Because how many times have you found yourself snorkeling along and realized you were cranking your head to the side to try and see out of the one spot on your snorkel mask that wasn't foggy?
What a pain. Well, it does not have to be that way. If you do things right you should rarely have any fogging in your mask, just crystal clear vision. You may be surprised to learn that the number one reason for a foggy mask is a dirty mask.
The moisture forming inside your mask has to attach to something. That something is dirt specks and oils. Moisture cannot easily attach on a very clean mask. With a clean mask the moisture sheets down and collects at the bottom instead of fogging. Moisture also can attach to the microscopic imperfections in the glass. That is why anti-fog, baby shampoo or spit works. They act as surfactants that reduce the surface tension of the condensing water, making it less likely to cling to the glass.
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That said the post-cure process will add expense to the mask making process, so you can bet that low cost, economy diving and snorkeling masks are minimizing or skipping this process.
Fortunately, the amount of material only defines the amount of time you'll need to scrub and the amount of force you need to apply. A proper scrubbing will remove a thick or thin layer. Burning, or scrubbing the film off only needs to be done to the inside surface of the glass.
The outside surface will of course have water on it when you are diving, and cannot fog. Please be sure to only do this to dive masks with glass lenses! There are a few dive masks out there that have acrylic or plastic lenses, and scrubbing or burning a plastic lens will not have good results.
There are 2 types of defog:. Surfactants that minimize the surface tension of the water, such as soap or baby shampoo and hydrophobic coatings , that repel water, such as waxes, polymers, and gelatins.
Surfactants will reduce the surface tension in the water droplets. This means they are less likely to form little spherical droplets of fog, and more likely to smooth out across the surface of the textured glass. Hydrophobic coatings are like our leaf example earlier. The Hydrophobic coating will serve to smooth the textured surface of the glass, as well as reduce the cohesive force between the water and the glass.
The water will form into larger droplets which will roll away. Anyone who has ever used the commercial windshield product known as Rain-X has seen an example of hydrophobic coatings in action.
Mask over rinsing - Rinsing your mask is a perfectly normal thing to want to do, but a quick rinse is all you need. Remember when you are using a soap or any other surfactants-type defog on your mask, some of it needs to remain in the mask to be effective.
Too much rinsing will rinse the product out of the mask, rendering it useless. Soaking their mask is another one that has perplexed me. I often ask customers why they are soaking their mask in the bucket.
Divetech recommends the following when you buy a new mask, provided it has glass lenses:. Use a lighter to burn off the film from the inside of the lens. Use an abrasive product to scrub the inside of the lens. Be sure to do this with adequate abrasive material, with a proper amount of force, and for enough time.
Some of the commercial products I looked at did not have an amount of time you should scrub listed in their directions. So ,my advice is, when in doubt - scrub longer. Spray a moderate amount of your defog agent into a dry mask just before diving.
Rinse the mask quickly and lightly in water. Stick with us and you'll never have to suffer through fog again! Thanks for reading and we hope to see you diving with us soon! Tony Land. More than you ever wanted to know about mask fogging. Related Posts See All. Personally, I find it helpful to understand why something happens rather than just being given the cure.
Hearing, "just spit in your mask", is more helpful when you know what the spit is actually supposed to do. The physical effect at work with fogging is called condensation. Air, even what we might call dry air, is full of water vapor, or basically water in the form of a gas.
Lots of water vapor gives the feeling we describe as humid. All air has some water vapor, including the air in your scuba mask. You know how when liquid water gets cold enough it turns into a solid, a. When water vapor cools down, it turns into liquid water. What does this have to do with foggy masks?
The lenses on your mask are in contact with the water outside, which compared to the air inside, is quite cool, even in the tropics. The water vapor molecules are constantly bouncing around in your mask, so when they hit the cool mask lens, they in turn cool down and turn back into liquid. This process is called condensing.
While your mask looks clear and smooth, it is actually full of teeny tiny imperfections, not to mention dirt and dust that collects.
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