bouyancy.
To answer your question more specifically, I don't think anyone wants to hassle with trying to build their own set of wings. Too much work for saving a little bit of money.
To answer your question more specifically, I don't think anyone wants to hassle with trying to build their own set of wings. Too much work for saving a little bit of money.
boomx5
Contributor
I think I read somewhere on Scubaboard he made his own.
canuckdiver
Contributor
You won't find much info abou home-made or "custom" dive gear. there's a couple of sites that are dedicated to it, but on the whole, the diving community looks down on it and dosen't want to hear about it.
PM me for those site addresses
PM me for those site addresses
Early cave divers did. Some of the first were plastic jugs on a string.
Boomx5 was right, I have made my own BC. However, I would not recommend it to anyone right now. I did it at a time (late 1970's) when the BC as a concept was in its infancy. I wrote some articles, and tried to get people interested in the concepts of buoyancy compensation and the development of better BC's. By the way, one of the old books that has some of these do-it-yourself ideas published is `"dive the complete book of skin diving," by rick and barbara carrier (no, the lack of capitalization is purposeful, as that's how they did it).
I worked with a wet suit manufacturer, Bill Herder of Deep Sea Bill's on the Oregon Coast at South Beach, near Newport. He started building a bladder into the back of his wet suits. He and I discussed different designs, and he put together an inverted "U" into the wet suit back. His next step was a sandwidch of two pieces of neoprene for the whole back of the wet suit. Then he put together a vest of neoprene, that I demonstrated at the pool in San Diego for the participants of the Sixth International Conference on Underwater Education (IQ6)
But I was wanting a front-mounted BC that did everything I wanted done. At first, I simply experimented with different commercially-available configurations of inflatable life jackets. Then, I didn't like the harness design, so I patterned my own after a parachute harness. Then I designed the inflatable part, and put my own version of "wings" on it. I tried making this myself, and it promptly burst in the pool, but not before the concept was proven.
So I had a design, and needed to find a builder. I got a local company, Pack Trails, to make the outside, and a dive industry parts manufacturer for BCs to hand-make the bladder. I then had two made, and still have them today. I have been using them since they were built, in about 1984. I also have a patent, Patent # 4,623,3126, dated Nov. 18, 1986.
My wife and I, after numerous discussions, finally agreed not to try to commercialize it ourselves because of financial and personal liability risks. I approached several diving companies, and none would even try it. So I have two BCs that I spent about $5000 on, along with about four years of development, that I have never seen anything from.
I must say that today's BCs are a far cry from where I started out, and do the jobs they need to do. My one big gripe about them is that they are permanently mounted to the scuba, and one of my criterion was to have a BC I could very quickly and easily use for snorkel diving.
But I think that, even today, talking about making your own BC will cause a reaction. The photos I posted on the "Buoyancy" thread under "Basic Scuba" of the BC I developed have been removed. I will post it here and see if it stays this time.
What will I do with it now? I don't know. I have thought of using it with the PFD device to help handicapped individuals, but I approached some people here, and they lost one of my two prototypes. Mayby when I retire, I'll have some time to devote to it. And, there are other concept waiting to be developed too. So there are a lot of possibilities, if only I didn't have to work and make a living
SeaRat
I worked with a wet suit manufacturer, Bill Herder of Deep Sea Bill's on the Oregon Coast at South Beach, near Newport. He started building a bladder into the back of his wet suits. He and I discussed different designs, and he put together an inverted "U" into the wet suit back. His next step was a sandwidch of two pieces of neoprene for the whole back of the wet suit. Then he put together a vest of neoprene, that I demonstrated at the pool in San Diego for the participants of the Sixth International Conference on Underwater Education (IQ6)
But I was wanting a front-mounted BC that did everything I wanted done. At first, I simply experimented with different commercially-available configurations of inflatable life jackets. Then, I didn't like the harness design, so I patterned my own after a parachute harness. Then I designed the inflatable part, and put my own version of "wings" on it. I tried making this myself, and it promptly burst in the pool, but not before the concept was proven.
So I had a design, and needed to find a builder. I got a local company, Pack Trails, to make the outside, and a dive industry parts manufacturer for BCs to hand-make the bladder. I then had two made, and still have them today. I have been using them since they were built, in about 1984. I also have a patent, Patent # 4,623,3126, dated Nov. 18, 1986.
My wife and I, after numerous discussions, finally agreed not to try to commercialize it ourselves because of financial and personal liability risks. I approached several diving companies, and none would even try it. So I have two BCs that I spent about $5000 on, along with about four years of development, that I have never seen anything from.
I must say that today's BCs are a far cry from where I started out, and do the jobs they need to do. My one big gripe about them is that they are permanently mounted to the scuba, and one of my criterion was to have a BC I could very quickly and easily use for snorkel diving.
But I think that, even today, talking about making your own BC will cause a reaction. The photos I posted on the "Buoyancy" thread under "Basic Scuba" of the BC I developed have been removed. I will post it here and see if it stays this time.
What will I do with it now? I don't know. I have thought of using it with the PFD device to help handicapped individuals, but I approached some people here, and they lost one of my two prototypes. Mayby when I retire, I'll have some time to devote to it. And, there are other concept waiting to be developed too. So there are a lot of possibilities, if only I didn't have to work and make a living
SeaRat
