Softening nylon webbings

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gekodivebali

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I'm a Fish!
Does anyone know a way to soften nylon webbings?
Been using the same webbings on my backplate for a couple of years. Their incredible stiffness was no problem until I started using some rubber rings on my waist straps allowing me to reposition my S80 cylinders when their buoyancy changes (mains on sidemount and deco/stages on backmount).
I'm very happy with using the rubber rings ( great for trim & streamlining), but realise that a softer webbing would make moving the tanks around the waist straps that much easier...

---------- Post added April 14th, 2013 at 04:04 PM ----------

Sorry did not mean to post this in the Hogarthian forum...
 
Webbing is pretty cheap--just find the type you like and replace it. My personal favorite is the webbing from Halcyon.

(The waist belt on my Stealth SM harness is very stiff too, but I'm able to move the rings forward without too much of an effort. It seems that the rings need a certain amount of stiffness to keep from collapsing the webbing.)
 
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Commercial diving harnesses use 2" x 1/8" thick Dura-soft nylon webbing that is much softer then standard weight belt materiel. You should be able to get it from either Amron or Mar-Vel. The only other alternative I can think of would be seat belt material but you would probably find that to be too soft and too thin.
 
I found some nice webbing here in Manila - much softer than the standard. It's an extra 2-3 hour round-trip to get it, but worth the effort when putting rigs together, especially for sidemount.
 
Ron: Funny u'd say that. The rings come from a Stealth rig (older batch). The waist webbing on that one is way softer than on my Hogarthian harness. The xDeep one works great for me. the other one is a stock Apeks one and stiff as hell.
All: thanks for the input. Here in Bali, there is not much locally available. If no means of softening my webbing, i'll have to import since the only webbing available is stiff weightbelt material...
 
Have you tried boiling it? Seems I heard of this a while back. Supposedly will take some of the stiffness out. Never tried it myself so if you were to give it a shot I'd try a small section before tossing a whole harness in.
 
I have a friend that dives in the tropics a lot with a Tee shirt. He uses standard untreated Nylon webbing:

Flat Nylon Webbing 2 Inch

It tangles a little more than treated Scuba/weightbelt webbing but is very comfortable and packs much smaller. It is as soft as the DuraSoft used in commercial bell harnesses, but the same thickness as weightbelt webbing so buckles and glides fit.
 
Thanks for that Akimbo. I'm loving the colors and patterns too. Seeing some belts in my future. :)
 
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