Turtle fin foot pocket insert?

[LG Diver]

Hello. I posted this question in the "fins" section as well, in a slightly more generic form so I apologize for the double post.

I just bought a pair of turtles to use with my DUI rockboots. I'd like to be able to use them when diving wet also, so I can use one pair of fins for both situations and get rid of the split fins. Do you have any good ideas how to do this? The owner of the LDS that I got the fins from says that when he used the turtles 30 years ago they used to come with foot pocket inserts to adapt the foot pocket to different size boots, but he hasn't seen these in years. Are foot pocket inserts still available in order to use wetsuit boots with turtle fins?

Thanks,
John

 

[XS Scuba]

Hi John:
The Turtle fin has a long history. Originally, this was a product of Imperial (a past manufacturer of drysuits). BTW: the "turtle" was the logo of Imperial. In those days it was sold with multiple sizes of inserts which allowed the Turtle fin to be "shimmed" to fit many sizes of feet. At some point Imperial went away and International Divers (IDI) ended up with ownership of the fin. During the change of ownership the tooling to manufacture the inserts were "lost." It was of little concern as the shims were not well accepted as a method for sizing down the fin. The Turtle fin continued with IDI until a couple of years ago when XS Scuba purchased the assets of IDI from a Wells Fargo public auction. To answer your question the shims are no longer available.

Hello. I posted this question in the "fins" section as well, in a slightly more generic form so I apologize for the double post.

I just bought a pair of turtles to use with my DUI rockboots. I'd like to be able to use them when diving wet also, so I can use one pair of fins for both situations and get rid of the split fins. Do you have any good ideas how to do this? The owner of the LDS that I got the fins from says that when he used the turtles 30 years ago they used to come with foot pocket inserts to adapt the foot pocket to different size boots, but he hasn't seen these in years. Are foot pocket inserts still available in order to use wetsuit boots with turtle fins?

Thanks,
John

 

[LG Diver]

Thanks Mike! I'm always fascinated by the history of things as seemingly mundane as fins. Too bad about the shims not being available any more.

 

[David P]

Actually I was just playing with this yesterday in my pool. I used the shims from my split fins and shoved them in the turtle pockets. One shim each worked ok, but two shims make them fit perfect. You may need more shims as I wear a size 15/16 shoe...maybe a piece of 7mil neoprene