Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Divers Ready! The
channel out there that aims to make you a better scuba diver with every video that we put out.
My name is James and welcome to this, the next in our series of videos that we call quick tips,
where I take a topic within scuba diving, normally equipment based, to be honest, they tend to be
and I try and cram as much of my knowledge about that topic into a video five minutes or less. This
week as you may have already guessed from what's hanging up behind me I'm going to be talking
about wetsuit construction and more specifically, I'm going to give you the biggest tip I can.
Having sold thousands of wetsuits in my career, for when you go to buy your next wetsuit, what
you should be looking for value for money? So that's coming up at the end of this video. I'm
going to head over to the workbench over there and break down the different ways that wetsuits
are manufactured and what you should be looking for in each sort of price level within the wetsuit
categories. If you haven't done so already and if you feel like doing me a favor in return just
click that little subscribe button down there and hit the bell icon and that way you'll be notified
every time we drop a new video, and that helps us to grow this channel without costing you anything.
Right, that's enough. let's go to the workbench, the biggest tip I can give you in regards to
wetsuit construction right off the bat, the start of this video is, it's not always about the
thickness of the suit and people tend to zone in on that and think okay well a three mil and a five
mil on a seven mil and pick the thickness of the neoprene and as a general rule yes, absolutely the
thickness will add to the warmth but in terms of the construction of a wetsuit the thickness isn't
the determining factor in how warm a suit will be. It's actually the seams and how the different
parts of the wetsuit are joined together in manufacturing. Why do I say that the seams are the
most important aspect of wetsuit construction that you should be looking at when you go to buy your
next suit? Well, let me give you this analogy. I want you to imagine that you're driving in your
car and it's cold out, it's freezing cold and you've got the heater blasting and you're all
snug as a bug as you drive along and then you crack open a window and all that hot air starts
bleeding out of your car and your heater has to work overtime to try and maintain the temperature
inside the car but obviously, it's going to be fighting a losing battle. Well, that's pretty much
what's happening when you have a wetsuit with poor seams. Your body is heating up the water in the
neoprene pieces but because the seams aren't waterproof or water retentive, basically you've
just got water flowing in and out in the same way that the hot air will be leaching out of the car
and cold air coming in. So you really want to pay attention to that. So what I've done is, I've
taken three suits that I have here in the dive locker a lower-end budget suit, a mid-range suit,
and a high-end suit, they're all turned inside out right now because this isn't about different
brands, this is not a sponsored video, and what I want to do is show you a close-up and talk you
through the main methods that manufacturers use to join two pieces of neoprene together. Let's
start then by looking at the most economical suit out of the three, this is a three mil shorty,
I'll tell you that it retails for under $100, and it's indicative of the type of suit
that you would find in a rental fleet at a commercial dive center. So if you go to a
tropical destination and you're renting a suit this would be the kind of suit you'd get,
you'll also find them branded with the actual dive operators logo and all that kind of stuff.
You look at the stitching here which they've conveniently made blue so I can show it nice
and clear, and it's very obviously a stitched suit there's no gluing involved and I can tell
you that this type of stitching is called a flat lock stitch. It's very easy to do, it's very easy
to manufacture because you just run the two pieces of neoprene through a sewing machine, and the
particular thing about this stitch and the reason they use it for wetsuits is each loop of the
stitch is chain linked to the loop in front of it and behind it which makes it incredibly strong and
durable, ergo this suit is perfect for the rental fleet because they're going to get a ton of abuse,
very, very strong. The downside of this suit is all these loops on both sides, everywhere there's
a stitch there's a pinprick, there's a hole, so as you can see the amount of seams on here,
this whole suit is basically a sieve and there's gonna be a lot of water flowing through all these
seams and it's not gonna keep you incredibly warm, it's just meant to take the edge off in tropical
water if you're doing like one or two dives a day, perfectly fine. If you were doing four dives a day
for multiple days at a time like for example on a liveaboard, I wouldn't recommend a flat-locked
stitched suit. Let's look at the medium-quality suit, this is also a three-mil suit, it costs
between $100 and $200 and you can see it's also flat lock stitched. So if I turn the cuff of the
ankle here inside out, you can see stitching that goes all the way through it but you're getting
some additional features so at the stress points for example the crotch or the knee here, you
can actually see that there are dots of tape to reinforce those joints, particularly where
the suit is going to be stressed. So that's a good thing to look for. In the armpit of the suit
you've got again taping to reinforce that seam but you've still got that flat lock stitched at
that price bracket which means you're still going to be getting water flowing through the seams.
Not great, again if we move to the upper end of the wetsuit spectrum you're going to see
a whole bunch of different joining techniques on the same suit. So the first thing I want
to draw your attention to is the fact that the seams on this suit are taped. In other
words, they've used an elastic polymer tape stretched it out, and glued it over the seams of
the suit to hold the two pieces together. This makes the seam absolutely waterproof, there is
no water flowing through the seam of this suit as long as that tape stays in place. So you take two
pieces of neoprene, you glue them together on the side and then you glue tape over the top and it
completely seals the same. It's not as strong as stitching, but it is incredibly warm. If we take a
closer look at the ankle cuff of this suit you're going to see that there's a joint right here, and
the tape stops here, there's no tape over the top, there's no stitching there is a tiny little bit
of stitching at the end there at the stress point. But if we turn the suit the right side out,
I can introduce you to a new kind of joint which is called a welded seam. Welded seams work
in the same fashion as a taped seam but they run on the outside of a wetsuit seam for added sealing
and durability, and the beauty of a welded seam is its ability to provide maximum stretch but with
a non-stitch design, so you're not perforating and spoiling the thermodynamic properties
of the suit by making tons of holes in but you're allowing the suit to stay nice and
stretchy. This also gives the neoprene a clean low profile look, in some cases seam welding
will be used to reinforce a blind stitch on the exterior of the suit or in this case taped
seams on the exterior if I turn it all the way inside out, you'll see that that welding
continues past where the tape runs in that direction and while it seems working basically,
the same way as a tape seam except instead of being a piece of elastic tape. It's actually
a bonding agent applied as a liquid glue. So here we have three suits that are all the
same thickness, they're all three mil and yet I can tell you 100% for certain that this suit is
going to be the warmest because it has the taped and welded seams that are watertight they're not
going to allow water to flow in and out of the suit and keep you a lot snugger than the suits
that have flat lock stitch seams. Now I said that there are three methods of joining two pieces
of neoprene together and that is basically true. As far as it goes for suits intended for scuba
diving but there is actually a fourth method which is called glued and blind stitched where
you actually glue the two pieces together and then use a thinner lighter stitch which doesn't
penetrate all the way through the neoprene so you don't have those penetration holes, you're
not turning the seams of your suit into a sieve, but you've got the additional strength from
the glue. This has a couple of benefits, it increases the elasticity of the seam, and
whilst it's not as strong as like a flatlock stitch, that you'd find in a rental market suit,
it does increase the amount of lateral movement that two pieces of the suit can perform without
actually ripping the seam apart. Those seams are typically used in surfing wetsuits. You'll
see brands like Billabong, O'Neill and so on. They're going to use the glued and blind
stitch technique because their suits have to be a lot more flexible than a diver suit. However,
I did actually find an example of some glued and blind stitching in the higher end suit. Just here,
around the patch that covers the zipper, and the way you can tell if it's glued and blind stitched
is because well sometimes you can see actual glue residue on the seam. But also if you have a look
on both sides of the seam, you'll notice that the stitching doesn't go all the way through to the
other side, so you only can see the stitches on one side of the seam. So there you have it, ladies
and gentlemen, that breaks down the different ways that two pieces of neoprene are joined to form a
seam when building a wetsuit. My biggest piece of advice for you guys when you're going out there
to buy your next wetsuit is just don't be dazzled by the jargon and the scientific words that they
throw out there, have a look at the construction. Armed with the knowledge in this video my hope is
that you guys go out there and actually look at how the wetsuit is made and have an understanding
of what that means in terms of your warmth and you'll understand that it doesn't really matter
what the logo is on the chest of the wetsuit, it's really about the construction. So have a look at
the price versus the amount of seaming that you're getting on the seam itself because that's going
to tell you how warm the suit is actually going to be. Everything else is just marketing noise.
Really focus on taped seams, and sealed seams, and then look at that versus your budget
and buy the best suit that you can afford. I hope you enjoyed this video, I hope
you got knowledge from it. If you did, please give it the old thumbs-up, like button
just down there somewhere, it really helps us out to keep making these videos, and don't forget
to subscribe to our channel if you haven't done so already. And hit that little bell icon. I'd
love to hear in the comment section below, did you get value out of the last wetsuit you
purchased or if you're looking for a wetsuit what features are you most concerned about? Until
next time ladies and gentlemen, my name's James this was your Divers Ready! quick tips video
for this week. As always dive safe, dive often.
