Of bungee mounts and bayonet rings...

[g1138]

Is the bungee instruments too tight because of pressure points from the knots?
You may be able to reverse where the knots are so you don't feel any pressure. Then all you have to worry about is how stretched your bungee is and find a middle ground for when you're packing thick exposure and thin exposure.

Just my two cents.
I have a wrist slate which I used bungee for.
It turned out to be real tight to the point where the bungee knots holding the 3 pages together created painful pressure points.
So I reversed the knots so they were topside and it fixed the problem.

Additionally you could just resort to having two sets of loops which you could untie and retie tediously.
Or you could get two mounts dedicated to warm and cold diving.
It's not like your going to do a warm dive one day followed by a cold dive the next?

 

[kanonfodr]

Or you could get two mounts dedicated to warm and cold diving.
It's not like your going to do a warm dive one day followed by a cold dive the next?

No, but it's entirely possible to go wetsuit-drysuit-wetsuit on a long weekend or trip, depending on anticipated dive times. Anything around an hour or less here and I just wear my 4/3, if it's planned over 75 minutes or going deeper than 60 feet I bring the drysuit.

I used to keep my bungees wetsuit cut because I was doing most of my diving in a wetsuit, but now I just keep them super long and then loop them over so I'm not cutting off circulation in my drysuit as well as being much easier to get on and off in both suits.

Peace,
Greg

 

[HenrikBP]

OK, so here are pictures (sorry about the quality - the red color really blew out):

Here's a shot of how I used to lace and secure the bungee loops:



1) here's my computer in a bungee mount. You can see the 2 independent loops and the knots on those loops.



2) Here is is a close-up of the back of the mount. You can see how the end of each loop is secured with a regular knot, which is tucked into the groove in the mount. It helps to keep the tag end of the regular knot a bit long - they tuck in better that way. I place the knot in the side of the mount that will be away from me when wearing the gauge in order to make the adjustment Stopper Knots be towards me. This is one place where slightly thinner bungee comes in handy. With the thinner bungee and a really tight knot, the know slips into the groove without too much stress on the mount:



3) Here you see the the Stopper Knot on the bungee loop. I essentially make the knot with the tag end of the bungee *around* the bungee loop itself. The knot is made quite tight, and will still slide on the bungee loop. Since that end of the bungee is loosely looped through the bungee mount it slides easily when adjusting.



4) Here is a shot of one loop in a longer state. Note that in the longer state - where I need the length to get the loop over glove rings - much less of the whole loop is double bungee, so there is plenty of stretch.



5) Here's a shot with the loop tightened by sliding the Stopper Knot:



If you use this way to secure the bungee the advantage is - of course - adjustability as well as redundancy in case something breaks (not likely). Downside is that you need 2 hands to adjust the loops.

I think using a thinner bungee is an advantage in that 1) it's still plenty strong for the purpose 2) it requires much less pulling to put the gauge on and 3) for this way of lacing a smaller knot fits the bungee mount better.

Hope this helps,

Henrik

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I just use a very small zip tie to tie the loops together for wetsuit use. when diving dry just remove the ziptie.

 

[SelkieDVM]

Great pictures, Henrik, thanks. I can see I might have to do some experimenting to see which method works best for me. Time to restock my bungee supply!

Jim, thanks for yet another good idea. The zip tie would be a pretty easy solution.

 

[cool_hardware52]

Most important is the choice of bungee. I use and DSS sells a 5/32 diameter high stretch bungee.

Larger diameter bungee either doesn't stretch enough or takes too much force to stretch.

The 5/32 allows for quite range of suit thickness and stretches enough to pass over dryglove rings.

Tobin

 

[SelkieDVM]

Most important is the choice of bungee. I use and DSS sells a 5/32 diameter high stretch bungee.

Larger diameter bungee either doesn't stretch enough or takes too much force to stretch.

The 5/32 allows for quite range of suit thickness and stretches enough to pass over dryglove rings.

Tobin

Good to know. Regardless of method, I'll definitely be coming to you for my mounts and bungee in the near future. Thanks, Tobin.

 

[HenrikBP]

Most important is the choice of bungee. I use and DSS sells a 5/32 diameter high stretch bungee.

It's not easy to tell because of the red bungee "blooming" in the pictures, but I use a slightly smaller size bungee than what I got with the mount.

Henrik

 

[sleepr]

I'd love to see what options are out their for bungee mounting the Mares HD icon. DSS doesn't make one. I'm considering having a watch repairman knock the pins out of the watch style band and trying to loop bungee through the mounts. Any other ideas?

 

[Bubbletrubble]

I'd love to see what options are out their for bungee mounting the Mares HD icon. DSS doesn't make one. I'm considering having a watch repairman knock the pins out of the watch style band and trying to loop bungee through the mounts. Any other ideas?

@sleepr: You might want to ask yourself whether using bungee cord is really necessary. I like the depth-compensating feature of bungee cord, and bungee cord can be rigged so that loss of the computer is decreased.
That being said, DIY-modding your Mares HD without an instrument mount might place more stress on the watch pins, since the bungee cord is probably going to be of a different thickness than the original watchband and the stress isn't distributed as evenly across the pin (vs. the original band). Also, with bungee cord that's being stretched over things like dryglove rings, this might actually increase the chance of the pins failing.

I've found the watchbands on my Suunto dive computers to work just fine for hundreds of dives. My dive buddies have had similar experiences with theirs. YMMV.