CGA wrote the visual inspection criteria
I am so sick and tired of you pompous scubee-doos. You think that you know more about hydostatic retesting of cylinders then the retester, the DOT and everybody else in the industry.
The truth of the matter, very few of you know very much about recertification of your scuba tank , just enough to kill/blowup your self, because some other scubee-do fool told you that you do not have to follow the rules, that you do not like. Because you know more then the people that are trying to keep you safe.
Then after you blowup yourself, your wife, your kids, your friends, your house, your car, your neighbors, etc. you want/try to blame it on the retester, the manufacture, the dive shop, your dive instructor, the fill operator, anyone but you the one that is overfilling, not maintaining your equipment, allowed water to enter into your HP air tank and rust/corrode the inside and outside of a your HP cylinder. Then you ask the fill operator to fill your tank because it is just out of hydro by two months and the v.i.p. is out six months. Your statement is my dive shop at home does it all the time and you promise that, if the retester, the dive shop, the fill op. just does this for you just this one time and if yourself, your wife, your kids, your friends, your house, your car, your neighbors get killed/blowup because we did not follow the rules, YOU WONT bring suit against anyone!
Let me start to clear up somethings that you do not understand:
The job of the retester is not to recertify/pass your tank, The retesters job is to search all the cylinders that they are given, looking for the few that need to be taken out of service because they are bad/dangerous. So when your tanks are refilled it does not tear you face off. The recertification and returning to service is a by-product of what we are doing. We are not trying to pass your tank, we are looking for those few bad ones.
The retester must follow the corresponding CFR and any instructions included in that CFR. CGA wrote the visual inspection criteria. If it is a Special Permit cylinder, that SP has instructions that the retester must follow. The retester must have a copy of that SP. The retester does not care about what the manufacture (Worthington in this case) or the marketing company (XS Scuba, aka Mark) has to say about anything. The retester must follow the CFR. Not the manufacture.
Now, Worthington thought that they were smarter then PST and could do this hot dip. Worthington was wrong! The hot dip was what put PST out of business in 2005. The older painted PST E9791s test out great as long as you guys keep the rust out of and off of them. The hot dips fail about >60%. Something about the 2005s almost all are failing first hydro(the ones with ¾-14, scuba valve)???
Worthington was in trouble, their SP14157 were failing like the 2005 PST. The President of Worthington got on a plane and went to Washington DC and somehow got the test protocol changed. The SP14157s now are not failing. But, we are now testing them the same as the SCBAs and they have a life of only 15 years. Worthington may not be out of trouble with these things. Worthington also made/makes a 3AA2400 hot dip and 3AA is a standard and the test protocol can not be changed and those are still failing at a great rate.
Steel Tanks:
Asashi makes a cold dip, They test very good.
Faber, I had only one tank that failed that I could not tell why it failed, It was clean inside and out, it should not have failed. Faber replaced it and wanted it to test it to find out why it failed, I have not heard back from them. Fabers test great if you keep them clean(no rust)
The Southernmost Retester in the US
