scubaaaronh
Contributor
My wife being a shorter women and a little heavy had to get a mens wetsuit 7mm, which in turn had sleeves and legs that were way to long. I talked to a couple shops and the one owner had a similar dilema with his wife. He told me i could cut off the legs and sleeves to the length needed. His wifes suit is on its third year and is still holding up. The reason i decided to do this instead of having it professionally done is she is doing weight watchers and will need a new suit next summer. He also said i needed to use seal cement and aquaseal to hold the edges together so they wouldn't fray, and may have to take material out to trim it to fit. I decided to try this on an old suit first. The only problem was the sleeves when cutting them back made the wrist openings larger. The ankles fit well with boots under. For the sleeves i had to cut triangles about 5 inches long out to make the fit snug around the wrists. Then for the new seam i used seal cement to glue the edges by following the instructions. After this drien i put a thin bead of aquaseal over the new seam. and let it dry. After doing this i put a bottle inside each sleeve and ankle then put masking tape about 1/16 inch from the edge and used the seal cement on the edge to prevent fraying, and put a dot on the old stitching to lock it. After the first coat dried on the sleev ends i put on a second coat. After setting for 24 hours we tried to pull the new seam apart on the sleeve, i was worrind that the glue and aquaseal wouldn't hold up, to my surprise we troe the sleeve but not at the newly created seam. Looks like this is going to work. We started on her suit last night and cut it back. The ankles in her suit fit perfectly. the wrists need the triangles cut and new seams done. What we are going to do on her suit is take some nylon upholstery thread and do a loop stitch over the cemented seam then put aquaseal oveR and under the seam.
