Popular Woodworking 2006-04 № 154, страница 64

those standards, as anyone who's accidentally sat on their glasses will attest to.

Fogging, comfort and appearance? Today's safety glasses aren't your grandfather's heavy, black-framed shades with strainer-style side shields. In fact many of today's safety glasses are so good-looking you might want to wear them just to be fashionable. A number of the safety glasses designs are also appropriate for wearing inside or outside, providing a certain amount of glare protection. You can wear them instead of your sunglasses, look good doing it, and they'll protect your eyes.

Today's Shades

If you walk into a home-center store today, you'll be able to find a number of options in safety glasses, from the very basic models (priced between $2 and $6) to some more fashion-conscious glasses (some are shown at right) ranging in price up to $50. Many of the glasses shown on these pages look as good or better than many of the high-fashion sunglasses sold today. And good for us! Even better, they're less expensive. A really nice pair of safety glasses with multiple lenses and a protective case may cost you $45. A new pair of Ray-Bans will run you more than $200- and they're not safety glasses.

Even basic safety glasses are now designed with comfort in mind and they offer quality distortion-free lenses with excellent

safety features - usually priced under $5. Too good to be true? Not at all.

I had the opportunity to visit two major manufacturers of safety glasses and a variety of other safety gear, MSA Safety Works in Pittsburgh and Aearo Co. in Indianapolis. While some of these companies' products are commonplace in home centers, many more of their products are sold for the industrial workplace and are in fact designed and built for firefighters, police and the military. These products need to perform in desert warfare as well as in the middle of a five-alarm fire. Many of the people making these prod

ucts have Ph.D.s in one specialty or another, and some are rocket scientists. The benefit to us is the information from their tests led to technological advances incorporated into military safety gear. And that same technology ends up in our safety glasses as well.

Comfort

Safety glasses are only useful if you wear them. Along with attention to fashion, safety manufacturers are also spending a fair amount of time making glasses comfortable. The glasses should rest on your ears evenly, not pinch your head (but still not slide off), and should rest comfortably on your nose.

From the MSA Safety Works museum, the side shield goggles at right go back more than 50 years. The glasses at left are part of the current MSA Safety Works product line and look (and perform) significantly better and are designed for comfort.

Before we go any further, I want to address another "I can blink fast enough" shop concept. Keeping your glasses handy is a good idea, but unlike your sunglasses, using a lanyard or neck strap to have your glasses within reach is not an acceptable option. Not in a shop. It's just like wearing a necktie. If you've got something dangling from your neck, you stand a very good chance of getting caught or pulled into a machine by the neck.

Back to comfort. There are three major ways manufacturers have gone about improving safety glasses' comfort: articulating arms, flexible materials and padding.

Three very cool safety glasses from Aearo include glasses with indoor/outdoor lenses for a balance of working conditions. Two pairs of these glasses have three sets of interchangeable lenses. Safety can be stylish and even cutting-edge.

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