Shark in a Bus ???

The whole month of June we are celebrating the one year anniversary of the Argonaut Kraken's release to the divers around the globe.

The diver you are about to meet is anticipating the arrival of his new regulator and has a very unique and fun way of sharing his love of diving and some of the creatures of the sea in his area.

Meet Paul Sharp, Museum Curator and soon to be Argonaut Kraken Diver.

"Shark in a Bus" is our heritage marine museum housed in a 1957 Leyland bus, representing two lifetimes of collecting around Australia. It has it's beginnings in the old Cottesloe Oceanarium, Western Australia's first public aquarium which operated in the 1960's.

The collection represents all of Australia and was put together primarily in the 1960's and 70's. It features a giant Great White Shark (White Pointer) as well as whaling artifacts, fossils, sharks jaws and hundreds of other amazing exhibits. There's even a sea dragon, vintage dive gear and pieces of the US space station Skylab!

We love our sharks and our curator Paul is keen to share a lifetime of sharky stories and experiences, as well as answer your questions about these incredible creatures.

Shark in a Bus Website Link

I realize that many of us may not have the opportunity to visit Shark in a Bus in person but I really like the idea and what Paul it trying to do with his moving exhibit.  I hope you will take a moment to visit Shark in a Bus and please share them on your Facebook and other Social Media pages.  When I was a kid seeing an exhibit like this would have been better than a stack of E-Ticket rides on Christmas!

Photo of Paul's new Argonaut Kraken on the test bench before it begins its long journey to Australia.

Sea Hunt Forever.....March 19th and 20th 2016

March 19th and 20th at Silver Springs Park Florida.  As part of the Florida Springs Fest annual celebration, VDH Worldwide LLC  will be bringing you a multi faceted presentation entitled,

Sea Hunt Forever!

• World renowned collector and historian Alec Pierce will be displaying his one of a kind collection containing memorabilia and props from the Sea Hunt TV show and Silver Springs. Most items are found nowhere else in the world and some have not been seen for decades.
• Meet original cast and support members from the TV series.
• Divers in period correct gear reenacting scenes and entertaining guests on glass bottom boat tours and during surface intervals.
• Jonathan Bird will be filming an episode of his award winning show Jonathan Birds Blue World during the event.

Fun and entertainment for the whole family with Silver Springs Park hosting vendors, artists and entertainers the whole weekend long dedicated to raising awareness of the need to preserve the natural resources of the Florida Springs.  

Website for event is being developed.

Facebook page  Sea Hunt Forever.

Twitter account  https://twitter.com/seahuntforever

Media inquires contact   SeaHunt2016@gmail.com

Sponsorship's are available. Please contact SeaHunt2016@gmail.com

Argonaut Kraken a year in review

In June we celebrate delivery of the First Series Argonaut Kraken regulators to all the backers of the Fundable Campaign. Please allow me a little latitude as I wax philosophically about what an amazing year it has been.

A year ago in February I asked my friends, dive buddies, customers and potential new customers to believe enough in our new regulator project to put up their hard earned money to assist me in covering the cost to manufacture them. You can still see the campaign on the Fundables website HERE

To my amazement we made our funding goal in 5 hours and went on to reach 160% of what our financial goal was!  Once again my most humble thanks to those who believed in the project and put their faith and trust in me.

Now that the goal was met the real challenge was getting them all assembled, tested and shipped out to their new owners by the end of June 2014. With a great deal of help from my friend Rob at The Scuba Museum I was able to get them completed and we shipped 38 regulators to their new owners and 70 some T-shirts and certificates in a little over 3 weeks.

 

Jerry Lang (aka Kemps Cow) takes delivery of his Argonaut Kraken at Portage Quarry

Over the last year I have been inundated with requests for information on the new regulator from around the globe and have shipped new Argonauts to 12 countries outside the US.

What I enjoy more than anything is getting pictures and E-mail from divers using their regulator and sharing them with their dive buddies and friends. This is the most rewarding part for me!

We have over a hundred Argonaut Kraken regulators diving the world right now and I hope to double that number this year again.

Argonaut Kraken in it’s element

Luis and I are continually working to improve the Argonaut and do our best to share these updates as often as possible.  What other company provides you direct access to the designer of your regulator as well as the person who assembled and setup each one of them?  Below is a photo of Luis monitoring and taking notes on intermediate pressure changes while diving.

Let me wrap this up by once again thanking everyone who helped make the Argonaut Kraken project a reality. Without your support I’m sure we would still be stuck with the few working prototypes only.

If you are not a member of Team Argonaut there is still time to purchase one of the original configuration regulators remaining in the website store.

Sand Dog XII Follow Up

Sand Dog XII was once again a fun event and a great time meeting new divers and getting together with old friends.

Friday starts out as is usually does as divers arrive and start to assimlate in the motel parking lot. The veterans of the event are pretty easy to spot as they are normally standing or walking around with various regulators and other gear they want to show off or discuss with everyone. This is the time that the new divers to the group start circling closer and closer and most jump right in with introductions and comments like ….I’m (insert screen name here) on the VDH Website Forum….OH so your the guy or, It’s finally good to put a face with the posts…..Hey tell me about that new flux capacitor you have been putting on your Deathways 2000 that is supposed to double your bottom time…..Or  Hey did you get your new Argonaut Kraken yet?  And the inevitable….If you are looking for gear, the guy in 207 has some great stuff for sale...Better get on over there before Rob gets here and buys it all up.

This went on and on for hours as people split up and go into little huddles scheming and plotting to get the best deal and make the most of what they brought to trade and sell.

Followed shortly by one or two divers getting in the motel pool and showing off their best Mike Nelson skills as the rest grab a beverage or two and talk diving and catching up from past years events.

Eventually and with as much effort as herding cats we all made it to a local buffet restaurant where more 50 Fathom dive stories continue.

Saturday morning comes early as Blue Springs only allows X amount of divers in at once. If you don’t get there early you may have to wait till the afternoon to get a divers pass.

Luckily we had rehearsed the drill the night before and were able to persevere through the ass backwards system of diver check in at the park and made it to our assembly area all in one piece.

First I would like to thank Dave, Fred and Fun Size Doug for grabbing a great spot and putting up pop up canopies to help shelter us from the heat!

The day progressed as usual with divers going in and out of the spring trying out various equipment configurations, getting used to the heavy flow from the spring and taking lots of photos and video of all the divers.

At lunchtime we gathered for the traditional Sand Dog cookout mastered and overseen by my lovely wife and daughter and everyone was well fed and rehydrated and ready for another fun filled afternoon of double hose diving.

 We packed up late in the afternoon and headed on back to the motel to refresh and get ready for the evening gathering at a local restaurant for more hours of tales from the deep and other events of the day. Group had a great time and headed back to the motel for more “Parking Lot” talk, camaraderie and gear swapping till late in the evening.

Sunday morning took us to Alexander Springs which is about an hour from our host motel and through the genius of GPS directed several of us down a 6 mile stretch of washboard gravel road that was more akin to an episode of Top Gear UK, (not the crap US version) than a diving trip!

Alexander is a shallow spring but allows for many dives and is a great place to try out new gear and configurations. Gives divers the chance to get their rigs dialed in for the season and ready for other dive trips and destinations.  Lots of free time to talk and share the common bonds that bring divers together and discuss what was working and how it can work better.

The afternoon was wrapped up the gear was packed and plans for next years event was already in the works.

I’m really lucky to have such great friends and customers gather together sharing their passion for double hose diving with my family and I.  There are a lot more pictures and video forthcoming and I hope you will visit the VDH Website Forum in the next few weeks as divers have time to get home and post them. I had started a post on the event on Scuba Board but The Turkish Turd has made it his mission in life to criticize and demean our group and the event. Envy rears it’s ugly head in every group but no need to be dragged down with it.

I hope everyone makes plans to attend our event next time! Keep watching the VDH website and VDH Facebook page for updates and information.

VDH Timeline Part Five

VDH Timeline Part Five

Luis and I were talking the other day and he brought up that VDH had been going for more than a decade now a thought it might be nice to share some of the highlights for all the new double hose divers out there who have not been around since day one. My plan is to cover a few things at a time and post them on the message forum so those with a better memory than mine can share some insight and give some other interesting bits of information.

While I was typing this up I kept hearing Don’t Come Easy by Ringo in my head for some weird reason…

What you see spread before you in the pictures below are parts that 10 years ago were not available new and most not available at all.  If you could find NOS parts they were usually sky high and the NEW part of NOS was often questionable.

For example, NOS main diaphragms were sky high and even if they were kept in pristine conditions they were still no better than the original materials they were manufactured from.

If you want to see the only new parts that were available a decade ago,pay a visit to Dan at Vintage Scuba Supply’s store and you can see what 2005 had to offer for the double hose diver. This is not a knock on VSS, Dan is a well known collector and historian and takes a different approach to his business than I do.

And there are still are people out there who scream….Leave the old stuff alone! We like our regulators to breathe like crap...That’s how it’s supposed to be, you are ruining the originality of them…..You kids get off my lawn!!

By far the most difficult small part to get right were the high pressure seats. I won’t bore you with how they are actually manufactured but building a rig to test their longevity was a huge undertaking.  

I started by putting four identical 72cf cylinder with matching valves side by side and then held them in place on a board with pipe hanger straps. Then I took 4 DA 1st stages with the new seats in them with the pin and mushroom supports all facing up and as perfectly aligned as I could get them. Next I took a dowel rod and put round head nylon bolts through it so they were sticking down like lobes on a camshaft and I aligned each bolt head directly over the mushroom pin support. It took a lot of time to get it all in place properly and finally I attached a small motor to a gear reduction drive that I got from a device used to pull up theater curtains very slowly.

Finally I connected it to the dowel rod with a Lovejoy connector and let it rip...The dowel rod turned and the nylon nuts pressed down on the pin supports unseating the high pressure seats cycling the first stages. I did this for days….If I was home, the rig was running. Periodically I had to adjust the length of the nuts so they would keep an even pressure on all 4 valves or some would actuate and some would not. Did I mention this went on for days?  Well it did!  

The sounds were similar to steam valves opening and closing and after a while I had to put on hearing protection cause it was driving me insane…….But in the end it worked pretty well and I’ve been really happy with all three HP seats I've reproduced and the Quick Set tool I now use would have tested the seats durability much easier than the Rube Goldberg contraption I built.

Another challenge was and still is sometimes are tolerances. Parts for original regulator varied a bit. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  I ran into this the first time when I had the brass and bronze first stage filters done.  When I tried the new filters in first stages they fit fine in some and in others not so much. I realized the tolerance when manufactured was on the high side of the samples I used and I should have backed off a bit on the +/-.  Quite a few customers had to sand down the outer edge to get them to fit properly.  They were also very expensive to make so after I ran out I decided that it was one part that I could skip. Modern filters and backup washers work just fine and unless you are at a concours regulator show no one is the wiser.

Another addition to the recycling bin were the first run of HPR 2nd stage levers. The bend angle is critical and the drawings were very clear and explicit but the angle was still slightly off on the majority of finished levers. Now the easy approach would have been to simply flatten and correctly bend them again myself. But after trying a few this way it left marks where I had flattened them and I couldn’t stand the thought of a part that looked so nice and shiny with marks on it….So I scrapped the whole batch and today I still bend each lever one at a time in the jig Herman made for me.

A big issue is fielding E-mails like this…...Could you make XYZ part?  If you did make it I would buy one...The operative word here is ONE. Unfortunately I don’t have the skills, tools or machinery to turn out one of any part and no manufacturing company is going to take an order for ONE part unless it’s accompanied by a check with a lot of zeros in it.

There are several other companies that produced double hose regulators aside from USD and Voit but as of now no one has really picked up the ball and offered a large selection of parts and support for them.

Take the Healthways regulators as an example….Made in the thousands and easy to come by. Rugged single stage design and can be a good breathing regulator with minimal effort. The achilles heel is the exhaust design. The majority of them were made with a weird two piece exhaust in an effort to keep the Aqua Lung lawyers at bay over the duckbill exhaust design.

Over the years I have come up with several ideas that would work and even had reproducing the original parts sourced for them but no matter how sharp my pencil was I could never get the dollars and cents to line up with the cost of making them.

Sand Dog is next weekend May 15th to 17th so I’ll blog about that for a week or so afterwards and try to finish up the saga of getting the hoses and mouthpieces made. It reads more like a comedy of errors that a success story….

Vintage Double Hose Timeline....Part Four

Luis and I were talking the other day and he brought up that VDH had been going for more than a decade now a thought it might be nice to share some of the highlights for all the new double hose divers out there who have not been around since day one. My plan is to cover a few things at a time and post them on the message forum so those with a better memory than mine can share some insight and give some other interesting bits of information.

I wrote pretty extensively about The Phoenix First Stage earlier in the blog so to save time you can click on the link and I’ll try and share some of the behind the scenes stuff as best I can remember.

Before I go any further let me cover this…. I met Luis at a Vintage Scuba Supply even at Lake Wazee Wisconsin in 2005. For those who don’t know him personally let me share a little as he is way too modest to ever do so.

In my mind I envision that Luis looks at things and sees them kinda like The Terminator in the first movie. Everything his eyes see are in three dimensions with materials specifications, functionability, feasibility, options, assembly procedures, structural drawings, failure point and all sorts of math equations running like a ticker at the bottom of his field of vision…….When Luis talks to you about certain subjects I’m sure he has to dumb it down a bit so the rest of us can keep up.

All the while he is one of the nicest and most thoughtful people you will ever meet. It has been my distinct pleasure of working with him for a decade now and even though we try each others patience from time to time we have always been friends first.

Setting around a campfire one night at Lake Wazee, Luis starts talking about how he can modify a first stage similar to a Conshelf and get it to work on a two stage USD or Voit regulator.  I am very intrigued by the idea as it would skip the banjo fitting and allow use of modern attachments to the double hose that everyone was clamoring for…...Not always because we wanted to use them but since the big upsweep of divers using a double hose again there was a lot of pushback from resorts and dive boat operators about using “That Old Junk” to dive with.  Well Luis set out to conquer that and ended up doing it in spades.

A few months and a million phone calls and E-mails later he had come up with a rudimentary first stage with high pressure ports. At this point he only concerned himself with the ability to use all the ancillary parts that were on the shelf at Aqua Lung that we could implement right away. It saved on design time and materials cost and most of all it used proven parts that were industry standards and were reliable to a fault.  Clear through the Argonaut he has stuck to this idea and you will find most parts I produce are compatible with 90% of the original regulators.

He refined it a bit and figured out how to add low pressure ports and had a couple made up in a machine shop local to him.  Testing was easy…..It worked flawlessly and when coupled with the new silicone diaphragm made a regulator that breathed exceptionally well.

I started looking for a machine shop that would make a few production first stages….At this point it had no name, it was just the thing we were working on…….

As I earlier referenced, NEVER tell a manufacturer you are building SCUBA gear…...I provided drawings and asked only that they be built to plans and that was it.

Now came the hard part……. I had the $$$ for tooling and brass but could not cover the cost of doing enough first stages to use up the minimum quantity of brass I had to buy.…..So I went to a couple friends that I knew could keep the project on the QT and with hat in hand told them Luis and I had prototypes that worked fantastic but we needed to make a few more just to be sure they were as good as we thought. Asked if they could front me a little cash in return for one of the new first stages and then give us some honest feedback on them. All of them said, “ Hell Yes we want in”

Every project started at VDH has been with My Capitol FIrst. I have never asked friends or customers  to front me cash for an unproven and untested idea that may or not fly. If I don’t have a working and tested product that I can backup 110% I won’t ask you to buy into it.…

I got the samples built in naval brass and then turned them over to a friend outside of Chicago that ran a chrome plating business for motorcycle parts that I had known for years and I trusted would get them done right. At this point I felt like I was working with Faberge Eggs! Later he got shut down by the EPA for dumping stuff down the drains that he shouldn’t have :(

At the same time I was working with my main source to acquire all the parts from Aqua Lung for the internals of the new first stage. There was no way come hell or high water that they would have sold me anything directly….And if not for my source….You know who you are….This new project would have never gotten off the ground like it did.

I hope I get this part right…..The first finished parts went to, Rob, Ryan, Tom, James, and Joe…..Please someone E-mail me if I'm wrong on this.

The results of testing on the first few went just like Luis and I thought it would and I geared up to make the first run of 50 first stages….Out of this we also came up with the idea to use nylon washers for the high pressure sealing area as you could stack a couple of them and torque the first stage into place in various ways so the ports would align where you wanted them to ….You guys refer to it as Clocking….

The Achilles heel in the whole plan was being reliant on inventory at Aqua Lung specifically yokes and screws.

The name Phoenix was one of a few we were thinking of using….Spider was another one since it kinda looked like one when you hooked up all the hoses to it but in the end I decided on Phoenix since it was helping the double hose rise from the ashes.

Side Note:  Luis cares nothing or very little as far as names, colors, advertising, promotion, graphics, packaging, distribution etc…..It could be called X and come in a used milk carton and as long as it was to his specifications and performed as he designed it everything else is just fluff. Most of the time he prefers not to be bothered with this stuff and leaves it up to me. BUT, he is always very cognizant of how it performs in the field and takes great pains to analyze feedback and information we get from other divers.  

After the first run of 50 Phoenix first stages Luis made a revision and was able to shorten the height a bit and improve clearance. At the same time he did some changes to improve airflow through it. Info Covered in THIS Blog Post

At one point I had dozens sold and NO YOKES OR SCREWS to send them out with…..For those who don’t know me I can assure you that this causes me an immense amount of panic and stress.  I HATE…..HATE…..having an order from a customer and not being able to deliver it right away but I was at the mercy of AL and you can’t get what they don’t have…..

Bernie Campoli and several other friends came to my rescue once again and went to their dive lockers and shops and dug up all the new and used Conshelf yokes they could find and sent them to me with the understanding that I would send the loaners back once I got resupplied with the new ones.  Their hard work and friendship allowed me to get out an entire run of Phoenix first stages that would have otherwise been delayed for two months!!!

My friends and customers have been vital in building the double hose community and I will forever be in their debt.

Since 2006 I have changed machine shops and plating companies several times. Not by choice by due to economic shifts and changes in attitudes. Several of the shops I worked with were small and luckily for them they grew and the business of making 50 parts at time became no longer feasible or if it was, they were charging me a much higher price for their service. With these changes have been many failures in production and quality control. The picture below is what I like to call my BOX OF FAIL…...and my recycling bin is much larger !

When the Argonaut came out last year I had decided to stop producing the Phoenix first stage as I thought the volume would not equal the capitol I had to tie up producing them.

Boy was I wrong….I’m used to getting hate mail, it comes with the territory but the outrage from the community made me feel like Frankenstein in the village….I could feel the flames of the torches through the computer.

With over 500 Phoenix's out in the diving world it has taken on it’s own cult following. There are even divers with Argonauts that still cling to their Phoenix like Linus does his blanket.

There is no need to change the Phoenix nor does it need to evolve. It stands solidly on it’s own.  I predict that someday it will be revered in the same light as the Conshelf or Scubapro MK5 with the same adamant supporters still in use decades after it was introduced.

Rubber Dub Dub.......VDH Timeline Page Three

VDH Timeline Part Three

Luis and I were talking the other day and he brought up that VDH had been going for more than a decade now a thought it might be nice to share some of the highlights for all the new double hose divers out there who have not been around since day one. My plan is to cover a few things at a time and post them on the message forum so those with a better memory than mine can share some insight and give some other interesting bits of information.

As with many projects we start this one started to snowball and the momentum it was gaining gave me confidence that I should pursue other items for the double hosers.

I had started rebuilding quite a few regulators but was EXTREMELY frustrated with the final product because so much was lacking in what I could do with the right parts.

Regulators were rebuilt with new parts inside but the ancillary parts were still original. Main diaphragms were 50 years old and the rubber had lost most of it’s flexibility. Mouthpiece valves were about the same or had been replaced with pieces of inner tube screwed into the wagon wheels. Duckbills were available as replacement parts SOMETIMES…..I didn’t and still don't like to be at the mercy of someone else when working on something.  I was turning out regulators that were like V8’s with two plug wires missing.  They worked much better than they did before service but still were way below their potential.

First things I tackled were Duckbills and Mouthpiece valves…...Little did I know there was a HUGE learning curve when making parts from rubber….I was still trying to duplicate the original and not thinking forward to improving what was there.

In my ignorance I made some pencil drawings of mouthpiece valves and provided dimensions as best I could and started asking for quotes from suppliers I could find through Thomas Registry.

This turned into a whole other nightmare of questions I was not smart enough to answer...What durometer do you want?  What is the shrinkage factor? What is acceptable sidewall deflection etc etc…...Engineers like Luis answer stuff like this in their sleep but I had NO CLUE what to tell the manufactures.

So I gathered up a few of the very best valves I could get my hands on and sent them to people that offered to bid….Once again I learned you can’t just send in a part and say “Make it just like this or better”  …..The ones that would use the samples charged a large fee to Reverse Engineer the valves before quoting….I finally bit the bullet and paid a company to dissect the mouthpiece valves and reproduce them. And as it turned out I got a reproduction of the same flat valve that had been used for 50 years and along with it, the same failures as they had….They deformed easily, didn’t last that long and the sealing was marginal. BUT they were new and fit the wagon wheels correctly and were much better than crusty old valves.

Duckbills…. At the same time I had contracted with a company who build rubber molding for the auto industry outside of Detroit to reproduce them. They were using a dip process similar to making a wax candle. The finished product was more flexible and much better that the crusty old ones but the finished product was plagued with inconsistency. More than a third of them were too thick OR thin in places and could not be used or sold. I confronted the company about it and was told, the waste percentage was acceptable in their opinion and if I didn’t like it, I could take my business elsewhere and they were tired of listening to my complaints…...I was basically screwed as I had already paid a small fortune for the form used to make them and was out of $$$ to go anything else.

The ones that were ok worked fine and I had NEW duckbills to put in customers regulators.

Duckbill in the picture is a new one..I don’t have an example of one of my first efforts. The black valve is one of my first and the clear one is an example of my first silicone valve.

Main Diaphragm…… I can’t take credit for the initial legwork on these as Ryan Spence from Flashback Scuba had given me a couple of examples he had made from clear Silicone and some contacts with a company willing to build them….Thank you Ryan!

Note: Never tell a manufacture that you are building parts for SCUBA or life support equipment as 99% of them will run like you poured boiling oil on them…..

My venture with the company he suggested bore fruit right from the start...They did indeed make the silicone section of the diaphragm but the challenge was correcting the outer edge of them. All the examples I had were USED and had been compressed in cans for 50 plus years and when the drawing was made it reflected this…...Unfortunately I had already paid 5k for the mold and the revisions to get it right cost me half again as much.

Second issue was getting the center discs made….A supplier for the stainless disc was no problem but finding someone who still had BROWN phenolic material to duplicate the single stage diaphragms was impossible…..I was listening to too many “Experts” in the double hose world telling me that if the parts were not exactly like the originals that no one would buy them….

My vendor had sheet after sheet of phenolic material but it was yellow...I finally bit the bullet and had them made and hoped that they were accepted by the end user.

The sample diaphragms were fantastic and you could easily measure the benefit in lowering the work of breathing with a magnehelic. I was ecstatic to say the least!  Once they produced the first 200 diaphragm discs I had to use adhesive to attach the center disc in each one of them and then put a weight on top to hold it in place for 48 hours.  So my house had folding tables setup all around and smelled like solvent for weeks while I let the adhesive for the center disc cure.

Three more revisions to the reproduction diaphragm have been made since the beginning and each has improved regulator performance...The above shows various samples and revisions.