Whats up guys has anyone ever tried making wetsuits? any recommendations on where to ge the neoprene from? also any templates online somehwere? thanks
A few notes - based on my limited experience in the canvas-working trade and doing wetsuit repairs plus having a girlfriend who does polyester fleece garments commercially, small scale.
Yeah, a lot of people tried making suits. Jack O’Neill, among others, when making your own was the only game in town.
Neoprene coated with fabric- relatively small quantities: https://www.owfinc.com/SBR/products/312/ - note that these prices are by the inch, not the yard as in most fabrics…
Your seam-joining operations are either glued/blindstitching with or without seam tape (best quality) or overlock stitched, as you’ll see on inexpensive clothing.and cheap wetsuits. Overlock machines (sergers) are something you can find fairly cheap - in the thousands of dollars, A good blindstitch machine, suitable for fabric-coated neoprene, is very expensive. They both need to be adjusted, tuned, for the fabric you;re using.
You can use through-stitching in a good zig-zag pattern, the seam needs to be able to stretch lengthwise to some extent, but your basic home sewing machine can’t handle the fabrics used here, you need a commercial zig-zag machine. Which can be had used, but as we found out zig zag through stitching in wetsuits isn’t all that durable. Walking foot/compound feed zig zag machines are the nutz for this sort of work and sail work and yes, I covet one. See http://specialtyoutdoors.com/my-machines-part-1/ for more on that.
I mentioned the fabric is expensive. Which means screwups are expensive. Setting up and running the machines is an expense to think about, so that you don’t screw up expensive material. Pacific Rim factories might have one person to do the setup and a lot of piecework people drudging away. But economies of scale matter in any fabric/clothing business. If you have ( say, as a commercial diver) priced a custiom suit lately, you’ll see the difference between those and an off-the-shelf suit.
If you buy a used commercial machine you’ll need to have it looked at and tuned. Not cheap. Not easy to find somebody who can do it.
Then you have wetsuit glue, zippers, snaps, velcro. You’ll probably need several flavors/thicknesses of neoprene foam. I’m not even going to get into patterns. Though something to think about- rash guards cane about in order to deal with overlock seams and not-so-great pattern suits.
You see where this is going.
Hope that’s of use. Good luck.
doc…
Or you could just find a supplier on Alibaba to make suits with your logo on them.
Or you could get The joisey boy to make you one.
Awe… Somebody’s mad. LOL!!!
…at best you can finish with a learning curve and and 80s quality neoprene wetsuit. No Yamamoto rubber quality or the plush lining etc that a good quality suit have now.
I’ve gotten the full tour of the Henderson Wetsuits (Hyperflex) operation here in NJ. Its a pretty cool operation with some very specialized equiment and a lot of labor involved. A lot of their suits are actually made overseas. Government contracts, some models and repairs are done at their facility here. The pieces of a suit are cut on a giant flat bed computerized cutter before being glued and sewn together.
Hypeflex. The original Joisey Boys. Been doing it forever.
Never take advice from a copier toner salesman.
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Yep. Note the blindstitchng and taped seams, etc.
I was curious, so I looked-
Snugg price list - the suit shown, a 5/4/3 I think, lists for about 440 UK pounds, near enough $600 US.
Really, I have to wonder, how do they do it so cheap?
They undoubtedly have a long relationship with their suppliers and buy quantity.
Note also that those sewing machines are probably fifty years old or more, they predate when the company started, likely were bought used and amortised a long time ago. As were their tools and setup.
They have been in business since 1982. Experience counts; watching them build the suit,that sort of speed and efficiency doesn’t come quick. And makes up in part for a better pay rate than in the Pacific Rim factories the bigs use.
Plus maybe having access to the knowledge of somebody who did bespoke clothing, a hard-to-find craft that survives in the UK. Clothing patterns are like surfboard templates, you start out with them but just how you adjust things just right on a particular item is a learned, skilled craft. Impressive. I’d buy one.
hope that’s of use
doc…
I would be happy if I could just figure out how to seal the seams with that black seams they do at the factory. I’ve tried taping and gluing with aquaseal but its not nearly as good as a factory model. Either of those options would allow me to get the cheapest suit that GBS and then just seal or tape the seams for durability. I don’t care about the fleece part of a wetsuit as I just wear thermal underwear from walmart that was maybe $15 and does the same thing.
Ahmmmm- a few things. From the top;
Aquaseal sucks. It doesn’t stretch with the rubber, I don’t like it for repairs, let alone doing seams, as it makes a non-stretching place on the suit that encourages tears and failures around it.You might as well use silicone sink and tub goo.
Next- what about sticking the tape on with wetsuit glue? Yeah, I’ve done it, sticking failed seam tape back on with neoprene cement or contact cement. Trick is getting decent impregnation in the fabric of the tape and on the inside of the suit, not too much, as that gets stiff and inflexible and chafes, or too little which breaks loose again.
Awright, what about doing it like the factories do it, with heat. The seam tape is impregnated with something like a hot glue, that the heated rollers the factories use squeezes into the fabric on the inside of the suit and that particular adhesive has a little stretch to it. But you have to get the heat and pressure just right, this isn’t an iron-on transfer on a t-shirt. A lot of the early suits didn’t get it quite right, which is why I found myself fixing taped seams…or I should say trying to… with neoprene cement.
And then…well, ya can’t do it on the cheapest suits. They have overlock seams that won’t work with tape.
Okay, so you wind up going with blindstitched or flat seams that are also glued to a fare-thee-well as part of the manufacturing process. The flat seams have a seam that’s on a diagonal with a gazillion stitch holes in there that might weep water and where taping the seam might be of benefit. Though they’re kinda rare, the blindstitched are more common. And the tape will work with both.
Now, you might tape it yourself. You might do a good job, you might not. Fair chance you’ll ruin the suit. The other thing is, the blindstitched suits these days tend to be taped already. Buy a taped suit.
Couple other things-
The fleece lining in suits? Yeah, well, that’s marketing. How much function it has is open to question, keeping the water trapped against your skin inside the suit from moving around. If the suit is genuinely watertight, neat, some insulation might be a good thing. On the other hand, if you’re wearing wet thermals I can pretty well guarantee they will fold and bunch up and chafe. Ungood.
Lastly, if you really want to save some money- I mentioned marketing. Look, the wetsuit companies bring out a new model about every Tuesday. As the technology is fairly mature, improvements in said new model will be incremental at best, marketing hype more probable. But that means the older model is ‘obsolete’ and discounted heavily. Not only do the makers sell them off cheap on their websites, the smarter surf shops buy them up to sell cheap or sell them at a discount to make room fo the new models. Which is when you swoop in and pick up a good deal. Or end-of-season sales, when Fred’s Surf Shop needs to raise cash to pay for the new load of cr@p they will get suckered into buying at a trade show. 'Cos it’s a rare surf shop owner that doesn’t fall for the industry hype just as much as the most starry eyed beginner.
hope that’s of use
doc…