I’ll keep this short and sweet, following on from the new socks I fitted to my other drysuit, I needed to fit a new neck seal to my crewsaver. It’s the cheaper of the two and my backup, so didn’t mind having a go myself.
First off was to find a suitable jig.
No jokes about the KKK, please
This gave me the best fit for both the suit and neck seal as both could be fitted tightly and i could suspend it fom the ceiling to allow me to work around it.
The required ingredients and tools were sorted.
Next I taped off the the areas to be glued using masking tape doubled over so I could roll the seal upwards and hold it in place. The adhesive is applied and left to go off.
Note that I fiited the seal while both the suit and seal were inside out.
Next it was a simple matter of rolling the neck seal onto the suit. I used both the rollers in the picture above and my fingers to make sure that all the air was expelled and good fit achieved.
I then wanted to tape both the inside and outside joins to give me an extra seal.
The suit was turned right side out again and I taped off an area round the whole neck roughly the width of the tape that would allow me to apply the adhesive generously without messing the suit and seal. This is not necessary, but not only does it offer an additional seal, it gives a nicer finish
The tape was applied and using my fingers only, I worked around the tape making sure it was a good seal.This was reapeated on the inside aswell.
The finished article
This was much harder than fitting the socks, due to the fact that the suit would gather in little rolls while hanging on the cone.
If I was doing it again, I’d probably try to attach the new seal to the existing one(which I could have done as the tear didn’t go the whole way down to the suit). This would have allowed me to strecth the latex tightly on both the nect seal and existing part on the suit, which would have given me a much smoother surface to work on.
As a finishing touch I’m gonna apply a thin layer of aquasure(when it arrives) to the outside eges of the tape(on the outside of the suit). This again should offer better waterproffing, but also help prevent the tape from trying to peel away if caught on something when adorning.
I hope this helps if anyone else is thinking of attempting.
I’ll let you know if its good when when it warms up a little.
Noel
