Foot Pockets

[Jon]

When I was swimming in the pool a couple of days ago the lady next to me had a Finis monofin that she let me try. The blade was all wrong for freediving, but the foot pockets were fairly comfortable. Maybe not as comfy as the OMER pockets on my speacilfin, but a lot more comfortable than the Waterway pockets on that fin. Since the waterway seems to work better for dynamics, but is way too painful to use for openwater diving, I thought about getting a Finis footpocket and gluing it onto the waterway blade.

The question is how hard is it to do, how does one take off a pocket without hurting a blade- I was thinking something along the lines of a heat gun- and what kind of glue should be used to glue the new footpockets onto the blade?

Does anyone else have much experience with the Finis foot pockets- or any other ones out there that I might want to check out?


Thanks,

Jon

 

[Merlin]

Jon,

I built my own "amateur" monofin and I pondered over this for a long time. I cannot tell you how to get them off but I can tell you that the best way to glue them is probably epoxy resin. In Ace Hardware there are literally dozens of epoxy resins for various applications. You want something that is rated for high loads and if possible waterproof although I have no evidence that the regular resin doesnt work in water.

The main problem I ran into was that if the foot pockets are not precisely made for the blade then their contacting surfaces may not be very flush. As a result you get a really bad bond with little surface actually glued thus decreasing the strength of the hold. But this is mainly because I was using foot pockets that were cut from old bi-fins.

Good luck