Posted by Steve on March 19, 2001 at 21:22:45:
In Reply to: Re: "Wet steel" a no-no.....why? posted by MHK on March 19, 2001 at 12:16:28:
This subject seems to come up on the board quite often. Last week Gerry made a graph of his bouyancy and at what depth he would become negative, very well thought out stuff.
I would have to look at each setup before I would condemn someones bouyancy selection, this blanket statement of wet/steel being no good is to broad and narrow minded. I see people with AL tanks put ankle weights around the neck or tank weights on them to move lead off the belt. There are so many different types of tanks, BC's, wet and dry suit combination in addition to types of dives being conducted at different depths. Some wet/steel combo's are just fine for some dives.
"Do you penetrate wrecks??? If so you could easily puncture your bc."
Yes, a few I want to do more. Good point about the puncture, the same accident could also snag and tear a wetsuit or a drysuit. Now if a wetsuit tears it still has its bouyancy but a shell dry suit tear in addition to a BC puncture I see as a problem. If I went to 6atm and had a BC failure with my setup HP100 and dropped my lead I would be 1-2 negative. If a switched to Al tank I would be 4 positive. Big deal, either way I'm not happy not the ideal situation to be in. Either way I'm going up slow at first and then faster and faster and I've put myself in a situation where I can't make a safety sto. It seems to me that a lift bag that has a dump valve would be a better safer way to reach the surface from deep dives than ditching weight because I could make my stops along the way.
Steve