Viking Bayonet Dry Gloves

[Raiderswim]

Has anyone used the Viking Bayonet style dry gloves that turn and lock in?  Can they be used with a wrist seal still in place?  How'd you like them?  Pros?  Cons?  Also open to hear good points of other dry glove systems.

[Vtach]

I have the Bayonets mounted on my DUI suit with latex zip seals in place.  So far they are pretty nice and easy to don/doff.  The only thing I don't like about them is the location of the tabs on the rings.  If I have a glove failure or leak while getting in the water, I cannot just pull a backup glove over the rings and continue.  I can do that with the SiTech rings on my BARE suit.  I will have to get out of the water and reseat or replace the glove itself with the Bayonet system on my DUI.

So far, I have used the old viking rings, the bayonet system and the SiTech rings (glued permanent rings).  So far, I like the glued permanent SiTech the best.  Easy wrist seal replacement, docking rings are pretty easy to use, multiple glove options and you can pull a glove over the outer docking ring if you have a failure.  The old viking rings work really well on existing seals if you like to use a chemical style stretchy glove (see my avatar).  If you are focused on using a coated fabric glove (eg blue smurfs) you are going to have to use a docking ring.  I would prefer the SiTech system on my DUI but Chris tried to mount it on a demo DUI suit and couldn't get it to work, something about the seals being too thin to seat the system well enough.  I prefer the smurf gloves and received the bayonets for a gift so thought I would give them a try for awhile.

[matt t.]

I helped a guy that uses the Viking Bayonet system with a glove on the boat last weekend. One of the large o-rings on the "suit cuff" side kept un-seating and looked like a potential problem. I would stick wth the Si-Tech system or the Viking rubber rings and pull over gloves Todd mentioned in his post above.

[ethanb]

We've discussed the issue of rings pretty extensively on thedecostop.  Here are a few threads discussing it.




Regarding the bayonet rings, I've been using the standard Viking rings since '99, except for a year when I have the Bayonet Rings a try.  They worked adequately, but I ended up switching back to the standard Viking rings for a number of reasons.  The major reason was that the Bayonet rings were often insanely hard to remove after a dive.  Especially when I'd get a bit of dirt into the groove, it would often take the help of another diver or a pliers in order to remove it.  I took to only rotating them 3/4 of the way to fully locked to avoid this.  I never had issues with leaking or the gloves falling off - the retention mechanism is very secure - but always felt they were too difficult to remove.  The other reason I switched was that they require a plastic piece to be installed on the glove, so it's more difficult to quickly swap in a spare glove when one is ripped or lost before a dive, or to use multiple sets of gloves when one set gets wet inside.  None of my buddies were using the Bayonet rings - everyone had conventional Viking rings - which was another good reason to switch.  We've also been using agricultural gloves that pull over both rings and are very easy to install and remove solo.

Ethan

[MikeS]

Agricultural gloves?

[ethanb]

They're available at Fleet Farm (sadly not at Farm and Fleet) on the aisle between horse veterinary stuff and hydraulic cylinders and fittings.

Ethan

[Chris H]

Dang I miss Fleet Farm.

[MikeS]

We have one here in Beaver Dam.  I´ll have to check out the gloves.  Thanks.

[ethanb]

Beaver Dam is the closest one for us - that's where we usually buy them too!

[MikeS]

Do you mean the blue nitrile milking gloves that come in bags of 24 for like 3.99?  They seem kind of thin, but is all that I could see there.