How to Quickly and Easily get labels for your tanks
Hi
One of the main tenets of DIR is to ensure you are breathing the right gas. As well as applying the correct procedure when selecting the gas, it is important to ensure your tanks are correctly labelled, with the MOD and your name, initials, whatever.
I found that the GUE MOD stickers to be overly expensive, due to the costs of shipping a sticker half way across the world, and also they don’t provide labels with your name on. I didn’t like to use the license plate lettering as that would cost nearly as much and I preferred the black on white labels as they seem more visible. Ideally I wanted a decal which I could make myself, as often as I wanted and at not too high a price. Here is my solution which I thought I would share.
Avery Labels produce a heavy duty decal which is waterproof and available for laser printers. I have a bunch of laser printers at work and these labels work in them all. The code is L4775. They are provided in a pack of 20 A4 sheets for about £20 from Viking Direct. I have used these for a few dives and found them to be very effective.
Once I got the labels I then needed to suss out the font and size to make them visible and also to make them fit nicely, particularly when using OXYGEN. I simply used Word and after some experimenting I settled on Gill Sans MT Condensed and 300 point. This font size allows enough MOD labels for two tanks, so that worked out at approx 25p per label, and I am now able to carry a bunch of different labels which I can simply switch on the tanks depending on the gas I am using. It also worked well with AND and I can get two of those on each sheet. With some playing around with proper labelling software or a DTP package I am sure that you could make more of the space but I find it easy just to do it this way although the ‘OXYGEN’ label would need playing with to get two out of a sheet.
So far the labels have been very successful as long as you remember to wash the tanks down before sticking them on and remove any other glue residue. I put some on the other day after taking some gaffa tape off the cylinder and they became loose during the dive, one even came off. Amazingly, whilst swimming back I found the missing sticker and took it with me to the surface, wiped the tank off and stuck it on. It stayed on during the next dive and is stuck as securely as all the others. They are very good stickers and I am very happy with the outcome.
It is very handy having a bunch of different labels in my ‘save a dive’ kit so I can simply replace them if they start looking tatty or because I change the gas. It is also easier now to identify me during a dive as my twins are now marked with my name, so if ever you see a guy on a boat with ‘AND’ on his tanks you know who it is.
They look very professional too IMHO.
Andy
Sorry about the quality of the pic. I just took it with my mobile phone.