Vintage Double Hose

Ron's In-Between Vintage Collection...
- There was an "In-Between" era of sport diving between the simple black and white gear of Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt and the Modern BCD/PADI system that's so common today. It was the Cousteau TV show era, the James Bond Thunderball period, the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea show, Flipper, etc. Our friend Ron SheriffDiver has a fever for restoring and re-creating unique diving gear from that period. He brings virtually EVERYTHING with him to dive at our local dive trips. And it is quite a show to see.

Some of the Vintage Themes of Ron SheriffDiver
- My wife Jill took most of the pictures posted here (thanks Babe). Here are a few photos of Ron's vintage gear:

- Above is Ron in his James Bond Thunderball "good guys" dive gear. Red suit, white Voit Twin Tanks, Polaris reg... The red suit turns color to dark purple and then black when you go much deeper than 15 feet so it was hard to get good underwater video showing the RED color unless we stayed fairly shallow. They must have shot the movie scenes pretty shallow or with artificial light to get the red to show up.

- Above is Ron in his James Bond Thunderball "bad guys" Spectre outfit. Ron goes to extremes to get his outfits as authentic as possible.

- The UDS-1 was an attempt to commercialize the futuristic look of Jacques Cousteau's TV show divers. The UDS-1 units have been difficult to restore back into diving condition. First, getting the tanks hydrotested was the challenge. No test facilities seemed to have the right connectors. I think DiverDon found a place that could do the Hydrotest as well as the Eddy test visual. Next challenge was restoring the filler hose system. I think Herman helped with this. Then, the first stage of the regulator is integral with the triple tank manifold and that had to be figured out. The harness was replaced with an Allan Klauda creation. The USD auto inflatable horsecollar BCD was also a challenge. Ron hung in there through all of this and got the UDS-1 system up and running as good or better than they worked when brand new. The last big challenge was the yellow striped black smooth skin suit. Striping took HOURS... And he had to tear it all off and do it again at least once. Congratulations Ron. VERY nice full out diva-able restoration!

- Photo above was a selfie taken by Ron. We got alot of good underwater video, too.

Always looking good!

This is the place to enter the world of vintage scuba. It's like when I got into early Honda motorcycles in 1996. You can get great deals on stuff that is going to become highly collectible and will command prices upwards of $30. That's each.

I can't believe the prices that people are asking for corrosion filled, un-inspected crap with rotten hoses , missing parts, etc. But then, no one will pay a fair price for a rebuilt regulator that is dive-ready. The cores are getting more and more expensive, and the rebuilds are dropping in value. Go figure....

Take the message from Ron Sheriff Diver. He does it all simply because he loves Vintage diving and vintage gear. Same for me. I don’t care how much my stuff would sell for. It’s priceless to ME! I’m not trying to sell it anyway! But I’m having alot more fun with the money in the form of my dive gear than I would if it was just money in a bank.

I don't know the direction of vintage gear price wise, but 1970's single overhead cam Honda CB 750K's in decent shape are hip and starting to get really pricey. Like Ron I do vintage because I enjoy the heck out of it. I'll let the dollars and cents to my future widow when she cashes out my collection. Lol

I've had a bunch of people come up to me when I'm at a dive site and say they know what it is that I'm wearing and how they remember that stuff. Even the tech divers enjoy coming up to us and look at our equipment and when we explain that the double hose regulators are all serviced and can be rebuilt they get an interest and wanna find one on Ebay to restore, dive, or whatever they want to do with it. I met a diver at Wazee and he's got a pair of Sportsways 38's from his father that he wants to get up and diving again. Yep, he wants to get a double hose to dive with it too..... If we aren't showing our gear at dive sites then people lose interest. People are generally amazed at our gear and they wanna try it out too!!~

Looking good Ron! Not sure the Cousteau divers wore horsecollar BCs but I recall USD was promoting BCs with the UDS-1 back in the day.

Yes they were promoting the UDS-1 with the horse collar.

UDS-1 by Scuba Diver, on Flickr