Scuba Tech Tips: All About Fins - S03E08

a divers Alec Pierce scuba mm here we are in one corner of the pro shop at scuba mm rather than the service area where I usually give these tech tips because we want to talk about some new products some of the divers were asking about fins and you know for your feet and and about the different types of straps and a few tips on there I have a couple of ideas you know we see if we sell a lot of fins or we see a lot of different fins and let me started diving a long long time ago I why I've seen fins changed a lot I can't believe that they still make improvements to fins I mean it's a piece of wood on your foot but anyway let me share a couple of ideas with you and see if you don't pick up something of interest here or maybe you have just confirms what you're already know might be valuable anyway Alec Pearce tek-tips Cuba mm here we go talking about fins first thing we need to do perhaps is clear up the difference between strap type thin strap type fins and the other type of thing that you probably have used in the past this is what is technically known as a full foot fin full foot what that means is that your foot goes into a pocket and it stays there you see the pocket of the fin holds your whole foot hence full foot now the difference is over our there are numerous differences but the difference that's obvious is first of all this then has to be the exact fit for your foot so this is the size 10 fin if it's a size 10 foot they're clear oh but don't the draw a picture for that if you're a size 8 foot you need a size 8 fin and if you have a size 10 fin for your size 10 foot your wife who uses the size 8 or fit so it fits your foot first of all secondly these fins are usually lighter less expensive and smaller generally speaking because these are really not designed nor most popular for scuba diving these are really I don't like to say they're just snorkelling fins because some scuba diver use them but generally speaking these are a lighter less expensive fin that fits your foot and since it fits your foot biggest difference to us anyway since it fits your foot your bare foot means you have no protection no boot you can't get a boot in here on top of your foot you see so you have no protection your foot you're walking down to the boat walking along the wooden dock you're getting on or off the boat walking over the sand or the coral whatever your foots completely bare exposed you have no protection the ankles underwater no protection whatsoever of course you can't wear these in cold water because it's not protected by the boot again all right so that's one thing to keep in mind about these go foot fins are available we saw quite a few of them but generally for snorkelers if you're a scuba diver and then generally speaking in fact almost always you're going to be using a strap type fin like this much more substantial this fin is the same size so just to say a small size small size small you see but you can see is already there's a much bigger fin much stronger much more substantial tool and you notice the pocket that's not a small pocket this is this is for besides eight seven eight was way too big of course because you wear a boot you have to wear a boot so you get a boot from your dodge store any kind of a boot like this that protects your foot from the cold protects you from the claw you can walk around in the boot and then we are about to jump into that water to make your scuba dive your slip the fin over pop it up over your heel pull it snug be like so to make it just the right tension on your foot and I could go scuba dad and with a powerful fin like this and this is not a great big heavy fin but with this type of fin you can see you can scuba dive for hours hours on end and a stiff current it gives you lots of power to get out of the current and the move with the current or against the current it allows you to finish for a long time very very efficient this is a standard type of fin and yesterday now there are all kinds of different styles to spin house holes in it this concept of hole start attention to 70s with the famous old u.s. divers rocket fin and then and then you then scubapro came up was there it was a jet fin and then holes in it personally and I was there when all that happened I could never figure out how they could sell a fin that it holes in it as better but all they had some research and some tests showed it so different designs different styles different bend sometimes certainly different colors and so on it's largely marketing its what it is I'm going to show you a fin in just a moment that is pretty radical but anyway this is a straight forward pin now it also has what is probably the most common type of strap and that is this type of strap I know you can see that Kevin really closely but it's a strap and it goes through a clip which is adjustable you press the button and getting it you can make it tighter sorry press the button and you can make it loose or you see and this also detaches quite easily so part of the clip is left on the fin and this part goes in and out very simply just like that you take it off now this is helpful because it's very difficult sometimes you get your foot into the fin when the strap is done up tightly so here is what I suggest what I have found in my many years of experience and helping other divers as diverse as the proper way to put these things on you if you have difficulty with your fins maybe some of the eyes these ideas will help so you're about to get ready to go scuba diving your fin should be completely assembled and it should be completely loose so make the fin strap as big as possible okay so now you're all set so now you slide your foot in and you pull the strap up it's way too loose or of course so you pull a little bit on each side evenly until it feels snug the strap should be up on your heel fairly high and it should feel snug not too tight not hurting but snug okay off you go to your scuba dive underwater if the fin feels sloppy and that can happen because the boots can press a little bit or things change in the water you can always just reach down pull it a little bit tighter no problem okay the difficult is your eyes when you come back to the boat or back to shore to get these darn things off and you've made them really tight so how do you do that I see some divers and they're trying to push the button and loosen the strap and once it comes loose it doesn't loosen itself and then it becomes ooh the easiest thing to do in my opinion goes to you squeeze it now your foot will come up quite easily now when you do this by the way be careful because this clip also comes off it's not supposed to fall off but it can come off if you push on it Reed you heard you see you can you can take it off but it shouldn't fall off it should stay on the thin it only goes on one way and it kind of Lochte done placer you see what I have seen these come off sometimes to be very careful that doesn't come up so you have your things in your hand and off you go your walk climb up on the boat or you'll get back to shore and you're all finished now before you go on your next dive obviously you put the strap together and then don't forget to make the strap as big as possible okay all set off you go again then on snug it up do the dive when you come back to the bokor to shore just break the fin like that and the fins up to the boat you can actually snap these to the other fin yet oh I know you got two fins hanging off the strap now if you go a couple of ideas things to try next time see if that doesn't make it a little bit easier for your fin off and on a couple ideas anyway what I want to share is walking today is how this has changed this is probably the most common has been for the past 15 years maybe more before that would use this strap and a steel clip oh it was terrible on your knuckles this is much much easier to adjust and play with however this is actually it's sort of disappearing very slowly although it's the most common what's happening now is that the thin straps are no longer adjustable they're stretchy instead the first type of stretchy strap that come out came out with scubapro that had this first one and it was called the spring strap see that take a look in their camp see that the sustain is still spring in there you pull hard on this handle at the back on there your thumb the thumb grip and it stretches there's no way to adjust this you can still take it apart put it back together the same as the other type like that you see what you can't adjust it you can push this button all you want nothing happens so you put your foot in and you pull this back up over you heel and it snaps against your heel and it stays snug on your foot you still break this if you want to at the end of the diet to take it off but you know with these stretch straps we'll call them you don't need to do that often you're going to put your thumb in and just pull a bit pull it down and it comes right after your foot pretty easily so this is this was a big improvement over the previous adjustable clip plastic straps this this is stretch strap this particular one the very earliest one made of a stainless steel spring got pretty popular now watch happen even that spring strap and this one's been up for maybe ten years they even have spring strap is slowly disappearing look at this one this is another pin this one's some Sherwood and what they've done here is even simpler look this is just a rubber band it's just a bunch of a rubber elastic bands all rubber see that big hole for your thumb so you put it on pull it up over your heel and of course this is this is a size two to the fin so if you have a size 10 foot then this strap is designed to fit perfectly around a size 10 foot hold it in the boot of the fin where it belongs now too tightly not too loose and then you can get these in different lengths as well if you have odd feet and is not perfectly comfortable but there's a stretchy rubber strap once again with this particular style you can still pull it apart if you want to if you want to but again we're finding you don't really need to anymore what we used to do as I showed you earlier with the old clip type is you don't need to do that you can put your thumb in here pull it back and pull it down and it fins off your foot so that's that's the one one of the one of the newer styles of the stretch straps the very newest style of stretch strap is in fact a bungee look right here keV you see there that's a bungee strap good old bungee you see it and and now with this one again the big thumb hole to go big they're getting because manufactures realize that that you have to be able to grab that with the old type of fin this one here that was kind of hard to grab that thing get it in there but now the straps have a great big thumb holes you can get in there you can pull it up to your heel and then at the end of the dive you can grab a holder pull it down on a sock your foot with this particular strap and these are really very very nice very very popular very rugged very dependable this particular type of strap this one is from scubapro but they do not come apart they haven't decided that with the stretch straps there's no longer any reason to take them apart they've simplified the clip it doesn't have the adjustment it doesn't have the breakaway feature it just is fastened to the fin probably good in terms of keeping the whole assembly intact not losing bits and pieces and parts and and and this worked really really well I should show you from this side that look works really really well and this in fact is the fin that I wanted to show you that's pretty radical this is scuba pros latest the fin has actually been out now for four or five years it's not brand new anymore and we have found me personally I'm not a kid anymore and my I don't have 18 year old legs anymore in fact they're about five times older than that but anyway with this particular fin they spent a lot of time and money on research and development scuba crow does that they really really develop and research there any product before they bring it to the market and this is a pretty neat fin right off the bat what's weird it's called the sea wing Nova and it's a pretty neat looking fin we have found the pocket to be particularly comfortable they spent a lot of time looking at thin pockets so everybody said wow that ever feel good and then they put that special stretch strap bungee strap up over oh that feels great and it does it really does but the radical thing about this fin is this design and shape first of all you'll notice that the whole fin right from your instep right back to the tip of the pen the whole thin is flat the whole that whole thing is thin area so it doesn't really have a blade this is partly blade as well it also has ribs you see them running a full length that's to keep the water going straight back that's what you want water to do when your finger what the right hook straight back you don't want to going left or right straight back and that does that have to help but do that it has these these up turn the wingtips like a like I think it's a Boeing 727 isn't the Kevin that has a so one of those goes up by it and it keeps you water on the fin as well you see so that keeps the water trapped on the thin blade so go straight back any water that goes over the side not only is wasted effort but it actually slows you down and actually pulls the fin down to speed so keep the water going straight back that's exactly what sukira Pro does and and then let search for some of your young guys who have extra strong legs if your fin to her let's turn over like this can society think when your thin to your heart for this again why should I here Kevin watch those little cuts you see if you thin too hard eventually what happens is - fin Bend see them close up and when you get to the bottom of your fin stroke guess what happens you stopped it opens so the effort that you put in which was too much effort that resulted in the fin bending comes back at the end again it saves effort so they're very very efficient how efficient are they they were doing tests in the water pool it's like an air tunnel wind tunnel but it's a water tunnel and one of the engineers noticed that the tip of the fin he said what's that little bit of turbulence that's not good get rid of that so they put this hole in there that's not the hanger fins up that makes it feel more efficient pretty neat huh you might really like these things also they're very very light beautiful finish not inexpensive but in most cases well worth that we hang a pair of fins like this up in our pool around the corner and encourage people to try them and they love them so there's a thing that's kind of interesting too however doesn't matter what finger wear as long as it's comfortable works well for you that's sipping you should be wearing but there's some information on fin straps I think we're going to find over the next few years the more and more manufacturers what's already happening are going to be going to the stretch straps probably a little less expensive to manufacture they last longer no more rubber straps to wear up break less parts less likely to lose it and lose bits and pieces and parts and they work really really well anyway there's some ideas on fins I hope there was something in there that was new and interesting for you might help your daddy make it easier a little safer a little more fun and if you if you have any questions or comments you give me a call anytime Alec Pearce scoopa mm tech tips talk to you

Channel: Alec Peirce Scuba

Views: 49,235

Rating: 4.9364071 out of 5

Keywords: scuba tech tip, tech tip, scuba tip, underwater, scuba diving, local dive shop, scuba, fins, dive boot, open heel, fin strap, fin spring, fin bungie, snorkling, full foot, scubapro, scuba pro, seawing nova, alec peirce, alec peirce scuba, scuba 2000

Id: ULXHgod308c

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2016