New England Divers single hose regulator

[nikeajax]

John-S, good idea, I'll check it out next time I go to the hardware store: but judging by the image the spring looks like it's too thick, but who knows, eh?

JB

[waldenwalrus]

give me the measurements and I will mic out the springs on my old faucet, or better still I will mic the springs and post the measurements 

[waldenwalrus]

the delta faucet spring measurements noted in picture below 

www.flickr.com/photos/40156377@N07/41704249035/in/dateposted-public/

[SeaRat]

The spring is only there to hold the seat in place when there is no pressure, so it will lock up when pressure is applied (from Fred Roberts). The strength of the spring is not too relevant to its function.

John

[cnotthoff]

I know those faucet seat springs. They are far too strong for a tilt valve. Because the tilt-valve spring is only there to hold the seat in place when there is no pressure, they won't let the valve tilt to open if they are too strong,. The strength of a tilt-valve spring is closer to that found in a ball-point pen.

I've checked my drawers for older style conical springs for a tilt-valve. All I have are the modern version from TUSA. The new ones are not conical so they can wander a tad off center in the old style inlet fitting.

Good Luck,
Charlie

[vance]

Thanks for looking Charlie! I think a washery or a sleevy type thingy could be made to hold them in place better with a cylindrical spring. But it might be easier to bend a spring like this one on ebay. They are about the right size:

[SeaRat]

Jun 4, 2018 5:12:59 GMT -8 waldenwalrus said:

This is not a post about the NED regulator, it is about NED and my memories of it. I apologize if I have a few facts wrong please correct any if you know they are not right.

I haven’t been diving as long as SeaRat (perhaps nobody has, he may have been the first to have a Dive Flag bumper sticker on his covered wagon , but acquiring a New England Divers DH regulator pleases me a lot. I have lived in Massachusetts since I was 7 and my father was a diver starting in about 1960 in central Ohio. When we moved to Massachusetts in 1965 NED was one of the first weekend trips for my brothers and I so my father could get some new gear for the ocean and an upcoming trip to Florida.
Back then NED was located pretty much on the harbor front of Beverly, MA. As I remember the store was possibly a repurposed two-family home. It had a pool on the ground floor and the showroom per se was a series of hallways and small rooms. I remember posters of Sean Connery and the upcoming movie “Thunderball” posted all around. I also remember seeing lots of spearguns for sale and we thought they were so cool. There was only one other store at the time around here and it didn’t have the stock that NED had.

The other memorable thing that always made the trip there worthwhile was the pet piranha they had in the tank there. Holding your finger up to the tank and watching him try to bite it through the glass was great fun. I remember a Sea Hunt episode when Mike Nelson runs into a school of piranha and was glad he had his wetsuit on so they couldn’t bite through it. I am not sure if that was true but it was Sea Hunt and it was still cool. I won’t be testing that theory.

I got my first snorkeling set there, I think it was a Dolphin Brand kit. The fins had molded eyelets and a place to slice the foot pocket to add laces when you out grew them (they became my little brothers before that happened) also an oval mask with real glass that was clear, not orange and plastic like so many others of that era. The snorkel was a basic J with round rubber bite posts, which I haven’t seen on any snorkel since. That set got a lot of use until I out grew it.

I didn’t get certified until about 1975 when I was 17. At that point there were several dive stores in the area, so the 50 mile trip to Beverly wasn’t needed. NED moved at some point to Tozer Road in Beverly to a bigger facility. Unfortunately I never made it there before it went out of business. It is very hard to run a dive store in this area, especially away from the coast. NED was a big outfit and probably was the equivalent of Abercrombie and Fitch back when they were hunting/fishing and safari outfitters. They rebadged a lot of gear with their label, as it was a very well respected name in the diving community.

We are pretty much back to just a handful of Dive Shops in the area. A few more bit the dust in the past few years. Hopefully they will survive and thrive. It will be tough to get air on line.

I hope to get the time to get my NED rebadged Hydro Twin II soon and start using it. I have a DA with a Phoenix that I like a lot and a Voit Trieste that breaths OK but not great. It will be interesting to see how a stock Hydro Twin II will stack up against the Phoenix.

Good Luck in restoring the NED single hose. The NED name is a respected name and did a lot for the sport diving industry.  It's good to keep the name around and in use.

John

I actually bought a lot of stuff from New England Divers in the 1970s.



I bought my Aquala dry suit from them, I think.

John

[nikeajax]

Phil, I wonder if you lifted that decal, would say Orca underneath it? I'm not say look either, jus' somthin' to think 'bout is all

JB

[vance]

Jun 8, 2018 14:39:18 GMT -8 nikeajax said:

Phil, I wonder if you lifted that decal, would say Orca underneath it? I'm not say look either, jus' somthin' to think 'bout is all

JB

Was there a tilt valve Orca? My first post mentioned the resemblance.

BTW, I found a tee for my Malibu Diver. Now alls I need is the spring!

[nikeajax]

No, there wasn't, but I know these were built by SW/WL... According to the catalogs on the VDH, the Orca was from 1964. Until we can see a NED catalog from at least '64, I'm going to assume that the reg you have is a mix-and-match of on-hand parts that SW chunked together for an utterly bullet-proof reg that was very economical, like the HW Scuba Star. I know people like to poo-poo the Scuba Star, but the US Diver Deepstar-I was their own version of it: nuff said?

JB

[vance]

I've been practicing spring making. I need a spring for the tilt valve on my NED single hoser. It is a cone shaped compression spring which both puts tension on the tilt valve and holds the valve centered on the seat. That part is crucial and requires the spring to be pretty exact in the way it fits over the tilt valve and fits in the hose bore.

I made a couple from pen springs because I started working on them on Sunday (today) and the hobby shop is closed until Tuesday. Pen springs are too light, but it's good practice. My first one was made out of a paperclip, so pen springs are a bit of an improvement, functionally . But the pen springs don't have enough strength to hold the seat in place and I get a leak after a few breaths.

I really need .020 piano wire. I had a spring that is about the right thickness wire, but the wrong shape, which I pulled straight-ish to use the wire for a new spring. That worked ok, but it's hard to reshape the coils when they are already sorta set. The spring I made works, though. 

Here's a couple of pictures of first attempts:

These are the first couple I made. The paperclip one is on the left. The other has too many coils, since I was trying to give it a bit more tension. But, I made a couple more and I'm getting better. I now close the ends with 2-3 tight coils. The bent in loop at the big end keeps the big end from engaging the threads on the hose.




The little things are hella hard to hold on to while working them, and I spend more time crawling around on my hands and knees looking for them than I do working on them. They're only about 1/4" high and 1/4" around at the big end.

[vance]

Here's the final version made with .020 spring wire. Works great!

[seabob]

Jun 8, 2018 11:01:07 GMT -8 SeaRat said:

Jun 4, 2018 5:12:59 GMT -8 waldenwalrus said:

This is not a post about the NED regulator, it is about NED and my memories of it. I apologize if I have a few facts wrong please correct any if you know they are not right.

I haven’t been diving as long as SeaRat (perhaps nobody has, he may have been the first to have a Dive Flag bumper sticker on his covered wagon , but acquiring a New England Divers DH regulator pleases me a lot. I have lived in Massachusetts since I was 7 and my father was a diver starting in about 1960 in central Ohio. When we moved to Massachusetts in 1965 NED was one of the first weekend trips for my brothers and I so my father could get some new gear for the ocean and an upcoming trip to Florida.
Back then NED was located pretty much on the harbor front of Beverly, MA. As I remember the store was possibly a repurposed two-family home. It had a pool on the ground floor and the showroom per se was a series of hallways and small rooms. I remember posters of Sean Connery and the upcoming movie “Thunderball” posted all around. I also remember seeing lots of spearguns for sale and we thought they were so cool. There was only one other store at the time around here and it didn’t have the stock that NED had.

The other memorable thing that always made the trip there worthwhile was the pet piranha they had in the tank there. Holding your finger up to the tank and watching him try to bite it through the glass was great fun. I remember a Sea Hunt episode when Mike Nelson runs into a school of piranha and was glad he had his wetsuit on so they couldn’t bite through it. I am not sure if that was true but it was Sea Hunt and it was still cool. I won’t be testing that theory.

I got my first snorkeling set there, I think it was a Dolphin Brand kit. The fins had molded eyelets and a place to slice the foot pocket to add laces when you out grew them (they became my little brothers before that happened) also an oval mask with real glass that was clear, not orange and plastic like so many others of that era. The snorkel was a basic J with round rubber bite posts, which I haven’t seen on any snorkel since. That set got a lot of use until I out grew it.

I didn’t get certified until about 1975 when I was 17. At that point there were several dive stores in the area, so the 50 mile trip to Beverly wasn’t needed. NED moved at some point to Tozer Road in Beverly to a bigger facility. Unfortunately I never made it there before it went out of business. It is very hard to run a dive store in this area, especially away from the coast. NED was a big outfit and probably was the equivalent of Abercrombie and Fitch back when they were hunting/fishing and safari outfitters. They rebadged a lot of gear with their label, as it was a very well respected name in the diving community.

We are pretty much back to just a handful of Dive Shops in the area. A few more bit the dust in the past few years. Hopefully they will survive and thrive. It will be tough to get air on line.

I hope to get the time to get my NED rebadged Hydro Twin II soon and start using it. I have a DA with a Phoenix that I like a lot and a Voit Trieste that breaths OK but not great. It will be interesting to see how a stock Hydro Twin II will stack up against the Phoenix.

Good Luck in restoring the NED single hose. The NED name is a respected name and did a lot for the sport diving industry.  It's good to keep the name around and in use.

John

I actually bought a lot of stuff from New England Divers in the 1970s.



I bought my Aquala dry suit from them, I think.

John

[seabob]

The New England Divers info brings back memories. I was living in Peabody, MA and certified by NED in 1967 still have a photo copy of my card. My original was in my wallet when it was stolen in Cozumel in the 80's. Bought a gold label Healthways reg, "sharkskin" beaver tail wet suit and a DOXA "Black Lung" watch. Actually Dad did I was only 15.