Weight compensate with pony bottle.

[asmfish]

I recently was given a steel 40 pony bottle. All the local boat wreck diving requires you to have one. As I have never used one before and felt how heavy it was on my BC.

When diving with a pony bottle should I just remove weight from one side of my bc to compensate for the bottle? I currently don’t use a lot of weight. About 10-12 lbs depending and sometimes still feel a little heavy.

 

[Marie13]

Steel 40? Sure it’s not aluminum?

When I’m single tank, I sling an AL30. Don’t change my weighting at all.

 

[asmfish]

Steel 40? Sure it’s not aluminum?

When I’m single tank, I sling an AL30. Don’t change my weighting at all.

Yup definitely steel.

 

[Marie13]

Yup definitely steel.

A steel pony is definitely...unusual.

 

[Griffo]

Does it have a manufacturer listed on it? It's generally easy to look it up to find the buoyancy characteristics empty and full. Add in the weight of your reg, and you'll have your answer.

E.g a Faber 5L cylinder is 6.6kg but have a negative buoyancy full of -2kg. Add in the reg (0.8kg?) and you're -2.8kg in the water.

 

[asmfish]

A steel pony is definitely...unusual.

Yea so I see looking around here.

 

[Fishyhead]

With an aluminum 40, I can drop 1#. 2# is too much. Not worth bothering with.

 

[saxman242]

Might consider just moving 2 pounds over to the opposite side to balance.

 

[broncobowsher]

Steel is odd, that might be part of the reason it was given to you.
That is where AL40s are nice, no need to change your weighting when you add one, or five.

So with the steel you have a couple of choices.
Either you will never ditch it, or hand it off to anyone. At this point it is now part of your weighting. You have to figure it will never leave you.
Or, it can be handed off. But you are going to be diving overweight. Just for that one odd time you have to hand it off to someone else. And they may not be expecting it to be so heavy, so it could screw them up.
Neither choice is ideal. I don't know what your local diving is like either. A lot of this stuff is very dependent on local culture.

If it were me, I would be looking to sell/trade for an AL40. You didn't say how negative it is, but if only a few pounds I would just live with being a little overweighted. If more than a couple of pounds, drop a little weight, shift a little more around, know it isn't leaving you.

 

[rsingler]

www.scubaboard.com/community/threads/optimal-buoyancy-computer.576321/page-3#post-8612991