Why no poor man's rebreather?

[Sbiriguda]

Ida 59 rebreather - Sports In vendita a Brescia
How about this one
Military grade technology and it has a competitive price too

 

[northernone]

Cheap / Easy / Safe. Pick 1.

 

[Tungsten]

Tom died a few years ago (natural causes, nothing dive/rebreather related). He was a great guy and a pleasure to know. I assume his web page was pulled down shortly after that so no, it is not active.

Very sad to hear that; he seems to have had a great sense of humor!

I know virtually nothing about scuba, but know a bit of internet-fu.
His site was archived by the wayback machine; here is a link to that rebreather article:
100 DOLLAR REBREATHER

Also, here is another funny DIY rebreather article, also from a now-defunct website that got archived:
Project021017ThreeDollarRebreather

I hope this post works and the links work. This is my first post. I’ve been lurking a couple of days but felt I had to sign up to share Tom’s article.

 

[herman]

They do and thanks, it was nice to see my old friend. Tom did a rebreather demo class for us once in which we built a coke bottle and plastic bag rebreather similar to the one in the second article.

 

[kensuf]

Since we're looking at rebreather designs from guys that are now gone..

TP2000

 

[kotik]

Since we're looking at rebreather designs from guys that are now gone..

TP2000

The words "holy crap" were circling in my brain while reading through the slides, then I got to the one that shows where the name comes from. That is genius!

 

[Sbiriguda]

Since we're looking at rebreather designs from guys that are now gone..
TP2000

"There is a roll of standard-issue toilet paper in each counterlung to act as a water trap."

Pure genius

 

[kensuf]

He's the same guy that invented the Smithers code that several HUDs use. He was a sharp dude.

 

[Tungsten]

They do and thanks, it was nice to see my old friend. Tom did a rebreather demo class for us once in which we built a coke bottle and plastic bag rebreather similar to the one in the second article.

Glad to hear they worked. Very cool to hear about the coke bottle and plastic bag rebreather. I love the garage engineering!

Since we're looking at rebreather designs from guys that are now gone..

TP2000

That’s a great piece of work! I know how the air should circulate but not how that is ensured — it must be through the mouthpiece valves. Probably obvious if you’ve even held a rebreather before. If it works like I think it does it is a marvel of simplicity.

 

[herman]

Here is a photo of the coke bottle rebreather we assembled that day. I watched a guy breath off of it for at least 30 minutes. Not something we could dive with but it does demonstrate the principals of the pendulum rebreather.