Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
Halcyon’s single walled wing leaked air through the seams because they didn’t fuse the seams correctly and didn’t do something correctly with the internal urethane coating, according to Patrick of Oxycheq. Patrick actually had the best single walled wing of the era with his Razor series wings. In fact, there are many of them still in service still to this day. They are eagerly sought after down in Socal by a certain group of lobster divers. In fact, I just fit one to a Freedom Plate for a guy in my shop recently. I don’t remember Tobins single walled wing. If it was anything like the Halcyon version with leaking seams then I doubt there are any still in service.I can see the $50 for changing a bladder on a LCD wing as being somewhat profitable, but when Tobin wrote the steps to replacing the bladder on the Torus line, I could see it was a big time dump and probably unprofitable. You could not just hire someone to do that, you needed someone skilled. I agree with you there is no point for that design.
You may have forgotten, but Tobin did produce a single wall wing at the same time as Oxycheq and Halcyon. It was abandoned pretty quickly. In fairness, Oxycheq and Halcyon also abandoned the design. There was a thread years ago from an instructor from the Far East (I think Japan) that used the single wall wing for his dive school. They fell apart relatively quickly. The instructor posted photos, I don't remember Tobin's response.
I think the only company that still sells single wall wings is UTD, except for the Express Tech wing. I believe Apeks discontinued the WTX-3 model here in the US. Halcyon has a single wall wing but I think you need to purchase the package.
FYI, most or all jacket and back inflate BC’s are single walled and they seem to hold up just fine.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with a good single walled wing. They are simple in construction, they are light and flexible, they pack really well, and they are repairable, not a pretty repair but a repair none the less.