just a warning to avoid a men's swimsuit, made by a very well-known swimming gear manufacturer, with the model name of "endurance+ jammers". It has a stitched seam that goes up the back of the suit. This seam may fail. It happened to me today, was plenty embarrassing.
I've heard of suit failures but I didn't expect it to happen from this manufacturer, from a suit designed for endurance. If you compete at all or train a lot I'd be sure to replace it with a suit that doesn't have a seam in that particular location.
Kirk's right... the seams are serged... so, working from the outside of the suit inward, what you have on a seam is a place where the material is first held together by the thread, then a section where the material doubles up, then a final section where the serger 'seals' the doubled up area. my suit failure was a near-catastrophic failure on a meet suit... right on the seam that goes up the middle of your butt. the suit didn't split completely apart (you couldn't see skin) but it split to the point that the doubled up material came apart and there was just the very ends of the thread holding the left and right side together...
I think meet suits are more prone to this kind of failure because you often buy them smaller than a normal practice suit (at least I do). so there is a lot of stress at those seams. I think my suit was an Arena... this was 1987 or 88...
The key take-home lesson is always have an extra suit at a meet! :)
Kirk's right... the seams are serged... so, working from the outside of the suit inward, what you have on a seam is a place where the material is first held together by the thread, then a section where the material doubles up, then a final section where the serger 'seals' the doubled up area. my suit failure was a near-catastrophic failure on a meet suit... right on the seam that goes up the middle of your butt. the suit didn't split completely apart (you couldn't see skin) but it split to the point that the doubled up material came apart and there was just the very ends of the thread holding the left and right side together...
I think meet suits are more prone to this kind of failure because you often buy them smaller than a normal practice suit (at least I do). so there is a lot of stress at those seams. I think my suit was an Arena... this was 1987 or 88...
The key take-home lesson is always have an extra suit at a meet! :)
