Whats the best way to stop your goggles from Fogging?

[Ian_Gere]

Good points, Loz. Of course if something with sharp edges gets in your eye and you rub it, you will get a sore eye. Splinters of wood, bits of dry leaves, sand, tiny chips of concrete, and shattered BB fragments - any of them are best dealt with by rinsing your eye out with a few clean hands full of water and may well scratch the surface of an eyeball if rubbed...

 

I suppose what I should say is that it is impossible for a fragment of BB small enough to fit through mesh goggles to damage your eyeball simply by impacting it.

 

AFAIK there isn't any standardised test for mesh eyepro. The various meshes aren't manufactured specifically for eyepro, my own research has determined at least that much. Even high grade SS316 wire mesh (medical grade stainless steel) isn't impact tested - at least none of the suppliers I spoke to could find that data. I have seen Begadi wire mesh goggles which say 1.2J, but I know from my own testing that the mesh they are talking about withstands more than that (SS304 0.71mm wire #8 mesh) - my CO2 pistol puts out about 1.3J 1st shot and that mesh withstands quite a few point blank shots into the same spot (I forget how many now - it was a while ago) / but that is almost the same stuff I have in my custom V12's, although I'm certain that the way I have bent the ends of each strand of wire to wrap around another and the convex shape I've used increases its resilience a lot - certainly they withstand 320FPS 0.2g BB's without a dent, but I haven't tested the design to destruction.

 

The thing to be concerned about is full auto fire, because mesh does deform and finally give way, but yeah, AFAIK there is no standardised testing. Makes you wonder how well the lower end impact tested polycarbonate would stand up to full auto as well, eh? I mean obviously it has an elastic limit and also a harmonic resonance frequency...

[Guest PT247]

I wear ESS shooting glasses, so I am bias as to what I deem safe enough for skirmishing. I was however also a risk assessor in my previous career and deal in health and safety in my current work (I am pretty much the health and safety police at an airport.

 

I see what you are saying Ian about repeated shots to the eye could cause mesh (or any other material) to deform and give way but I have yet to see any airsoft gun firing on full auto hit accurately enough for that to be an issue even in a CQB environment, also in their nature airsoft guns in full auto have a considerable drop in fps from single shot, so I would not really be concerned about that happening particularly.

 

There are lots of risks we put ourselves in every day, some with far higher likelihood of injury and also severity of injury then the 1 in however many million odds of a ricochet off a hard item pinging a BB behind your eye pro but the risk is still there and it has been proven to happen, this does not mean we need to nanny every player and just like calling UKARA a licence to keep/use RIFs rather than a defence to sell them to an individual can be detrimental to the sport so can the opinion of a moderator on a national forum cause legislation to be written to force us to wear more and more PPE which potentially could make the organised and insured sites less enjoyable so players find land to use unofficially and have no rules so wear no eye pro or possibly even inadvertently shoot and injure others that were in the area not playing the game.

 

I agree face sealing eye pro is safer than glasses, but that does not mean it should be mandatory for adults, just advised.

 

Being slightly obtuse, all this talk of half face masks causing BBs to deflect behind glasses suggests to me that we are better off with no face protection and just wear goggles/glasses, that way if a BB hits you in the face it'll just lose all it's energy on our squidgy less important bits and drop to the floor! ;-)

[BrightCandle]

Being slightly obtuse, all this talk of half face masks causing BBs to deflect behind glasses suggests to me that we are better off with no face protection and just wear goggles/glasses, that way if a BB hits you in the face it'll just lose all it's energy on our squidgy less important bits and drop to the floor! ;-)

And if you get shot in the tooth it will chip it.

 

If this discussion says anything is that we are all willing to take different levels of risk. Some of us don't mind loosing a tooth, some of us don't mind a chance at a BB fragment in the eye, some of us are happy to potentially loose an eye. We can draw a spectrum of potential risk from one end to the other here and the various trade offs we make at different kinds of risks. I don't think we need to legislate those risks away, we all pretty much sign a waiver every site we go to anyway since we are signing up to get shot with low powered firearms. The site ensures everyone doing so isn't doing anything illegal but beyond that its all our personal choice. But we have to be honest about what those risks are.

 

Even Stanag 2420 for example on the Bolle glasses is 184 m/s BB strike, but at that speed its got a 50% chance of penetration. Does that mean a 150 m/s (500 fps sniper) has no chance or that it has a small one? I don't know and they don't have listings for 100% protection because presumably it doesn't exist. What the standard does give us though is a clear way to compare the products to each other and be confident its 'safe' for airsoft. Mesh doesn't have that and that bothers me. If I get my glasses and shoot at them to confirm they are good at defending me then they also perish as I do so since they only survive so many strikes. Standards are needed, anecdotal evidence like "I wear them and I have never been hit in the eye" isn't helpful, we need real scientific tests done to determine their limits.

[Mack]

Im happy enough with my ESS

 

[Ian_Gere]

Well, I had a reasoned reply, but Windows decided to update so I'll just say this for now: in my more egotistical moments I could fondly imagine that my opinion drives legislation, but IRL I'm yet to be convinced that the process of law making has anything so sensible as the opinion of people where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, at its core. However, there is no law requiring you to wear a helmet to ride a crosser on private land, nor pads, nor boots, but I'd be surprised if you could find an event which would allow you to compete like that.

[Guest PT247]

Yes, an organised motocross event (which will have insurance etc) will require boots gloves and helmet, but a lad on a motocross bike will still mess around on building sites often with no protection (& often on a stolen bike) if the hassle of using land officially is too much of a pain for them to be bothered to use.

Do you see my point that if people in an official position are stating legislation should be tighter it can escalate to more and more restrictions on gear which is although recommended not compulsory?

[Ian_Gere]

There is no legislation though. I don't think there needs to be any either.

 

I said if I were responsible for organising the event, I would insist on sealing goggles as the minimum required safety equipment. Naturally since that is my opinion I would also be pleased if site owners/organisers did the same. I understand what you are saying, but I disagree. What you are basically advocating is accepting a known hazard, of which many people, either new to airsoft or perhaps just less into it than we are, are probably ignorant, when the consequences are horrendous at least and very possibly literally grievous, because to not accept this risk as normal may cause some cock to take no precautions elsewhere! Really!?!

 

Some cock (like me for eg) might put an M200 spring in a long barrelled BASR and end up with something with which you could hunt small animals, but that doesn't mean we should accept 700+FPS sniper rifles in a skirmish (without 1st taking a damn good look at what eyepro can be trusted to withstand such shots at least). We accept FPS limits, even ones which we personally deem wimpish, which require modification of most guns from stock (even if that is done before purchase) and we also accept the need for eyepro - I do not see it as a gross imposition to put a restriction which prevents a known hazard on that eyepro.

[Guest PT247]

That is fair enough, I guess awareness of the hazard is the way forward to educate folk that these injuries can happen.

 

I'd object to be forced to wear full face or even sealed eye pro as I find goggles give me a far better field of vision as well as being the only true non fogging plastic that I have tried. I have a thermal lensed paintball mask which is pretty good as it only fogs a little but I find it too hot for running around in and it leaves my forehead unprotected from BBs (forehead hits annoy me more than the split lips from BB strikes). I would however wear the mask if playing on dark CQB sites like The Tunnels in Epsom. I hate half face masks as they interfere with aiming, are uncomfortable and no matter what goggles/glasses I wear the mask displaces them.

 

If mesh goggles that fitted properly let in more light and didn't restrict my vision or make me feel like I am about to have an epileptic fit in bright sunlight I would probably wear them still but so far I have not seen any that fulfil these requirements.

[Ian_Gere]

There's a gap in the market, for sure! Revision Bullet Ants are pretty good for resisting fogging, with fog tech, and seal very well without getting annoyingly sweaty. But once the fog tech has failed, reapplications don't last anywhere near as long as allowing it to dry overnight before polishing in the morning.

 

The trick to wearing 1/2 face masks without them displacing your eyepro is to fit pads to the inside which rest on your cheekbones. This pushes them forward so the frames of your eyepro fit underneath, but you also have to pull the straps tight so they don't bounce when you run.

 

I can't cope with paintball masks either - way too hot to wear. I can't even cope with my killer mask for the same reason. My inner jury is still out on the fencing stylee mask I bought recently - not being able to get to my mouth through it is a major ballache, but a velcroed on mesh door should see to that. The mesh is 0.9mm wire #8 I think, which is about 1mm inc paint and is pretty good for vision, but nowhere near as good as 0.71mm wire.

 

The issue is the diagonal measurement across the crossovers, 1.4mm as opposed to 1mm, which I don't think I'll ever get so used to that the dot shadows it creates disappear, as they do with 0.71mm wire. My main complaint though is that the paint is gloss, so glints make my eyes refocus close up in bright sunshine or under point source electric light, which destroys the illusion of almost nothing between me and wherever I'm looking. I'm planning to give it a few days in ye olde power spray some time soon, because just spraying it with Krylon will add more thickness to the wires. It is better as is than Hero Sharks though, just.

 

Is it the pattern of shadow dots and seemingly bright bits that make you think of epilepsy? If so, I think I know what you mean. I suffer from migraine and there are similarities between looking through large hole perforated sheet type 'mesh' and the visual disturbances of migraine... that's why it might seem as if i've got it in for Hero Sharks I don't get the same effect from interwoven wire mesh.

 

Perhaps you're right. But at the very least I think this specific risk needs to be made clear to people.

[Guest PT247]

I think I will have a think.... See if I can come up with a mesh that still gives a good field of vision.

 

The strobe effect from light to dark between trees seems to get in harmonics with the gaps in the mesh I guess re the epilepsy feeling. Have been knocked unconscious way too often and it is (in my head) close to the feeling as you lose consciousness

[Ian_Gere]

TBH I think that tempering 0.71mm #8 mesh is the way forward. Probably even better to do it after forming into a convex shape. Curling each wire around a perimeter wire also makes it much more difficult for hits to deform the criscross(sp?) pattern as the wires would have to actually stretch to allow just 4 of them to move apart, or deform pretty much the entire system, some of it by compression rather than tension which seems a bit unlikely to work well (ie the inherent springiness of each wire would absorb the force needed to push the perimeter wire enough that it could be pulled elsewhere, if that makes sense).

[Guest PT247]

am sorry, but early starts and beery evenings make that too much physics for my brain of very little bare.

 

I think there is massive improvements possible with cheap but safe eye-pro, damn you..... was trying to be all stubborn with my opinion, but it seems the engineer in me wants to at least try to think how they could be improved.

[BrightCandle]

My radiers really didn't fog much at all tonight. Considering how cold it is in Epsom bunker and how hot and sweaty I was I was surprised to find they held up for an hour without any real issues with just some op drops and a clean between rounds. I was expecting a disaster but they are dramatically better down there than mesh googles (because its already insanely dark).

[Ian_Gere]

I just cba to draw it, because it'd have to be in 3D to make sense and that's more drawing skills than i can muster without a lot of effort

 

I'm sure you get what I mean by a perimeter wire though. So if you imagine just 4 wires in the middle of a mesh lens replacement, like a noughts and crosses board, and each of their ends is wrapped around the perimeter wire. To force the crossed wires apart, so that the square-oid in the middle becomes wide enough for a BB to pass through, the whole system has to deform, because instead of being the straight line from the point of impact to the edge which it was, each wire becomes the hypotenuse of a triangle, where the right angle is at the point of impact, and that can't happen to the 4 wires only, yeah?

 

Either the perimeter wire bends, the wire stretches, or the the curls of wire around the perimeter wire uncurl. The weakest part of the system is the perimeter wire, so we might reasonably expect it to bend, but if it is pulled in by just those 4 wires then it can only deform in 2 ways -

 

1) a small amount over a wide area: the perimeter wire must also push the other wires which are also attached on either side of those under tension inwards also, unless the perimeter wire stretches, and since they are interwoven with other wires, that compression is acting against the shape of the whole system, trying to make it bulge out; or

2) the perimeter wire is pulled in sharply at those 4 points: again unless it stretches, the wires on either side act as pivots, and the wires further away are pulled out, again acting against the shape of the whole system, but in the opposite way, trying to compress the convex shape.

 

This plan depends on a few assumptions: 1) the tensile strength of the wire being well in excess of any force which could act on it, but I'm certain that even common or garden SS304L has more than enough, I mean it's measured in Kg's for each wire ffs and we're talking about forces measured in single figure Joules divided across many wires 2) that the temper is such that the coils around the perimeter wire can't uncoil - a more difficult proposition, but having managed to bend a £15 pair of jewellery makers pliers making such coils from SS316 in its 'as is' state, I'm confident that oil quenching would make sure them, and 3) that the steel isn't elastic enough to deform as much as necessary to allow a BB through and then spring back... I believe that this might be possible, although probably not under the forces we're concerned with, but the main reason why not is friction between all the wires in the system.

 

It probably hasn't escaped your engineer's nose that the 'either/or' 1) vs 2) scenario above is a false dichotomy. In reality the impact force would try to make both happen at the same time and whichever aspect of the system proved weakest would allow the greatest pattern of deformation in the end. But in the initial microseconds after impact, both of these patterns of deformation would be acting in opposition to each other. Add to this oil quench hardening and a layer of black Krylon, or even better an alkali black surface treatment (which would leave the wires thinner than paint and increase friction between surfaces) and I'm certain we'd have a winner...

[Ian_Gere]

My radiers really didn't fog much at all tonight. Considering how cold it is in Epsom bunker and how hot and sweaty I was I was surprised to find they held up for an hour without any real issues with just some op drops and a clean between rounds. I was expecting a disaster but they are dramatically better down there than mesh googles (because its already insanely dark).

Some links to the eyepro and whatever anti-fog you used would be good, mate

[cropzy]

So I skirmished last night.

 

I can confirm Cat Crap works a real treat and completely stops fog.

 

Bearing in mind I wear a proto switch el as face protection and it gets real sweaty in there it only fogged where i didn't apply the cat crap, I only had to put it on once and it last me all night.

 

I would seriously recommend it.

[BrightCandle]

So what I used last night was

Ops drops by McNett - http://www.ukmcpro.co.uk/equipment/eyewear/eyewear-accessories/op-drops-lens-cleaner-anti-fog-detail.html

Bolle Raiders - http://www.bolle-safety.com/tactical-spectacles/raider-raiderkit

 

The Raiders might look like glasses but they actually come with a prescription carrier that is also a foam seal around the edge, they are thus effectively lo profile and less disturbing to lower face mask googles, although you can certainly use them just as tactical glasses if you wanted.

 

Played 2 hours in Epsom Bunker, was reasonably cool down there (its still got quite a few puddles after the flooding) and I sweat impressively.

 

I washed them in soap warm water before heading out, then couple of ops drops on each lens and buffed it in. Between games I just cleaned and reapplied and buffed again. Games were each about an hour long.

[AK47frizzle]

Hey guys, i've discovered an interesting concept and i don't know if people already know this but oh well:

 

So i was in the shower blah blah blah, brushing my teeth and some frothy tooth paste got onto the mirror (don't ask why, it just does). As I was busy brushing my teeth, I ignored it but eventually i forgot about it. I then took a shower and you guys know how showers work, you get in there for 10 min and the whole bathroom becomes a warzone, vapour everywhere and on everything.

 

If you have a mirror in your bathroom you'd know that it steams right up and no matter how much you wipe it off, it just stays there. But I saw this; the part where I dropped tooth paste on to the mirror was completely clean, i mean, i could see my self very clearly as if there was no steam on it at all.

 

So it got me thinking.... could a tube of "colgate original" be the answer to fogging problems?

[BrightCandle]

So it got me thinking.... could a tube of "colgate original" be the answer to fogging problems?

 

Condensation forms on small particles on the glass. So if you had a perfectly clean glass then in theory they would never form. Practically that is impossible. So the second best thing is a material on the lens that makes the water more likely to form bigger particles so that it rans down and doesn't produce a fogging effect. You could for example use washing up liquid rubbed onto the lense as it breaks down the surface tension of the water droplets. This is basically what any effective anti fogging product does - it breaks the water tension allowing the water to flow down the googles. Toothpaste may very well do that.

 

The fundamental issue however is despite the material over time the water will carry it away. The amount of condensation could easily exceed the capabilities of your anti fogging material and eventually it will fog up. There just isn't anything physically that can be done about it. All of the known solutions and any solution based on applying something to the lens will fog up eventually. Its inevitable.

[Monty]

Might have to give Catcrap a try, my bolle glasses fog up like there's no tomorrow.

[cropzy]

Might have to give Catcrap a try, my bolle glasses fog up like there's no tomorrow.

Do, its great stuff.

[jcheeseright]

ESS profile turbofan goggles. Full seal, polycarbonate lens which will stop buckshot, anti fog coating on the lens that's effective on its own.

Coup de grace though is the fan in the top of the goggles that pulls air through them, on low speed it's all but inaudible to the person wearing them, let alone people nearby. On high speed it's louder but still quiet enough that no one will hear it from further away than about 6'. Have worn them with a plastic lower attached with cable ties during intense CQB with lots of running and have NEVER experienced them fog up even a little.

[BrightCandle]

Update on my googles and fogging. Tonight played Bunker 51 and it was hot, much hotter than 3 weeks ago and I was sweating like a river. This time I had the Raiders with the prescription lens in the carriers.

 

I had almost immediate rain out in the glasses, the polycarbonate hit taking part of the glasses was fog free but the presciption lens fogged/rained out immediately after I put them on. After a little while it would often clear, but with games in Bunker 51 only last 15 minutes on average before reload they often didn't clear enough. So while I am more than happy with how the googles themselves are performing a standard set of lens in the carrier isn't going to work out as it was often impossible to see. Protected my eyes perfectly, took a shot right in the centre of the right eye at close range and it didn't even leave a scratch but I didn't see it coming.

[Ian_Gere]

^^That is a real bollock squash. They're not cheap those prescription inserts...

[remus]

just saw this advertised on tv so thought id share. http://www.diy.com/nav/build/building-materials/building-chemicals/liquid_repellent/Rust-Oleum-NeverWet-Spray-Kit-13648670?skuId=14119367

was also thinking would the stuff you put in dishwashers to make glass not streak not be better than most things to put on lenses?