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Have you seen scuba diving? Calm, comfortable, and serene? Usually it's done in a neoprene wetsuit, that water can flow in and out of, but mostly stays in place getting heated by your body, making a thermal boundary around you, keeping you warm.
You can go theoretically go diving in any water that isn't frozen. But as it gets cold, not in a wetsuit. So, with the help of some NASA technology, you can go "drysuit" diving. Literally what it sounds like, you wear thick warm fleece pajamas under a suit that simply no water ever enters. Basically, you're in a giant waterproof bag sealed full of air, warm dry and comfortable, with a huge set of weights to take you and all that air under water.
The trouble is a matter of buoyancy. When you're out in the water, swimming, you have to stay perfectly horizontal. If you don't, all the air in the bubble bunches up on one side or the other, both leaving the rest of you pinched into a vacuum bag and directly against the cold water, and the top part of you wants to rise towards the surface. Sometimes you can't manage to re-tilt yourself, or you're suddenly upside down, and you go into vertical runaway, faster and faster rising to the surface.
There's no reason why drysuits are big uncomfortable pinchy airbubbles, and not double-walled inflatable heavens. Vertical runaway is a completely avoidable problem (keep the air from collecting in one place!). Kill suit squeez!
Borrowing techniques from inflatable kitemaking, especially with the donated expertise of zeroprestige and Pete Lynn, I thought I'd try my hand at building my own double-walled, bladdered drysuit.
Without further ado, the double walled-drysuit, as invented by me!
You can go theoretically go diving in any water that isn't frozen. But as it gets cold, not in a wetsuit. So, with the help of some NASA technology, you can go "drysuit" diving. Literally what it sounds like, you wear thick warm fleece pajamas under a suit that simply no water ever enters. Basically, you're in a giant waterproof bag sealed full of air, warm dry and comfortable, with a huge set of weights to take you and all that air under water.
The trouble is a matter of buoyancy. When you're out in the water, swimming, you have to stay perfectly horizontal. If you don't, all the air in the bubble bunches up on one side or the other, both leaving the rest of you pinched into a vacuum bag and directly against the cold water, and the top part of you wants to rise towards the surface. Sometimes you can't manage to re-tilt yourself, or you're suddenly upside down, and you go into vertical runaway, faster and faster rising to the surface.
There's no reason why drysuits are big uncomfortable pinchy airbubbles, and not double-walled inflatable heavens. Vertical runaway is a completely avoidable problem (keep the air from collecting in one place!). Kill suit squeez!
Borrowing techniques from inflatable kitemaking, especially with the donated expertise of zeroprestige and Pete Lynn, I thought I'd try my hand at building my own double-walled, bladdered drysuit.
Without further ado, the double walled-drysuit, as invented by me!
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Signing UpStep 1Materials
Knife
Scissors
Kite Bladders (or sheet urethane and air valves)
Scissors
Kite Bladders (or sheet urethane and air valves)
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