SI Tech vs Viking dry glove systems

[hudson]

Yes! The SI Tech wrist seal system comes with regular latex wrist seals to install. I feel the same about about maintaining wrist seals in place.

I was just discussing this with Bob3 - you can do the same with Viking rings. There are two ways to do it: the more common is to glue the old Viking rubber rings to the cuffs and jam the bayonet system into the old rings. The seal is then trapped by the bayonet inner ring. The other method is to glue the bayonet rings directly to the suit, and this is mentioned in the Viking manual, but it's not as common, more difficult and could require professional installation.

I'm very happy with my current Viking bayonet rings - they are just fantastic, and will try to glue them directly when one of my wrist seals craps out.

 

[Peter_C]

hudson, are you saying you can then have a field replaceable latex wrist seal?

The only way I could see that is if you glued to the outside of the cuff ring, then used the lock rings inside to hold a seal in place. Is that correct? Like these SI-Tech-permanent-wrist-rings-gloves

 

[hudson]

Peter, yes, exactly.

The trick is managing to glue the cuff ring to the suit (rings inside the sleeves). The ring is not flexible at all and if the sleeve diameter doesn't match, you are out of luck without modification to the suit - I think they are made to match Viking suits. However on my suit (CF200) it *looks* like I can get it to work, not sure... hard to tell with the seals still glued on.

Bayonet + rubber ring system would work with a wider range of suits: you have the three rings above + the rubber rings. You glue the rubber rings to the sleeves (so the sleeves are inside the rings), then the whole bayonet system above (including the trapped seal) gets jammed into rubber ring.

The advantage to not using the rubber rings is less bulk, otherwise the rubber ring solution is superior with regards to ease of installation (relatively...it's still more difficult than changing seals sending it off to Bob would be the best bet.) It's also easier to change the seals with rubber rings: you wouldn't need to work the locking ring from inside the sleeve - just pop off the bayonet rings, switch the seal, reinsert.