RAM Project

[gj1963]

RAM

I have a nice Royal Master, but to date, an original Royal Aquamaster has evaded me. Especially a round label. When Creed offered this round label Royal for sale it looked like a great start to a project. I have been amidst slowly building a faux Royal Master with a cyclone nozzle and repro tag. Some of its parts went to this until I reorder more... So I had everything needed to rebuild it on hand. The condition of the mechanicals was very nice and a quick ultrasonic cleaning got the parts looking as good as new. All assembled with new parts and on a tank it's holding a solid IP. The top box had, as stated, a distortion from being dropped. Not bad, but it caused it to not seat without binding. A Dead blow hammer and some body working tools have it pulled pretty much back. It is not fully concentric yet, but will get there it a bit more time. Need to order a label and some other things from Bryan soon and this will be ready for the local diving hole.
This evening my wife told me a goal of hers for the year is to learn to dive... This after her long saying she was too scared. Even better she said she wants to learn using a double hose. Maybe I'll give this one to her.

[Herman]

Is that an original heavy yoke or a Conshelf yoke that has been modified? If it is, those are hard to come be.

On the wife getting certified...find a really good instructor, private lessons are best and then you go far away during the training. I will work out better....trust me on this one.

[SurfLung]

- Good news about your wife! I gave my wife a Phoenix a couple of years ago and she was fine with it as long as I was with her. This Fall she signed up for lessons all by herself. Did the whole thing on her own. I only went to the two open water tests and watched with binoculars from the lifeguard chair.
- The unexpected part of this is how proud she is of herself. Open water is a serious and scary test for new divers. She did it all at 20ft deep in a cold dark lake. I'm proud of her too.
- At this point, she'd rather dive the way they taught her in the course so, the Phoenix is out for now. Gotta walk before she can run...

[luis]

On the wife getting certified...find a really good instructor, private lessons are best and then you go far away during the training. It will work out better....trust me on this one.

Very good advise. I could not agree more.
I made bold what I consider the key points.

[Creed]

Glad to see it working well for you. In regards to the question from Herman, I think it was an original yoke. I don't remember any sign of new machine work on it.

[gj1963]

Yes the yoke is original, it has not been machined.

I lucked out, unbeknownst to me at the time, to have a truly great instructor when I learned to dive. He had been diving and training for many years. I remember him pointing to a dacor dial a death on a tank on a Hawaiian pack in the corner of his classroom talking about his early days of diving in Belize in the early 60's. Alas he closed Shop and moved back to Sweden a while back. He became a close friend over the years, and I have that Dacor that I later restored hanging on the wall along with the tank. A friend of mine from that shop and time period, is an instructor who is teaching currently through another shop. Hopefully I can get him to teach my wife. I have assisted with a number of open water classes with them, using a double hose and they were ok with it, aside from making wise cracks at me the whole time.

[gj1963]

Here it is ready for a dive. Hopefully soon. Got cabin fever here real bad with snow on the ground.

[Creed]

Very nice!