VDH Blog

If you are reading this you most likely have a vested interest in the Argonaut Kraken project.  I started this blog not because I like to talk about myself but to have a place to keep the investors and supporters up to date with the latest information and progress on the project.  The VDH website Forum and Facebook pages are great but they are very impersonal and get hundreds of visitors a day but the majority of readers have no personal involvement in the project so I won't clutter them up with my miscellaneous ramblings. 

I am not a professional writer and the language I use may be colorful at times but it reflects what is going on in my head and what I'm up to at the moment.  I tend to go 2 or 3 directions at once so this is not going to read like a novel or newspaper.  At the bottom of each entry you can comment and I hope that you do. 

The Fundable campaign has been far more successful than I dared to believe it would be.  I have had dozens of requests to offer more regulators but at the moment I don't think I can commit to doing anymore in the time frame I have allotted for myself. 
There are 21 days remaining to raise funds and they will not charge your card until the campaign ends.  After that it takes about two weeks to clear all the legal paperwork I have to agree to and for the funds to be collected and transferred to my bank. 

So what's new 

The Jury is still out on the Kraken Red hoses. I have been collecting votes on FB and the VDH forum and more than 80% of the responses have been positive.
Luckily I have a good relationship (means I have spent a lot of $$) with the hose manufacture so they agreed to make the samples. Normally they require an order of 300 hoses to start.  As I said elsewhere the shade/color was a personal choice that I liked and thought would be unique.  When they arrived I HATED THEM I was ready to write it off and never even show pictures of them.  I put them on a regulator and propped it up in my work area so I had to see it hundreds of times a day and after a while they grew on me.  The Argonaut Kraken is NEW and deserves to break out of the confinements of what double hose regulators have been in the past. I am still not sure if they are a go or not but for those of you who don't like them please go back a time or two and take a look and I bet they grow on you like they did me.  If they are made they will be an option at least at first and you will still be able to outfit your Kraken with hoses in your choice of black, yellow, gray, green and possibly Kraken Red.

Cerakote Metal Finishing
Click to visit Cerakote main page

This finish shows real promise and I am currently banking on it being the finish for the Kraken and for restoration of a lot of other regulators that I do in the future.  Chrome plating is virtually dead here in the US especially for a small scale producer like me. Dave Ali does amazing work on restoring regulators but he does it as a hobby, a favor to me and because he enjoys it.  If you had to pay a company that did this type of work for a profit the cost to re-chrome a regulator would cost at least $500.00 to his level of quality and I'll bet you will have a hard time finding someone with his skills and patience to do it!
I'm no tree hugger but the whole chrome process with the EPA and toxic chemicals is not something I want to get bogged down into for the future. 
Samples of the coating on actual regulator parts are in route to me and I'll start abusing them next week.  I will follow up here with my results.  I have spoken with a couple of guys who have used it on their gear and they really liked the results.  Both of them applied it themselves and that's not something I'm interested in doing.  If I use this coating I will have it done by a professional applicator that is certified by the manufacture to apply the coating. I will follow up here as I get started.