FS: Full face masks (Widolf)

tele

Greetings from Southeastern Virginia.

Time to get rid of the old to make room for new old stuff!

First:

This was a mistake IIRC. I read on a web forum someone's praise for Widolf (Divematics?) FFM's and after googling I decided I wanted an OC one. Very rare used. I put out feelers and bought sight unseen and ended up with a surface supplied one. Thinking of converting it to OC, I wasn't too mad. Then luck hit and I found an O.C. one. It's not bad (the O.C. one) but old. I take it to the local quarry once in a while but I still prefer my standard regs (soon Rebreather). This one is way cooler than the O.C. one I have as it's all black and not chrome.

So here it is for sale, a classic widolf FFM. It has a speaker device, I assume it had surface comms at some point. The picture on the net shows a bearded guy using something similar with a rebreather (and BOV), which is impressive given no way to clear from leakage. I've never done anything with it except chucked it in the pile of projects. It still has the surface supply valve. It has ports on both sides that have vents. No oral/nasal cup.

(I wouldn't mind a metal non-chrome lens frame for my OC one if by any random chance someone had that part laying around).

Asking $400 USD + shipping?












Second up is parts from a project I never got anywhere with. I thought maybe I could find the other parts to complete it, but then I turned attention to vintage double hose regulators (that phase is over too). So this project never got far, but I believe the parts are valuable to collectors. It's Kirby Morgan. Someone told me it was a KMB-8 but I haven't verified. $130 + shipping (US) takes it (not unless it's tradable for one of those EXO-26 (red or yellow)!




Drop me a line if there is interest!




For historical purposes, a widolf setup for Rebreather (probably the shadowpac?). Looks like an older picture (found using google image feature). Not my photo.

NEDIVER

Is that the mask from Dig Dug?

Attached Images

dig dug.jpg (4.5 KB, 699 views)

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Dave Sutton

Man.. that's MY old Widolf.... with the S/N 3 engraved on the face. It came from the FIT Dive Locker... we had 4 of them at one time, each with 1 thru 4 engraved on the regulators. I'd love to have it back.

That is definitely a KMB-8. The side block is different than the later KMB-9, and the port is quite different. They were laid up fiberglass instead of injection molded plastic. The ports had too few screws and many of the frames cracked. It was the first product of the US Divers Commercial Diving Division. I'm not sure if Bev and Bob built them, or if USD built them.

If they are not sold yet, send me a note and I'll add them to the dive locker here for old times sake. That Widolf and me went offshore a lot, for wheel jobs, etc. I sold it years ago, wonder how many owners it's had since then? Man... this is too funny.

PM me and we can work out details.

Dave

kwinter

Dave -

Nostalgia for outdated equipment may be a true sign of just how old you've gotten.

Ken

Dave Sutton

Bloody hell... I still hunt Stripers with an Airmatic Speargun, my Dad's from 1957. Some things just keep working. And then there are the Mark-15's... all 4 of them ... and the 35 year old Rolex Sea Dweller that keeps crappy time. Yeah... you're right.

That old Widolf was the cats meow for doing shallow wheel jobs and riser inspections in the Gulf of Mexico. Took up no space in my dive bag, and was far more comfy than the Heliox 18's we were issued. Everyone loved it. In fact, that EXACT mask was the first surface supplied diving mask I ever dove, at FIT to retrieve some crap from the bottom of the deep tank after we completed a Mark-V (deep sea) training day. I thought I was the cool-dude in "lightweight" gear after shedding off 200 pounds of deep sea gear. That dive is still in my logbook... it would be August 1978. Wowie... it's like finding your first car for sale (or your first girlfriend...


Dave

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tele

She's yours! I will have to search through my emails (70K+ deep) and see if I can find any history on it. Most of the people that seemed to have them didn't know anything about them. One of mine came from overseas, and I'm pretty sure that was the OC one. I had set software to bid on a few on feeBay (I had an alert setup) but oddly they were in high demand and others would jump on them. Hint, the ones that said antique seemed to go more spastic. As I recall one went up over $900 and I couldn't understand it. Tons of bidders, no special options to my eye (no BOV or anything IIRC) and at that price you could go after a new one from Divematics. It was a fun challenge trying to find one, and I had a keyword trigger for 2 years on ebay and then some. I posted on a vintage equipment forum and if I recall I got a few hits from that from people searching the net, which led me to one of them. I think the OC one came about after I had basically given up the search. Just got a random email one day.

It wasn't as hard finding a nice double hose regulator.

Just in case someone can spring some more random history, here is the "#3" next to the OC one I found later. The OC one is quite a bit different, no possibility of mounting a BOV block to it. The reg is glued in, and it's not metal like the "#3" one it's more plastic (Not saying it's negative, just differences.)






Too cool Kind of cosmic.

The OC one is fairly comfy, but since it's the only FFM I've used so far I can't really compare it to anything else. I normally use a modern OC regulator and not a FFM. I plan to use a normal mouthpiece (or maybe a BOV) on the Inspiration.

PM is on it's way!

Dave Sutton

I think, but I do not know for sure, that the one you have is one that was used at the USN Experimental Diving Unit and was then given to the FIT Dive Locker after whatever they did with it at EDU. We had 4 of them in the locker, all were slightly different, and we did not use them as syllabus equipment because they were not an "industry standard" mask that we would generally encounter in the field. We used them in school for rapid-don standby diver masks for the deep-tank, not for open water use. I don't think that anyone other than me actually dived one in school, unless it was to grab one to play with it in the deep tank. They festered in a cubbyhole in the dive locker while the other gear got used daily. Just for an inventory, we had 4 each of the following: Desco Mark-V deep sea rigs, Divex 3000 helmets (with or without breastplates/neckdams and with and without the Divex SCC rebreathers), Aquadyne GH-2 helmets (with and without the Aquadyne GH-2 rebreathers), Aquadyne DM-5 band masks, US Divers KMB-10 band masks, Superlite 17B helmets, Aquadyne DMC-7 helmets, Miller 200 helmets (my favorite), and Savoie helmets. That was a real dive locker... There were the Widolfs and a few Desco "Jack Browne" masks too, which were not in the normal gear rotation. CCR-1000's (Mark-15's) were 'lend-borrow' from Harbor Branch Foundation. I'm poretty sure the odd Widolfs and Jack Browne masks were from the Navy somehow.


Dave

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tele

These are available if anyone is interested!

Thanks!

Dave Sutton

Huh?

Email me, I must have missed some PM's ...

Dave

iain-hsm

Long time since I heard that name, funny how a classic piece of kit gets lost in the space of 20 odd years. Seems like yesterday LoL. What you have are two versions on one of the original Widolf frames, The all black is the true original and the shiny scuba unit is a Divematics version of the mask. Hence why the difference in price and value.

The unit attached to the rebreather is also a Divematics version by the ABS lens frame

Not surprising Dave knows his kit, (and I guess its value) but the market has change and most divers today don’t know about Widolf.

However there are still some great design features in that mask that are still valid today, While everyone else went onto the reflex seal designs Widolf and Aquadyne went for the sponge seal Kirby Morgan also with the Camshell and our Royal Navy with a water filled ring face seal design as I guess the designer had piles at the time LOL .

We used to deal with old man Widolf (before he sold the tooling to Tracy R at Divematics.) he was one of the best American engineers I had the pleasure of meeting and of the Widolf mask he had a huge number of variants both for surface supply air and mixed gas. In its hey day (you lot were into telephone tapping) the Widolf 600 was made as a bell diver version. He never made a helmet. The rest is history. But the quality simply speaks volumes for Widolf.

Dave had another variant at Panama and we also had the 600 units in UK when I worked with a saturation diving company SUB Sea International 1979. I still have the manuals for these masks in archive when I get round to finding it I will post if anyone interested.

Your other band mask is a bit of a hybrid (I think, as it was also a long time ago). The first mask US Divers made when they bought the tooling from Bob Kirby, Bev Morgan and was bought back by them some time later when it was called the USD KMB-10. I worked for the company at version USD KMB-9./10 It was made by US Divers and the orange shell was an import I recall. I used to sell these to the Royal Navy up to the shell material changing to black and to pretty much every other commercial diving company outside continental USA. Again if you need manuals let me know. For more history you need to pick a more lucid time.
Good luck in selling these items they really are a very valuable piece of history and at least two people on this forum know there value Lol Iain