Wife wants quick release on harness

[roakey]

So let me take off my DIR hat for a moment (moderator hat's put away, too). Assuming you have a BP and wing setup, one interesting idea I saw was not actually cutting the shoulder strap, but using the QR to "gather" the shoulder strap material so you still had a continuous loop of webbing.

The problem with your post in the DIR forum is that you didn't stop with "Why no quick release?" but went on to ask about which shoulder to put it on, etc., none of which can be answered in the DIR forum since, well, it's not DIR and if we DID go on to answer your questions there, someone later might come along and get confused, thinking that QRs are DIR.

Roak

 

[Hory]

Roak,

You make a good point. We don't want to confuse the rest of the forum thinking it's DIR. Agree. I shouldn't have pursued the issue.

The idea of gathering webbing material sounds doable. Thanks for the tip and thanks to everyone for your patience.

Best,
Hory

 

[Bob3]

Never mind with the sewing, a plain old SS weightbelt buckle can be very easily added to a shoulder strap.
As a little bit of extra insurance, a slab of bicycle innertube can be slid on over it to cover the latch, allowing a few inches of tail to hang out from underneath while covering the latch from gremlins that may otherwise grab ahold of it.
It'll be less likely to have an unintended opening yet still be operable if need be.

 

[mempilot]

Just curious - how many instances have been recorded of a quick release failing on a bp harness while underwater? Can anyone give a personal experience where this happened? There seems to be hardly any pressure on the QR while underwater, but I can see it as having a lot of stress while on deck. It also seems that stitching would not just all of a sudden fail without first having shown some sort of deterioration during a pre-dive check. Webbing is extremely hard to 'break'. So is delrin nylon. That's why delrin is used in making composite pulleys that hold tremendous weight and heat. Has anyone tried to break a delrin QR? I smashed one with a hammer and it still held. The weight needed to break it went way beyond equipment weight. So what gives on the failure point? Our regs, gauges, hoses, spring straps, mask straps, and every other piece of equipment have so called failure points, but everyone gets hung up on the QR buckle.

BTW, I'm glad this thread was moved. I didn't want to post this where it first originated.

 

[mattengstrom]

A bunch of us got into this after a dive one evening, and the "failure point" argument came up. Someone made the point that quick releases can break, and that you don't see rock climbers use quick releases on their harnesses because of this.

While this is true, it's an argument that doesn't apply to diving, IMHO. Rock climbers DO fall. And when they do, that harness has to arrest their fall, and this subjects it to a load that is many times higher than the climber's body weight. In this case, quick releases are subjected to very high stresses, and their failure would result in the death of the climber.

The counter-argument to this is that your diving harness doesn't get subjected to anywhere near this level of stress. It just has to hold the tank and wing in place - it doesn't have to support a great deal of weight or resist high shock loads.

The entire argument was pretty much settled by the owner of one of the local LDSs. He's a cave diver, and before he started selling harnesses with QRs, he wanted to test them out. He used one on a dive into Ginnie Springs and, as an experiment, undid the quick release at his farthest penetration point. He then scootered the entire way back out with the QR undone, without having any major problems.

That settled it in my mind. Some people may rant against QRs, but if you want the added convenience, go for it.

 

[Albion]

There was a recent case of a diver dieing in about 10 feet of water becuase his inflator hose came loose and he sunk (he wasnt wearing fins either but thats another story), if he had quick releases he might be alive today.

 

[Bob3]

There was a recent case of a diver dieing in about 10 feet of water becuase his inflator hose came loose and he sunk (he wasnt wearing fins either but thats another story), if he had quick releases he might be alive today.

If the poor devil wasn't overweighted to begin with, things might've turned out differently too.
Back to the continous piece of webbing thing...
I've seen backplates so thin there is no way to get a decent radius on the slots. Also seen poorly finished slots, and slots missing needed chafing protection.
Some folks actually think its OK for their webbing to be fraying a little in way of their slots.
In an instance like that, a properly rigged sewn connection will be much stronger than a mediocre continous pice of rigging.
Just because it's all one piece doesn't mean it's stronger.

 

[hantzu701]

There was a recent case of a diver dieing in about 10 feet of water becuase his inflator hose came loose and he sunk (he wasnt wearing fins either but thats another story), if he had quick releases he might be alive today.

1) I have seen a quick release system for a harness made from surplus military hardware. It seems to work well, but is expensive ~ $80 per release. Given the added cost, perhaps going with a BCD instead of a bp/wing would be appropriate.

2) Albion, unless you provide a little more info about how this diver died in 10ft of water, I find it a little hard to buy your argument that quick releases would have prevented his death.

Hantzu

 

[redacted]

Being a little on the old and large side, I was having a bit of trouble getting out of my BP while floating on the surface. So I tried a SP plastic buckle first. Installed it on the lower part of the left shoulder strap. No cutting of the webbing so a failure would just result in BP strap being a couple inches longer. Used bicycle tubing to containg the short loops. End result was the buckle tended to slip a bit. Maybe SS buckle would be better but I don't think so. Next, went to the 2 inch QR, keeping the tire tube to contain the loop, and that seems to be working fine after about 50 dives. No slipping problems. Threading them on and getting it right was a bit of a trick. Probably took me 4 or 5 tries to get what I wanted.

By the way, except for a couple tests, I havn't used that QR since I installed it last summer. For some reason, the BP just seems much easier to doff than when it was new and that QR seemed so necessary. Couldn't be softened webbing and better technique.

 

[WillAbbott]

Ok, I only skimmed the tread, but heres my 2 cents.


Quick releases can be bad... I have not once seen a QR fail on a jacket/or "normal" back inflate.

I have however dove a BP/Wing with the Dive Rite Delux harness, which has a QR on the shoulder...

EVERY time I dove it, while still on the surface, without much effort it released on me, and I almost lost the whole rig. It never came undone on me at depth, but as easily as it came off at the surface, all I would have had to do is move right and it would have released underwater.

With that said, DIR or not aside, there isn't anything wrong with a QR other than the failure point. If you were to go this route, I would try and test as many harnesses as possible to find one which doesn't seem as prone to failure, as the Dive Rite one was for me...

Also a great alternative is the one Bob suggested, use a SS Weight belt buckle for the QR... it can release very quickly just like a plastic QR, but it is also a much more secure buckle, and would be easy to install into the webing, just cut, and attach the buckle, and your done.

Another option to make getting in and out easier without putting a QR in, is remove the weight belt keeper on the right shoulder strap... this will allow your wife to pull that strap looser and tighter as she gears up, but not allow a failure point underwater.

I have friends who do it this way, and I recently have done it this way, as I just can't get my right arm through when gearing up, has to do with the way my drysuit fits.