A New Horse Collar

[OystrPir8]

Thought you guys might like to see my new Horse Collar. I just had it made as a prototype.



I call it the "Protégé" - with the idea that the design came from the masters of the past with a few added customizations for the present & future. The French is a nod to the Cousteau, Dugan, Dumas, Flaco, Piccard crowd and the world they introduced us to.

Mainly I added a few D-rings (avert your eyes if they make you sick) to hold your octo & light, etc., removed the CO2 port , and added a second over-pressure valve on the back side - so you can bleed off air while swimming prone. It also has a roomy pocket for collectors or for those who carry a lot of gadgets and reflective tape for heightened viability at night or in murky water. I'd love to hear your input! I am thinking about puting in a run of these if anyone might be interested.

Robb

[SeaRat]

Robb,

That is a great-looking BC. Tell me who you got to make this BC, please. I would like to get newer versions of my Para-Sea BC design made, as mine are getting worn, so I would like a few new ones. Some here have expressed an interest in trying one out too. So maybe we could do something just a bit different, and come up with a brand new design. I'll share with you the specifics on the BC design I have.

Thanks,

John

[duckbill]

Robb,
That is a great looking horsecollar, and it does have the vintage look, IMO. Pretty neat you were able to find someone to make it who even knew that a "horsecollar" is dive gear!

[nemrod]

I like it. It is much like the SeaTec that is still being made. The pocket is a nice addition, I would like to see the inflator hose a good bit shorter.

Here is a pic of my Dacor dual bladder SeaChute. The upper bladder is CO2 and oral inflation, the lower bladder is also oral or power inflator. The lower bag being the bouyancy compensator places the "lift" under your center of mass aloowing the diver to remain horozontal in the water much like the modern wing designs accomplish. The standard hosecollar tends to cause the diver to rotate feet down resulting in silting and inefficient propulsion. These Dacor vests enjoyed a brief popualrity with cave divers and early "tech" divers. The lower bladder is about 15 pounds lift and the upper an additional 15 pounds. Both have a manual dump valve that has a finger grab to make venting easy. One thing not readily apparent is that the power inflator is split from the oral/dump valve. This allows the LP hose to route under the left arm and directly to the power inflator. The oral inflate/dump valve is in the end of the corrugated hose thus making iit light and eliminating the complication of a long LP hose. It also has a large pocket. I have toyed with the idea of having some new ones made but don't really know how to go about it. It is as far as I am concerned the most advanced of it's breed. I am pretty sure I bought this thing in 1974 at a shop I briefly worked at but at least one vintage diver says they did not come out until 1976. That could be but is not what I remember.

Jsmes

[OystrPir8]

yes - I could stand to have the hose a bit shorter as well. That thar is a pretty advanced horse collar you've got. So there is an upper and a lower bladder? The power inflate mechanism seems a bit unconventional and expensive to duplicate but I like the idea of being able to distribute air to different compartments to affect your trim!

The Sea tec is still being made? Why have I been unable to find it? Do you have a link?

[nemrod]

Well, about the Seatec, I assumed it was still made.

www.amronintl.com/tactical/products.cfm?id=267

The power inflator is not complicated. Early BCs were strictly manual inflate with a push valve that you placed in your mouth and pushed and blew and vented by depressing it with your fingers when held over head.

You cannot put air into the upper bladder except via the small oral inflator or the CO2 cartridge. This upper bag was only used for surface floatation and emergency use only. The lower bladder did all the BC work. One odd charaterisitic was that with heavy tanks on your back and air in the bladder it induced a rolling tendency. Nothing hard to control but noticeable that you tended to turtle. Thing is that usually, if you were weighted correctly, very little air would have to be introduced. This BC allows a horozontal swimming position not possible with the standard horsecollar--just like a wing. You cannot see them but it also has two small D rings on the back. In event of lower bladder failure air could be put into the upper bladder orally and the large manual vent allowed easy venting. This was a safety aspect for cave diving so that no matter what you had a BC to keep you up on the ceiling and not down on the bottom silting the passage up. Or, lol, that is the way we considered it anyways regardless of the original intent by Dacor.

I should point something out for historical accuracy, I being a tinkerer even back in the beginning took the single piece power inflator and sawed it in half. The original inflator had the oral inflator as part of the power section but was easily cut free thus allowing me to mount the power inflator at the lower bag and place the oral inflator on the end of the corrugated hose. This was not really my invention, a famous (not a name dropper here) and well known and now deceased cave diver that I met and dove with a few times showed me this trick. Believe it or not but in the late 60s and early 70s two chlorox bottles and a rope were the cave diving BC of choice. (kinda like the Kemps Cow) The bottles were given a few puffs of air and then the rope placed under your belly with the jugs floating up behind you. I cannot know for sure but sometimes I wonder if somebody from Dacor saw this and it inspred this BC--just a curiosity.

(edited because I typo constantly)

James

[OystrPir8]

Great.... Now I want one of those....

[SeaRat]

OystrPir8,

If you do have the ability to produce these, then I would like you to consider my design, the Para-Sea BC. It has the advantages of the Dacor BC, with greater capacity and better distribution of the buoyancy. Here is the design:

The bottom diagrams show the difference between the Para-Sea BC and a normal, front-mount vest for keeping a diver face-up. (Drawings are from U.S. Patent #4,623,316, Nov. 18, 1986, inventor: John C. Ratliff)

The Para-Sea BC's harness is designed after parachute harnesses, and is more comfortable. There is also a four-point harness system for the scuba tank (shoulder straps, and two hip straps). It has major advantages for handicapped swimmers and divers, in that it can be put on in a sitting position. Here is a photo of it in use, showing the different force vectors:


John

[nemrod]

The horsecollar type BC went out of favor for the supposedly better integrated vest type BC that was the rage throughout out the late 70s and 80s, namely the ScubaPro Stabilizing Jacket. I have not seen them in common use since about 1980.

The horsecollar requires you to don an extra piece of equipment and remove it between dives and the jacket/vest rigs just slip on and off as an integrated unit. Improper use and fitting of the horsecollar type resulted in it lifting up under the chin also and many divers including me just don't like anything in front of them which is why I went to a wing decades ago (of course not vintage). The other thing the conventional single bag horsecolar does is that the air migrates around behind the head and this of course is what destroys static horozontal trim. BUT--BUT, there are times I still use the Dacor and it does not suffer from most of the disadvantages of the horsecolar save for the donning and doffing of another piece of gear. I find that ParaBC interesting but just like a conventional horsecollar it would cause the diver to go feet down and head up underwater imo, the only way to prevent that and promote a static/neutral horozontal underwater swimming position is with the compensating air under the belly. Unlike most horsecollars the Dacor is long in the torso allowing the black airbag portion to ride way down on the torso and it does use a four point harness sytem like a parachute--sorta. On the surface, it would roll you to a head upward or belly upward position but only with the upper chamber inflated would it actually keep the head cleanly above the water in the "lifejacket" style head back floating position--that horsecollars are so good at. In actual underwater use with typical gear, the Dacor, like a wing, puts the diver in a slightly head low and feet up position allowing easy frog kicking,helicopter turns and all that without having to do all the spastic arm waving and thrusting and constant kicking to keep the feet up and legs horozontal.

My Dacor is on it's last legs, the upper bladder has begun to come apart. I guess I will be looking for something new one day soon. Your design looks clean and simple oysterpir, what would it cost?

Nemrod

[OystrPir8]

It cost me about $160.00 to make. I like the idea of the 2 compartments! What sort of wing do you use?

My Non-vintage BC is a ScubaPro Knighthawk. I like it but I do feel engulfed in it. Too much stuff under my arms and around my shoulders. I have not tried wings. I did try a DUI back inflated BC and it kept flipping me on my face on the surface. I like the look of the SeaTec wings on the link above, but it looks like those would really be a challenge on the surface and like it would be fighting for space with a double hose reg.

As far as an extra piece of equipment, (and evern worse now with weight integration) I dont feel the need to put on everything at once. Im not into lifting an 80 lb pack (all on my shoulders) and trudging across the beach while being strangled by a 7 on 7 wetsuit & hood with enough safety gadgets dangling from me to qualify as Christmas tree.

My goal is simplicity.
I wanted the horse collar so that I could stay within the vintage style, but without the worry of brittle OP valves and questionable bladders. I have an old Dacor I got off of E bay (Not like yours, though) but the vlave crumbled after my first dive.

I would love to put together basically the ultimate BC: VERY simple, great underwater and great above. Nothing to get in your way. From what I can see it looks like some in the Tec community may have some things like that. Diving to me should feel like you are wearing as little as possible, and that you are not figting buoyancy or imbalance. I don't want to be covered in hoses or extra tanks or multiple regulators. Simple, easy and clean. Me & the water.

[Broxton Carol]

My goal is simplicity too. I usually have my weight and balance right on, so I dont need a horse collar, OR a BC. Thats the way I was taught. I got a voit horsecollar in 1972. I still use it today, if Im going out diving in the ocean, or out in a lake where its a long swim back to the shore, or boat. If I could be sure i would be right under ther dive boat all the time I would leave it off, but too many times, I get careless and drift away from everybody, and have a long swim back, in that case I mouth inflate it. Its still got the original inflation cart in it!!

[OystrPir8]

WOW! Yeah - In Monterey I just feel like a BC is pretty much a must. Plus with the 7 mil suit the buoyancy variant is pretty dramatic especially within the 30 foot range and at a safety stop I'd be pretty nervous without the extra control. I have a lot to learn from you guys about really fine tuning the buoyancy.

[nemrod]

The wing I am using is the old SeaTec I have had forever but it too is beginning to die on me. No wing is vintage but I am eclectic and dive what I like and I hate poodle jackets like the one you describe, the Knighthawk thingy. Those things are highly promoted by all the PadI retailers because they are nearly pure profit. Huge price on a piece of cloth and a bladder and a couple of D rings. The current dive market is big into those KnightHawk jackets and so called back inflate jackets with some having nearly a dozen D rings on them and all sorts of here today and gone tomorrow integrated weight systems and goofy gadjets all in black of course. Are they going to a funeral?

Shhhhhh--secret between you and me---for your non vintage diving get a wing and a back plate. Get an aluminum plate and I really like the Golem gear 35 pound wing. Rig it Hog. You can dive it double hose or gag--gag---cough--uh--single gag hose! Get yourself a BP/wing and loose the Nightyhawky poodle jacket--lol. The DSS stuff looks good but--well--never mind.

Diving vintage with a simple harness or even a horsecollar is great fun but in cold water in the olden days it must have required true grit--I don't got no cold water grit--as a Southerner it is winter when it drops below 80 degrees. I understand that a dry suit or heavy exposure protection requires some sort of BC. Most drysuis have front connections making the horsecollar problematic.

Many old horsecollars were made with a rubber impregnated or laminated cloth like the Nemrod and Fenzy units. I looked around for some material like that but not much luck so far.

James

[crimediver]

Until a couple of years ago I used to obtain military equipment for my law enforcement agency dive team under the DRMO LE surplus program. I can assure you that the Seatec horsecollar is alive and well in the military as that was the predominant brand I saw. Parts are easily obtained from Seatec dealers. Also got a bunch of DUI drysuits. All the inflator valves were located on the left thigh. I suspect that placement is ideal for a horsecollar wearer. Also a lot of the units diving that gear inflated their drysuits from argon bottles.

[nemrod]

Another curiosity about the BC, when the horsecollar BC was introduced it mostly resembled the Mae West type safety vests that had been used for years (or not used, lol) and it was apparently thought that the BC should serve as a "lifejacket" function. Thus the CO2 cartridges and prefered life jacket design that would support an unconcious diver face up on the surface. This idea persisted strongly and I was disallowed from several dive charters because of my wing type BC which would not float me face up. PadI went on one of their crusades against them and even to this day have a hard time coming to grip with a wing or back inflation unit thus all the semi vest type BCs that supposedly can maintain a head high position if inflated. But, anyways, along the way, slowly but surely, it came to be understood that the BC was a bouyancy compensator and not a life jacket--NOT a life jacket. This resulted in the CO2 cartridges going away and wider acceptance of back inflate or wings. It seems that now the main and primary purpose of the BC is not emergency surface floatation but maintaining neutral bouyancy and horozontal swimming positions. The horsecollar, the typical horsecollar, does not do this very well and this is the main reason they fell out of favor imo.

For a vintage diver we don't have much choice, it is either no BC or a Mae West vest or a horsecollar. I got this Nemrod horsecollar, no power inflator, overpressure dump only. It is orally inflated--no power inflator-- through a one inch or so corrugated hose. It oddly has no CO2 cartridge. It has a large rubber belt and crotch straps and works very well and it is bright Nemrod yellow!





Nemrod