I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
- Here's a topic for discussion that I think all of us can appreciate. I'm thinking of all the many times our friends on the Vintage Double Hose forum have answered the call for help when one of us was trying to solve a problem. I've benefited from this literally more times than I can remember. I'm thinking it might be fun if each of us listed a few "Helps" we got from our friends on this forum...
1. Saving my first set of Twin 42 tanks. A hydro test facility had rejected them and stenciled "FAIL" on the sides. When I reported this on VDH, I got technical advice from Luis, practical advice from others. And the gist of it was that for steel tanks to fail was rare... Much less two of them. So I found a different Hydro tester and those tanks passed "re-qualification" (Hydrotest) by a wide margin.
2. Remember my beautiful Made In France DA AquaMaster with the bent horn. I couldn't figure how to straighten it without dimpling the can somewhere else. And out of the blue came SwimJim Bach with a can stretcher... Plus a video showing me how to make one myself and use it. Needless to say, it worked slick as a whistle and I've had a beautiful regulator to dive and hang on my wall ever since.
3. Awhile back I got real interested in making all of my reserve valves functional. It was fun learning how they work but some I could not make work because the seats were corroded or otherwise degraded too much to seal properly. So, Tom Madere the Captain offered to sell me some brand new old stock seats for a ridiculously low price. I was so happy, I sent him a few bucks more than he asked for. So when the package comes in, he put some extra stuff in there and said, "Since you sent me Lagniappe, I'm sending you Lagniappe." Lagniappe is a Louisiana custom of adding some free stuff to a deal... Like 13 donuts in a baker's dozen. So I got all of my reserve valves working and improved my knowledge of southern culture, too!
I've got lots more stories like these, how about the rest of you readers of the VDH forum? Can you share one or two stories here?