How to Make a Wrist Slate for Scuba

Recreational scuba divers have access to a mind-boggling assortment of high-tech safety gear, but underwater voice communications equipment is expensive and rarely found outside the ranks of professional, technical and commercial divers. This limits recreational divers to communicating with simple hand signals, and through messages written on plastic dive slates. You can save the expense of a commercial scuba wrist slate by constructing your own.

Things You'll Need

  • White polyethylene bottle, 2-quart capacity
  • Hobby knife
  • Ruler
  • Pencil, Number 2B lead
  • Hook-and-loop adhesive-backed tape
  • 1/4-inch medical tubing, 12 inches long
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Instructions

    • 1

      Trim both ends off a polyethylene bottle using the hobby knife. Polyethylene is the soft, white plastic used for liquid bleach bottles and containers of household cleaner. Cut the bottle so that you're left with a hollow plastic cylinder about six to eight inches in length.

    • 2

      Cut the cylinder lengthwise, starting on one end of the plastic and slicing down to the other end with the hobby knife.

    • 3

      Measure the length of the cylinder with the ruler to determine the half-way point. Mark both sides of the cut at the half-way point with a pencil.

    • 4

      Cut off a two-inch section of the hook-and-loop tape. Apply the "hook" portion of the tape to the outside of the plastic at the half-way point. Apply the "loop" portion of the tape to the inside of the plastic cylinder at the half-way point. This lets you slip the plastic cylinder over your wrist, then press the hook-and-loop closures together to secure it in place.

    • 5

      Cut a quarter-inch slit in the plastic with the hobby knife to use as an attachment point for the pencil. Place the slit on the side of the plastic cylinder opposite to the hook-and-loop closures, about an inch from one end.

    • 6

      Tie an overhand knot in one end of the medical tubing. Push the other end of the tubing through the slit from the inside of the cylinder. Pull the knot firmly against the cylinder. Push the back of a number 2B lead pencil about two inches into the open end of the medical tubing to secure it to your wrist slate.