Stage Rigging Methods

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Ok here's my photos. There are aspects of the Dave stage that are similar to Edd's.
First you take a piece of bungee and wrap it tightly around the neck. I was shown to take a quick link and put a knot in the bungee so it holds without pulling through the quicklink. Then place another quicklink(for clipping your reg) and the snapbolt style of your choice( I prefer butterflies) on the bungee. Wrap the bungee around the neck of the tank and run it back through the quicklink. Once you get it positioned, add a ziptie to keep the quicklink from moving. Up until this point it's similar to Edd's I believe. Now pull the loose end of the bungee so it's really tight around the neck and put a knot in it so that it stays tight. Being tight is important. If the bungee's too loose, the tank valve will have some play when clipped onto you. Here's photos illustrating up until this point
View attachment 195549 View attachment 195550

So at first when I was shown this I thought it would be weird in how you attach the top to your chest. It's really not at all. Once in the water it's totally comfortable. To clip the neck in you actually pull the butterfly back underneath and behind the valve handle. One point, this is a setup where your valve is facing down. Some people don't like that. Once on though you can easily see your valve and keep it out of muck. If you're scraping it, you're in some pretty tight stuff. So here's a photo of how the butterfly comes back for attaching to your chest d-ring. I was Edd-trained, so I have two chest d-rings. The lower where I clip off my primary and the upper where I clip off stage and deco gasses. It works just fine if you only have one d-ring and clip primary/deco/stage all to one.
View attachment 195551

The bottom attachment goes to your waist d-ring. It took me a few adjustments for proper d-rign positioning. If it's too far forward, your tank may hang too low. I have my d-ring right at the top of my hip bone. The bottom attachment is a snapbolt of your choice on a very short piece of bungee. Bungee is the critical part so it has some stretch to pull the tank in. I keep mine very short, although slightly longer is easier to grab. I like my stage pulled in really tight. In the photo, my bungee is actually longer than I would usually have it. If the bungees too long you may get a little tank hang. The attachment is basically at a 45 degree angle behing the valve (or just behind the handwheel). The wormdrive is 10 inches from the bottom. For me keeping the top and bottom attachments nice and tight are best.
View attachment 195552

For me the protocol is primary tanks on, stage on, then attach deco bottle which the leash goes between the stage and the primary to attach to the same waist d-ring as the stage. The deco bottle sits in the a shape created by the primary and stage.


*Photos courtesy of C & R Diving Unlimited, Inc- The official fill station and expedition logistics managers of the inventor of the Dave Stage

Sounds quite nice, a few mods i think i'd personally try (just personal preference) but i'd really like to see this configuration in action..... do you have any photo's or video of your stage/deco attached like this? Video showing the donning process in the water would be very useful too..... thanks for the comprehensive post!
 
No video unfortunately. That's why I tried to be detailed in the post, so you can just rig it and give it a dive. I saw it once live in person and took a couple photos, then rigged it and dove it. It's a very simple system, and easy to firgure out. Hardest part to remember is the snapbolt pulls back and under the handweel. I deploy my hose and route around my neck. The inventor just pulls the hose up from the bottle to his mouth. We both use Edd swivels on our regs.

He's taller than me and my girlfriend is only 98 lbs, and it works for all three of us with no hanging tank, so it should work for everybody.
 
So, I'm still not satisfied. There HAS to be a better way. The main reason I say that is because my instructor's method is what rddvet is describing, which sounds like the most successful as far as what I'm diving is concerned. I can't go back to him and say, "Dang, Michal, you were right," without trying a few innovative things first.

I've got an idea involving a bungee, we'll see how it works. I've got two stages right now, I'll set them up the same and drain one of them to 500psi and see a comparison.

My idea is a bungee loop on each shoulder. Clip off tail to buttplate, then clip off valve to shoulder. Then wrap valve in bungee loop. Bungee would twist the bottle down and into position. I'm thinking valve handle upwards initially with the clip coming down off the inside of the bottle and the bungee twisting the clip away from the buttplate. Does that make sense?
 
So, I'm still not satisfied. There HAS to be a better way. The main reason I say that is because my instructor's method is what rddvet is describing, which sounds like the most successful as far as what I'm diving is concerned. I can't go back to him and say, "Dang, Michal, you were right," without trying a few innovative things first.

I've got an idea involving a bungee, we'll see how it works. I've got two stages right now, I'll set them up the same and drain one of them to 500psi and see a comparison.

My idea is a bungee loop on each shoulder. Clip off tail to buttplate, then clip off valve to shoulder. Then wrap valve in bungee loop. Bungee would twist the bottle down and into position. I'm thinking valve handle upwards initially with the clip coming down off the inside of the bottle and the bungee twisting the clip away from the buttplate. Does that make sense?

I'd really like to see Michal's way and see how close it is to this way. I've seen iterations that were kind of like this, but it's the little things that give you headaches in sidemount. If you learn his way, I'd love to see some photos of it.
 
Following along. Currently 2 al80's have been plenty of bailout in cave non-trimix depths. I like the idea of having stage above primary and deco in the back or clipped at 20'.
 
Ok I am Michal. Mine set up is similar to yours. I am using non stretchable line, no bungees. The bottom leash is very short and the D ring is high on mine hip. The top clip is very close to the tank neck as is yours. I only chose the line over to bungee because if it is tight and secured with the hose clamp, the tank is not moving forward and backward while swimming ( the ding ding effect :-D ) which I was unable to achieve with the bungees. I just tested this set up last weekend and was very happy with it. I will eventually post some pictures if you interested.
 
I didn't even notice that Michal posted here, but I've come up with my own (and then subsequently realized it wasn't unique or original).

My solution is super similar to the one rddvet posted. Worm-screws holding a SUPER short piece of bungee down for bottom leash. Top is the same long-bungee with a quick-link and zip-tied in place, with the bungee excess being wrapped around the tank valve. It's practically an Edd-rigged stage but mounted differently. I'm getting VERY good results aesthetically, especially once the stage drops to under ~2500psi. I haven't completely settled on the height of the worm screw, angle of the bottom leash, or angle of the top leash.....but it's working well enough for now. I can try posting mid-dive pics tonight, and maybe a short video (we'll see how much cleaning I can get done, first :D)

It has, however, made me wonder if top-mounted would be worth trying to go back to. I'm thinking an extra-long top bungee wrapped around the valve would be the trick. The other change I'll be making soon is to go to two quick-links per tank a la Edd. The other thing I'm unhappy about is that I have to swing my elbow inside of my SPG and push my primary bottle out and over just to clip it off. I found top-mounting the stage much easier, but checking the pressure and turning the valve is easier bottom-mounted.

Another thing is reg routing: I'm currently routing my reg hose similar to my left-post short hose. However, when I add a stage on the right side I'm thinking I should run the reg down the tank and then directly into my mouth on a ball swivel. Other option is that I have a Zenith Reversible, so I might route my right-side stage mirrored to my left-side stage....or run both stage regs down the tank and then straight into my mouth. We'll see. What are Y'ALL doing?
 
... What are Y'ALL doing?
I do not have the experience most of you have - perhaps that is the reason I do not 'get it', but I do not think so, I might just be using a different method (that I only copy myself) that also works - but since you addressed this Y'ALL:

I simply use normal sidemount or stage rigging (doesn't mater much which, but I prefer my own tanks and those I use only for sidemount).
For the upper attachmet I use a 4mm bungee loop around the tank neck and routed between valve and SPG hose (to keep it from 'rolling').
The only tricky part is finding the exactly right length for that bungee (or a way of handling one length for any diameter a tank can have).

The main sidemount tanks are responsible to keep all others where they are supposed to be and share use of the front hip D-ring with the top mounted tanks and the backward one with the bottom mounted.
As long as the additional stages are attached I never expect to have to swing the main tanks forward or detach at the hip for anything but the normal reclipping once every dive.

I only dove that with up to 4 tanks and all where small maneuverable tanks (7 and 8 Liters).
But I tried it with up to five stages in any position.
With my slight build topmountig 80cft makes me look like I am backmounting them, but it works well enough.

From my observation normal sidemount rigging and hip-D-ring attachment works perfectly, as long as you always estimate the length of the tank neck bungee correctly.

For routing the right side additional hose(s) I found that flex hoses allow for any type of routing without elbows or swivels and it can sometimes be useful to switch between them several times during a single dive.
 
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I'm not a sidemounter, just a backmounter that got tired of stages going retarted with the standard GUE rigging. My typical dives are long range (3-4 hours) shore dives. I cover a lot of ground, so I got sick of how my stages sat (like anchors...).

My method: I moved my left waist d-ring back until it was almost touching my backplate, and added a second d-ring that sits about 2" in front of the center point on my left waist. This allows me to shift the bottom clip depending on whether the stage is riding heavy or light, and keeps the bottle in line with my body. Up top I added a bungee that I put on a small quick-link to my backplate, attached to the highest hole. The other end of that bungee gets clipped to my left chest d-ring with a standard bolt snap (same size as my primary regulator bolt snap). I have it so that it has just a little bit of slack when it's unloaded. When I'm walking on shore, or if I'm getting geared up on the boat, I clip the stage in and enter the water with it loose. Once I'm in the water I just tuck the stage(s) into the bungee and go on my merry way.

Pros: It allows me to use any of my/buddy's standard stages without modification. It also works as a pretty decent fin holder when I walk back to the car. It's simple

Cons: It doesn't quite allow for a "true" side mount. The valve/first stage sits just in front of my armpit/shoulder and not quite perfectly tucked in like a true sidemount configuration

If you want to stick with a mainly DIR configuration, this might work for you.
 
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Late to the party here. I've never been a fan of bottom mounting stages, even in backmount. The stages hang too low. Even with them properly trimmed out and tucked up they still hang a bit low and I also don't like the clutter in front of me. We spend all this time trying to declutter our chest area then we throw a couple of large cylinders right there. That being said, some people prefer front mounting and that's just fine. It's not for everyone though.

Victor, what kind of clip were you using on the bottom when you tried my method? Smaller clips will not work well because they don't have the weight required to get the clip where you need it. You can't do my method using one hand. One hand drops the clip where it needs to go and the other grabs it and attaches it to the D-ring. I've yet to run into a circumstance where I can't use both hands to do this though. Even when I take along 4 stages I top mount all 4 stages. It keeps me decluttered in the front and the stages all ride nicely behind me without any concern of them hitting the ceiling.
 
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