Welding goggles

[Dabbsterinn]

so, I was wondering about whether it would be profitable using those welding goggles for forging, not only because of the almost complete coverage of the eyes, my father, who works a lot with angle grinders and wire wheels, can tell you just how painful it is to have a metal splinter embedded into your eye, I:m sure a few here can also testify for that

Another possible advantage is for easier judgement and finding small things that i tend to drop now and then into the fire, the darker glass helps counter the blinding brightness of the fire, i suppose the fire also has some damaging effects for the eye, not really sure about that but i remember overhearing something about that, could be related to a thing called glass blowers blindness, where the radiation of the hot glass does something to the cornea, but this is all just stuff I've heard and have no way of saying whether that is true or not 

[Frosty]

The eye damage caused by forge and glass blower's fires is "IR cataracts", I don't recall the correct term. The best way to avoid the damage is to not stare into the fire.

 

I've tried forging with tinted glasses but prefer to be able to judge the temperature without having to learn a whole new color set at the reflex level.

 

You can get good quality full coverage eye protection, I wear close fitting side shielded reading glasses as a matter of course. If I'm doing something in the shop that will put a lot of debris in the air, say disk grinding or wire brushing I have full a face shield.

 

A word of warning is necessary here. No matter how good your eye protection you aren't wearing a hood so crud will get into your hair eye brows, etc. and when you take your eye protection off or take a shower even it can fall into your eyes. As a matter of course I bend over at the waist with my eyes closed and ruffle my hair thoroughly, brush my eye brows and give my face a general brushing off. THEN I keep my eyes closed till after I've shampooed my hair in the shower.

 

I've had so much crud in my eyes they won't let me near a MRI and I don't want a spinning piece of metal doing the blender dance in my hide anywhere.

 

Frosty The Lucky.