Quiet here ...........

I've been busy using up my steel stockpile, building a small CNC plasma table, now nearing completion.

I"m cutting out Targets in AR400F for a customer North of me and just south of Canada. He has been shoveling snow and scraping ice left and right. He ordered the targets and then mentioned - have to wait for the snow to melt to use them - don't hurry. Money in bank - they are going next week. Maybe he can set the black ones out in white snow for high contrast.

But then not much business this year. Working on a job at the College if they get going - slow over there as well.

Mart> Anyone working on anything? I'm stacking up metal and waiting for spring,

I am building some specialty antenna mounting hardware for an installation. Cold rolled steel rems are still bringing $1.45 / lb here in Phoenix (50 pound sale). In December it was $1.99, so it's better, but still pretty high.

BobH

I'm refurbishing an old meat smoker. Today I took a cast iron turkey fryer cooker burner and sawed it in two parts and tapped each part 3/4NPTF so I can run a 3/4" pipe through a closely-fitting hole in the firebox, and use the burner to achieve a propane conversion if I like, or just a firewood starter if I like.

I'll be welding up some food racks real soon here.

And I am just finishing a Mk III cart for my small MIG welder.

GWE

Not building much right now.

I did just list a bunch of stuff on eBay for the Divers Institute. An old ROV, some big air tools and some old underwater camera gear.

You can do a search on seller diversinstituteoftechnology

I think the ROV could be a lot of fun for a tech school with a robotics program.

If I ever hit that damn LOTTO, I'm going to buy a full Mk V outfit. I should have bought the movie prop from the John Wayne movie, Wake of the Red Witch, IIRC, as it sold for a lot less than I thought it would. It was a prop, but it was still a Navy Mk V, just inoperable. We all got to dive the full Mk V one time in diving school just to see what it was like compared to today's gear. Like the difference between driving a D9 Cat and a Maserati. Came very close to getting to dive a Newt Suit and Jim Suit, but failed the final cut.

For those who are scratching and wondering what we are talking about:

Steve

Did pick up some scrounge, about 20 telephone poles from ten to twenty feet apiece. Am going to build my grandsons an observation tower.

Steve

We try to let the students dive the Mark V, but we have trouble keeping the equipment working. You can buy new suits from China, where they still use the Mark V for inland and ship's husbandry work. A Mark V is basically a glorified bucket over your head with an air hose stuffed up inside.

And NEVER get your feet higher than your head!

I think one by one, the Mk V's are being corralled in museums.

Steve

How could you with the mega-ton of lead attached to them?

It's probably better that way. That stainless Gorski? is pretty dang nice.

"Pete C." wrote

It is possible if you get past horizontal, and your sealed feet start to fill up with air. The out port will then be on the bottom of a fastly inflating balloon. It has and does happen. If your suit doesn't explode on your fast trip to the surface, you will have other injuries from too rapid of an ascent.

Steve

Well, that's regular dry suit fare, however in a dry suit you normally don't have all that weight attached to your feet like you do in the Mk V.

--Have been mooey sick for over a week; just now getting my 'sea legs' back under me. Have been waiting to use a homebrew HVLP rig to tune brass pipes. Once they're tuned I've gotta take another whack at TIG brazing. I'm thinking if I time things right Ernie will be here when I'm doing it.. ;-)

Well, Pete. You will just have to trust me on this one. It can and has been done. Called a blowup.

Steve

If we ever sold all the Mark V's we have at DIT we could pay off all our debt we incurred by building the new classroom buildings.

Supposedly we have one really rare one that is worth over $30,000.

If you over inflate your suite you can shoot to the surface or invert. You can fit a LOT of air in a Mark V suit.

The problem we have with the Gorski's is that they require higher air pressure, 165 to 180 PSI. Our current dock air pressure is 150 PSI so the Gorski's are hard to breathe in. On our deep dive boat, they run the pressure higher so the Gorski's are happy. The good side of the Gorski is that it is very new to the market and you can buy them off the shelf.

Kirby Morgan's new 77 is also ceramic shell cast stainless, like the Gorski, but they have a 6 month waiting list for them, and they just had to recall a few hundred of them due to rust spots appearing.

Hard to believe sometimes that I am NOT a diver.

3-1/2 years at DIT and I have learned way more about this industry than I had ever planned on.

Not even recreational???

Don't know why I hadn't noticed the divers here before.... Anyway, fortunately (I guess) I think I'm now too old and weak to ever consider trying to clamber into a Mk5, let alone get up and down a ladder with the lead boots on. Every time I see one on display at a show it always seems to be 80 degrees F and thanks, but I don't want to try that on right now.

I've done the air in the feet of a dry suit trick - ONCE ! I came up kinda quick from maybe only about 80ft., but it was enough to learn from - and survive. It isn't just the feet, once the legs start to fill it becomes real easy to get tipped head down - and after that it just gets worse. I've seen ankle vents, but I think it is another one of those problems that it is better to avoid than to solve.

Back in the 70's I was heavily involved in sport diving and the Posieden Unisuit was "the" drysuit. The group I used to dive with had a variety of people and one was a really obnoxious woman who was an instructor. She pesetered and pestered a guy in the group to let her try his drysuit at the local dive site. Finally the owner relented and let her use it. She got her feet high and ballooned to the surface where she flailed around with her fins in the air. Her dive buddy towed her back to shore with her feet flailing away. Kinda took the wind out of her sails.

I seriously considered taking up commercial diving at that time, but the MTBF seemed pretty low for a career.

BobH