Some thoughts on Hydroglove suits.

[David Wilson]

The Skooba-totes suit, on which the Hydroglove is based, began as a simple two-piece, waist-entry suit in 1958 but acquired a line of accessories over the decade or so it remained in production. One of these accessories was a waist ring and rail, illustrated in the image of the Skooba-totes flyer in my previous message. The caption there reads:

Some divers insist on this hard rubber rail and stretchy ring for sealing pants and shirt on waist entry suit. Rail has stainless spring steel prong.

My mid-1960s Submarine Products catalogue features a green version of the Skooba-totes, imported from the US to the UK, offering as an accessory a "Rubber tube waist seal":

Super stretch rubber tube held with a wooden dowel. Can easily be altered to fit any waist size.

So far as I am aware, the Skooba-totes never came with a waist band, or cummerbund, like the Hydroglove, but cummerbunds were certainly a feature of the British-made Siebe-Gorman frogman suits of the mid-1950s and the Siebe-Heinke Dip Suit of the early 1960s.



So all the seal improvement methods suggested by Hydroglove are historically authentic responses to the problem of leaky waist seals back then.

 

[Hydroglove]

This time I wore a dry suit hood over the top of the HG hood. This both kept me warm and it seemed to help seal the hood.I wore two fleece pullovers underneath and the collars remained dry through both dives.

In older dive books the issue of a thin rubber hood and its dangers in diving have been covered well. I trust that you wear some kind of liner between you and the latex hood? I understand that an ill fitting hood will make for issues in a proper seal. Unfortunately making a molded suit in sizes to fit everyone to a tee is a daunting task of it's own.

I would like to know if you are using some kind of thermal hood under the hood of the Hydroglove suit and then a neoprene hood over it? I must admit that I must have lucked out as I do not experience trouble with my face seal. I use the foam under hood from Viking as it helps the hood fit snug to my face. I can surface swim in pretty much any position with out the suit venting.

Another issue is ballast. Not being out to offend anyone but with a "regular" pneumatic inflated suit and a B.C. a dive with a few extra pounds of lead on you can be adjusted with a push of a button. I suspect the old way was to pay much closer attention to your lead belt. For what it is worth I have two lead belts that I use depending on the amount of thermals worn on the dive. I also tend to dive a bit lite ( at least for the first 10 feet ) if I'm planning on going deep on the dive. That way once back on the surface just a modest amount of air in the suit keeps one afloat and no venting issues to speak of.

Bill

 

[elmer fudd]

I've got a good deal of hair right now, so I haven't really found it necessary to wear anything under the Hydroglove hood and the drysuit hood on the outside provides thermal protection. Combined with an old oval mask, I find that I can add air easily and I don't have any problems with ear squeeze, particularly if I encircle the mask with my hands while exhaling. That combined with my body being at a general downward angle makes adding air easy enough that I see no real necessity for a modern fill valve.

The vintage mask really seems to work much better with this suit because it pushes harder against my upper lip. When I exhale through my nose the air naturally tends to exit around my temples and into the suit. With my modern silicone mask I found filling the suit in this manner to be harder. The modern mask has more of a tendency for the air to exit at the bottom of the mask.

Dumping air is another matter though. I'm trying to figure out a good period correct dump valve, but I haven't perfected that yet.

I started by taking the fill tube from a Mae West and fitting it to the inside wrist of the suit. This allowed me to orally inflate the suit and to dump air by simply pulling the valve open.

I found that orally adding air was a nice feature, because you can air up your suit for your surface swim and with a drysuit hood over the HG hood the air doesn't dump so easily that you lose it all when you roll on your back.

Unfortunately, while it dumped air reasonably well, it also leaked water down my arm. I didn't quite understand why this was happening my first dive and I decided to improve on it some more. I removed the manual valve and added a duckbill. This dumped air better, but man did I ever get wet.

I intend to modify things again, but my next plan is to fit a duckbill on an angled tube facing downward at the wrist. This way gravity should prevent water from flowing in when the valve is open and venting air.

 

[duckbill]

I would think a round tube under the wrist seal would let a bunch of water in around it.

 

[elmer fudd]

I didn't put it under the wrist seal. I cut a dime sized hole about 2.5" away from the wrist seal, on the inside left forearm, passed the tube through the hole and then glued everything in place with Aquaseal.

 

[BilgeRat57]

I got my Hydroglove a few weeks back. I tried it at first in a pool unheated. Using a pony tank I was able to stay down easily. I practiced adding air thru the mask and hood, that was easy too. While hovering a foot off the bottom, I tried bleeding the air thru the sleeve. That took a little more since I was wearing regular 3mm dive gloves. I was able to get rid of air thru the sleeve but with some fiddling around. I was thinking of using Apecks cuff dumps, but got a lot of info about leaking, low profile cuff dumps. I asked my buddy, whom owns a dive shop, if he had a few to spare so I can experiment. He didn't have complete ones. Sure had a lot of low profile cuff dumps from other people's suits. I am thinking, wouldn't a dump valve from an old BC work better? I know about doing it manual as opposed to cuff dump auto/manual override. Also I have used my rear dumps on my back-inflate BC and have not gotten any water in the BC. I plan on using mine with my dive boots. And yes the waist band is great. I never got a drop of water in my suit no matter how hard I rolled around. Someone mentioned installing suspenders. I like that and will do. Plus a surgical hose ring for the waist..like that too. I do plan on using my BC with it.