Building A Set Of Doubles

what's up guys this Brian again from Lake Hickory scuba marina I got my dive masters y'all you guys know him as an instructor T ROI he did ARF end video for us truly just bought him some aluminum ladies from another diver buyers and we're actually gonna break these guys down because he just got a manifold and a band system and we're actually gonna put these together as a double back mount system if you will and I'm gonna kind of walk you through the process of how we do that I know a lot of questions all you guys been asking some more technical related questions on our Channel and been wanting to see some more technical videos so that's kind of what we're gonna do I'm gonna show you how you can take a two single ATS and build them into a double system of course you got to have both cylinders you need a left and right hand valve of course we've got the manifold here to go between them you need the hardware and the bands to do it as well so the first thing that I'm gonna do is actually strip these cylinders all the way down I'm going to take this one's actually got a stage kit I'm gonna take it off because the previous owner of these tanks will actually wants it back and of course I'm going to take the vows out I'm gonna do a quick visual inspection and then I'll walk you through the process of how you put a set of doubles together so let me get these stripped down real quick and then I'll get right back in with you alright so guys we'll go ahead and strip this one down Troy's behind me with the other cylinder he's gonna go ahead and bring it down he's one of our visual inspectors here so I'm gonna actually let him do the visual inspection but these stage kits are pretty simple in design it's just a metal band that kind of holds a webbing strap on so I'm just gonna loosen it up until I can disconnect the wedding itself and then I'll be able to take the stage kit right off of it so you have enough play here you simply take the bolt snap pull it up through and this one's actually wrapped a couple times to make sure it'll size right for the customer or for the divers I'm gonna take the band off and on once you take the top of the stage off as well [Music] and just like that stage kid is off now we can get the valve off we're also going to take these tank boots off so that we can make sure that both tanks are pretty even as we put the bands on all right the next step of course is getting these valves off and I've showed you in the past of how we take valves off we never want to hit the actual turn knob on here we want to be very careful of course you want to drain it make sure there's no air left in it and we want to look for a flat spot this valve has two flat spots here and of course if you have a rounded neck on your valve itself you can actually use the flat spots up top as well but I'm just going to take my adjustable wrench and I'm gonna fit it to that flat spot and I'm just gonna simply pop on it until it breaks free once it breaks free then I can very easily just screw the valve off without any damage now at this point I will hand it over to Troy I'm gonna actually let him do a visual inspection of this cylinder as well check the threads out real quick guys basically what he's doing we're looking in the threads making sure there's no cracks you get an internal inspection just making sure that there's no moisture buildup all the times when you drain the tank there's a lot of condensation and moisture will build up from it but we're just going to do a quick visual inspection and I recently visually inspected these in the past months we know they're good but anytime you take a valve off you just want to do a quick visual inspection of your cylinder good alright guys so the next thing we're gonna do is pop off these tank boots and in theory tank boots are supposed to protect the bottom of tank we actually take it off all our aluminum cylinders you know on a steel cylinder you still want to take boot because it allows that tank to be stood up but on aluminum cylinder they're really not that good for anything other than just keeping the paint from being scratched but the reason I'm taking this off is when we use this table to slide the two tanks together I want to make sure that they're the exact same height when I put the bands on them and unfortunately tank boots come in different thicknesses so unless they're identical you're not going to have those tanks evened out and I want to make sure both tanks are even so to do that I'm gonna take both of these tempered zones all I'm doing is simply just hitting it with a rubber mallet I'll spin it just a little bit and continue to hit it too up pops off just like that now I'm gonna knock the other one off real quick and then we'll start with the bands and all the hardware from that point on alright guys so the next step of course I want to clean off my table I don't know any raised edges I want a nice smooth flat surface and the really cool thing about our table I like this backdrop here because it's gonna be flat and even across the board so I can actually load put both cylinders up there to make them nice and even now there's also another final step that I need to do is where the manifold is going to come in there's these little plugs and I actually want to take these plugs out and that way I can actually fit the manifold up in them if you've ever seen a set of doubles that's been broke down for side mount cylinders you're gonna have to put these little plugs in it and that just kind of mimics that manifold as far as sealing off that so we're gonna take both of these out we're gonna get it up here on the table and then we slide both cylinders all the way back that way we know that they're on a flat level surface and of course we're gonna have them both even now ideally you want some type of system that you can lay the tanks in but if you don't have that system I'm gonna show you how you can do it on a table just like iris here as well alright guys so the next step is I've got to install the manifold and I've actually already got it started a couple three here it's very important that we also grease the o-rings here lube the o-rings if you will and I'll just use a standard Crystal Lube for that I'm not actually looping up the threads I'm just looping the o-rings that's on the threads and when you install the manifold you want to water play in as you can tell it's very smooth as I screw this guy in I don't want any catches in if you've got a catch that usually means you've crossed threaded it or your tanks are not evenly dispersed across so as you're doing it as you're screwing it on if you fill a little bit of resistance all you've got to do is either separate the tanks or pull them in a little bit until that resistance goes away then you can continue to screw your manifold on between the two valves and it doesn't take much you just want to work on the tanks kind of back and forth to you no longer feel resistance and you can actually screw the manifold all the way down it's very important that we keep the gap between the edges of the manifold and the valves equal on both sides and like I said just to do that you just go simply either separate the tank spread them out or pull them together as you're doing it and very easily you can keep that manifold from cross threading all right guys so now that we got the manifold installed the next thing I want to do is actually make sure that this is loose I don't want it super tight because I need to be able to adjust it for the diver so as he reaches back to do a valve drill he needs to be able to reach it so typically what I'll do is bring it straight up and down with the top of the valve and then I'm gonna give it just a slight extra turn towards the back of his head just enough so that as he reaches back with either hand he can actually reach the shut off for the manifold so now that we've got this installed I'm going to take these little nuts here on the side of the manifold and I actually screw them down to lock it in place and I want to make sure that I had the same amount of gap on both sides now if you're not sure if you've got it screwed in all the way you can finally give it one final turn just to make sure and if the manifold does not come back up to at least that ninety degree angle or perpendicular if you will to the table then you've went too far and you're gonna have to actually undo it one turn and then use the nuts to screw in it looks like I had at least one more turn just to show you what they looked like if I tighten it one more time you can see the cut off or the metal fold here is actually going to be going straight down and we don't want that and I can't go any further with it so I'm actually going to loosen it up just about maybe a half a turn and like I said I usually start perfectly perpendicular to the table if you will or parallel to the table and then I'm going to turn it slightly back towards the divers head maybe at a forty-five if you will and that way he should be able to reach this knob if he ever needed to do a valve drill now at this point I can simply tighten down on these nuts and they shouldn't be very hard to do you should be able to do them with your hands once you've got them down then you'll simply just take your reach and give it a little snug twist okay and then once that's done your manifold is properly installed and what that also does it locks it into place but it also gives you a little play so that he can manipulate it as well so now that we got the metal foil manifold installed now we're going to go and put on the tank bands alright guys so I've actually flipped the tanks over so you can get a little bit better view here these bands have actually been on these tanks prior the same gentlemen that Troy bought these from actually had them doubled up I broke them apart for him for stage cylinders and now we're going to put them back together so these are the original bands that came on them and I've actually got a marked both top and bottom now mostly the bands are always going to be the same so it doesn't really matter which one goes on top which one goes on bottom however they have kind of formed to these cylinders cuz they've been on for a while and so I'm gonna put them back in the order that they were now to get started I'm actually gonna take my hardware here and I'm gonna go ahead and thread some of it on because it's a little bit easier to do it now during this process then waiting once I've got everything up in there so I'm gonna do is shove the bolt up through the bottom of the band I'm gonna have a washer and a lock washer and then I'm gonna place my nut on top but I'm not gonna tighten it all the way down I'm just gonna simply start the nut onto the boat just until I can see the threads and almost from there because I still need a lot of play for that band to be able to open up now at this point you want to be very careful in that love once again even if you had a jig to do this with you're still gonna have to be lifting up on these cylinders so you want to be careful that you're not putting too much tension up here on the manifold itself so what I'm gonna do is actually lift up the tanks and I'm gonna let Troy slide the band's up as far as he can get it and typically speaking we want these bands about to the top of the crown here to the crest of the cylinder so he's just gonna slide them up we're just gonna temporarily put them in place and then we can measure him out to meet the specs of his back plate so you're ready Troy yeah all right I'm gonna lift up simply slide them up okay it's good for right now and we're gonna do the exact same thing with the second set of bands we're gonna prepare a boat he's gonna slide it up now I'm not too worried about tight and he's down yet because we need to make sure that we measured out for is back plate so I'm gonna pull out a tape measure we're gonna pull out his back plate we're going to measure the whole distance and that's what we want this to equal the same amount of distance between the holes on this back plate the same amount of distance needs to match the bolts on the band system itself alright guys so our next step before we go any further we need to measure the holes in his back plate and most back place most manufacturers are going to be pretty equal as far as where the holes it's a pretty standard Lien's what I'm actually gonna do is measure from the center of this hole here to the top of this slot here and that's gonna be the two holes that he uses if he decides that he doesn't want it in the top slot he wants to use the next one down then we will measure the difference here and we'll find it here in the center and it should still come up to the same amount of distance so if I find the center of that top hole and the center or the top of this slot here it comes down to 11 inches and that's what we need to space these bolts out at 11 inches to make sure it's going to line up not only with his back plate but also with his wing as well alright guys so the placement of these bands are really gonna be determined on what cylinder you've got and how high you want the tanks teroz typically speaking what I do is I take this top band and I find the top of the crest of the cylinder here and that's usually where I put it now unfortunately these are two different aluminum Maties they're not made by the same manufacturer and they're also not made at the same time that were not even made in the same factory so we're gonna have to compensate a little bit for that we've already measured out the distance which is about 11 inches is what we needed and since these tanks were together previously there was actually a mark on the cylinders that we marked originally so instead of lining up the top band we actually went ahead and lined up the bottom band to put it back exactly where it was at and so now we can measure up the 11 inches to the top now usually when I do that I'm not gonna use this top part of the tape measure because it moves I'm actually gonna jump up to the 2 inch mark and I'm gonna use it as my starting point and then all I have to do is measure up 11 inches from that starting point and of course that's going to be 13 inches as far as the tape measure is concerned we know that to be really 11 inches so I placed a 2-inch market centre of that boat I'm gonna move this band up until it says 13 inches in the center and then I can simply tighten it down now to do that I'm going to use two different wrenches to do it I'm gonna use they close the end of a wrench to hold the bottom nut now I'm gonna use the open end of the wrench to maneuver the top part of the nut and I'm gonna simply just tighten it down until it's snug it doesn't have to be SuperDuper he-man tied it just needs to be snow once I've got it and as you're doing this you want to kind of work back and forth back and forth to make sure that these bands don't move out of place so go a few threads here a few threads there a few threads here and a few threads there just back and forth until you have a good and snug and then your bands should be adequately secured to the cylinders as you're doing this you want to double check just to make sure that you still have the same amount of distance in the gap up here at your manifold between the tape valves and that way you're making sure you're not putting any undue stress on it as well okay let's put this everyone we're gonna make sure the backside secured as well [Music] alright guys so the next step I want to make sure even though I know that these are 11 inches on center I want to make sure that they're gonna line up with his back plate so since I measured from this top hole and we used the top of the slot all I'm gonna do is just kind of hang it there on the top hole there and I'm gonna make sure that bottom boat lines up at the top of that slot and as you can see it's perfectly centered here and it is setting on or resting on the top of the slot there he can very easily shift it up if you need to based off his body's profile or whatnot and it'll still line up as well but now that we've got this lined up our last step of course is to pressurize the cylinders I'm gonna put about 50 to 100 psi on the cylinder and just make sure that there's no leaks in the manifold once we've verified that then of course I will go ahead and pressure these up to full working pressure and then Troy's gonna actually thread on this back plate we'll throw a wing on here and he should be good to go alright guys so now that we got the cylinders banded together everything's good to go we're actually going to put about 50 to 100 psi in here we're gonna do a quick bubble check I'm just gonna spray a little baby shampoo water on here just to make sure that there's no leaks that we need to worry about before we completely pressurize the cylinder and then of course all pressurize on both up to working pressure in locking our previous video of where I showed you how to fill doubles I always want to make sure one valve is open one valve is closed and I always want to make sure this manifold is open that way as I feel one cylinder it'll actually cascade over and fill up the other cylinder and they'll both be filled at the same rate so I'm go ahead and put my way up on here and then we will get started [Music] all right guys we got his tanks finished up I've got them filled up to the working pressure which on these two tanks is 3,000 psi per cylinder I've got the manifold checked I made sure that there was no leaks there so he's going to be good to go to actually dive with these I want to make you a couple quick pointers real quick anytime that you build a system like this the manifold does not need to be actually tight you actually want it a little bit loose so it still should turn even with those nuts screwed down in the theory there is let's say that you're in that cave or cavern system or any type of overhead environment if you used to happen to get too close to the canopy if you will or whatnot and you hit this valve you could run the risk of actually hitting that manifold and breaking the manifold but if it's loose enough that it'll turn whenever he does hit it by mistake it will actually just Bend into it it won't actually break the manifold so we want to make sure that this part is actually still loose as well moving on down we want to make sure that these bolts are 11 inches on center or based off what back plate and wing system you use simply measure out the holes where you're going to set it and of course make sure that your bolts are lined up you want to make sure that the bands are relatively even on the cylinders which brings me to my next point and unless you have two cylinders from the exact same lot you're not going to be exact and I need to stress that these two cylinders here are about ten years difference in manufacture dates so the cylinders are not the same though the height of the taint necks are not the same even the little groove in the bottom of these cylinders are not the same and you're gonna have to make a decision or you want everything perfectly flat across the top or do you want it perfectly flat across the bottom now the best case scenario is even if the tanks are not even you want this as straight as possible so there's no undue stress on the manifold that you also want these tanks to be as flat as possible so that you don't have them caulk one side or the next so when he takes these cylinders off maybe he puts it on a tank bench or something like that it's not putting undue stress on this because one tanks actually taller than the eggs so with that being said any time you band up two cylinders make sure that they're at least from the same law and preferably from the same manufacturer as well and that way you're going to be even across the spectrum as well but guys I hope you enjoyed this video if you got any questions about doubles or side mount cylinders or anything like that or how you break them apart just let me know down in the comment section below and I'll try to make you a video on as well and I'll at least answer your questions as quickly and as best I can but guys if you like this video you want to see more videos like this simply smash that like button and definitely share it as well as always make sure you follow us on Instagram and Twitter like us on Facebook pencil bench or subscribe to us here on YouTube and as always guys we appreciate your business gals we really appreciate you watching our videos if you liked it make sure to give us a big thumbs up if you're not a subscriber simply hit that subscribe button for us and make sure you hit the little bell to turn on all notifications if you want to see some other cool videos make sure to click these links here they could be scuba tips that could be diving videos search-and-recovery videos or gear reviews once again guys we really appreciate it

Channel: LakeHickoryScuba

Views: 9,551

Rating: 4.9849625 out of 5

Keywords: How To Assemble A Set Of Double Scuba Cylinders, Putting Together A Set Of Doubles, Diving A Set Of Cylinders, Backmounted Doubles, DIR Diving, Technical Diving, Lake Hickory Scuba Center And Marina, Instructor Bryan Stafford

Id: ZsvOj0ag-bI

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 21 2018