Vintage Double Hose

Man, with the VDH plate in black cerakote, a harness rigged Luis style, and a nice wing this is an extra slick setup.

Nice looking rig! I'll bet you get tons of questions about your REBREATHER at Ginnie this weekend Thanks for posting the picture. I'm really surprised that so few new owners have posted pictures of the regulators they have waited so long to get....We worked on the project for just shy of 3 years and I'm anxious to hear everyones 1st impressions of the Argonaut.

Kraken #12 has arrived... Less than a half hour later: 12 year old granddaughter tried it out as well: Hopefully, I'll get to try it out for real next Tuesday at a local quarry, then on to Bonaire next Saturday for a week of diving.

Thanks, Bryan, for getting it here before the big trip!

Very Nice! Thanks for sharing

Here is mine.....

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUByi7XPqJY[/video]

It took until today for DD-2 to wing it's way to Podunk, New Mexico.
I was so excited this morning knowing it was scheduled to arrive that I could not sleep. I paced much of the morning waiting on the fedex guy while my wife and kids made fun of me. Finally!














I had high expectations, and they got blown out of the water. This thing is beautiful, and the craftsmanship, detail and design is amazing.

It's a bit late to hit the local dive spot today, but will get it in the pool shortly.

Hats off to Bryan, Luis and Co for bringing this to reality.

Photo by Luis in Bonaire May 2014

Is there a special significance to the DD serial numbered Krakens? I know JES has one, and I have seen a few others.

slonda828 wrote:Is there a special significance to the DD serial numbered Krakens? I know JES has one, and I have seen a few others.

About 2 years ago it was time to take all our good ideas about the then unnamed regulator and actually build a few......Needless to say that cost a lot of cash. I approached 12 people asking for cold hard cash to get the prototypes made. In exchange they would get the 1st production regulators. At the time all we had were good ideas and Luis drawings for the main body and 2nd stage volcano orifice. Thanks to those 12 I got enough parts made that real time experiments and diving trials could commence. To their credit all they had was my word and the belief that I would make it happen.

I stated calling those 12 divers The Dirty Dozen and the serial numbers on the 1st 12 regulators are DD-1 to D-12 especially for them.

UPDATE: Luis just reminded me about the 4 bodies we had first. Completely forgot about those but I'll let him tell that part of the story. But still the funding from the Dirty Dozen let me start the production trials and gave us the prototypes that the test divers were using in various places on the globe.

Bryan wrote:Nice looking rig! I'll bet you get tons of questions about your REBREATHER at Ginnie this weekend Thanks for posting the picture. I'm really surprised that so few new owners have posted pictures of the regulators they have waited so long to get....We worked on the project for just shy of 3 years and I'm anxious to hear everyones 1st impressions of the Argonaut.

I'm up in Northern Wisconsin this weekend taking the ERDI 1 course for my dive rescue gig with the PWFD. The Kraken arrived after I left and I cannot wait to see it! Hopefully the weather gods will smile upon me and I'll get to test it Monday as I am off. Film at 11:00.... I hope!

Bryan wrote:

slonda828 wrote:Is there a special significance to the DD serial numbered Krakens? I know JES has one, and I have seen a few others.

About 2 years ago it was time to take all our good ideas about the then unnamed regulator and actually build a few......Needless to say that cost a lot of cash. I approached 12 people asking for cold hard cash to get the prototypes made. In exchange they would get the 1st production regulators. At the time all we had were good ideas and Luis drawings for the main body and 2nd stage volcano orifice. Thanks to those 12 I got enough parts made that real time experiments and diving trials could commence. To their credit all they had was my word and the belief that I would make it happen.

I stated calling those 12 divers The Dirty Dozen and the serial numbers on the 1st 12 regulators are DD-1 to D-12 especially for them.

UPDATE: Luis just reminded me about the 4 bodies we had first. Completely forgot about those but I'll let him tell that part of the story. But still the funding from the Dirty Dozen let me start the production trials and gave us the prototypes that the test divers were using in various places on the globe.

It has only been two years since we stated this project, but it does seem like a lot longer than that.

Bryan forgot about the first four prototypes that were made by the first machine shop (there has been several machine shops).

For the first four prototypes we just used vintage metal cans, but we new that the first step was to test the main body. We have plenty of experience with a first stage in the form of a Phoenix and a second stage in the form of the HPR (a descendant of the second stage in the Pegasus project). I just needed to test the new integrated design.

In the summer of 2012 we made plans to try and have several prototypes ready for the November Cozumel trip. Four of us bought in into the first four prototypes: Bryan, Rob, Jim Louvau, and myself.

The first four machined prototypes came in with lots of machining errors (and one drawing error). With help from Herman we were able to correct most of the machining error. He can cut more metal, but he can not add metal when too much metal was cut.

With some adjustments we were able to salvage the first four prototypes and we dove them in Cozumel. We took some of them to 155 feet.

The first machine shop never delivered on what they promised. To continue the project Bryan needed more capital and that is where the "Dirty Dozen" came in. Without their funding it would have been a lot more difficult to move forward.

We had a design (no project name yet), but without the funding it is not possible to make more parts. The parts we had worked, but were not good enough for a final product.

After that the story kept on getting complicated with two more machine shops bidding on the project, but both of them delivered at some point defective parts. There were no design changes since the beginning, but I made several drawing changes to clarify details that the machine shops messed up in the samples.

If I recall correctly, the crowd funding became necessary to get molds made for the cans.


Note: Bryan and I have talked about sitting down and writing down a time line of the evolution of this project... my comment was that as soon as we have some spare time we should do that.

Thanks for the back story Luis and Bryan, it is incredibly interesting.

I was out of town this weekend and the long anticipated arrival of the production Kraken came while I was gone. I am happy to report that unit DD-3 has arrived on the shores of Lake Michigan and is ready for service! I'm looking forward to taking her from the fore ground to the back ground!

Looks great Jim. Nice photos to go with it.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

#7 has arrived! What an incredibly built and just an all out bitchen regulator!!
The quality of this reg blows me away. I love it! Top notch all the way.
I wasn't sure how the red hoses would look and they look great with the reg. Even showed up the same day as my red Squale mask.
I'll take the Argonaut over any of my other regs without a doubt.
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