This last Saturday I was at a huge auction with my dad and I bought these (supposedly old fire fighting) air tanks(3), harnesses(3), and masks(9). The auction was in a huge field so all the stuff was sitting outside for at least a couple days prior to the auction itself. The day of the auction it rained a couple times, though I had bought them and got them in my dads truck before the worst of the rain. I'm going to say now I have no experience with air tanks, whether underwater or on land.
Full picture
Tanks, one came with a "free" harness(it was attached when I bought it, hence why I picked it out of the pile).
Two harnesses
Masks
Two of the tanks are aluminum, the other is composite. The composite is a Surviair brand according to the worn and peeling sticker. The two empty harnesses are Survivair Sigmas. I don't know what brand or model the one attached to the air tank is. All nine masks are also Survivair sigmas. At the bottom of the box of masks I found a PASS device.
I looked the Sigma model up online and it said they were not fire rated, so what these were actually used for is a mystery to me.
I checked the dates on the composite tank and the oldest I saw was '99(test sticker), so it should still be good right? The black connection piece on four of the masks have chips missing out of them, so I assume that they are either useless for anything other than looks or need that piece replaced.
If anyone can enlighten me on these and whether they are still usable or not I would love to know. I'm also curious as to whether these can be used underwater. The most likely use I will have for them is to have a way to fill paintball compressed air tanks at home, since a proper compressor is expensive and compressed air is better for the guns than the much more common CO2. If the tanks aren't usable then I'll make a Big Daddy costume using them(especially since the composite is near the end of it's life span). I'll probable sell the broken masks to my classmates at school, especially since the were willing to pay insane money for my gas mask when I wore it to school on Halloween. And if all the stuff is in good condition I never have to worry about being on the "bad" side of the campfire again
.
Sort-of-off-topic story time: No, this is not the weirdest thing I've ever bought. Nor is it the oddest thing I've seen at that particular auction, last time I went I think I saw them auctioning off a Dragonov sniper rifle, or one of a similar style gun( meaning a stretched AK with a scope on it). Since my dad owns a used car lot (though we sell a lot more than cars) out in the country, he goes to auctions to get cars, farm equipment, trailers, etc. Quite a few times the cars we get will have interesting "junk" in them, like an entire coin collection, pocket knives(I'm a knife lover
), a machete, a hatchet, a scooter, fuck loads of coins in ashtrays, one car was full of unopened condoms all over the place, and the once the police asked if they could use the area we keep junk cars(for parts or to be scraped) to train their drug dogs and found a bag of pot, but not one they planted.
EDIT: I changed the title.
