Hi all,

I remember a couple of posts where folks (I've got names!) were going to follow up on gold platted didymium glasses, and whether they're worth it, etc. They seem to be a no brainer from the commercial propanganda, but I'd love to know more...

Cheers,

JD

Speaking from experience, they are a very good thing! The only drawback I can complain about is that you will have to learn to judge colors all over. They do a fantastic job of blocking harmful UV and such.
When I mentioned learning to judge colors again, I mean just that. The lens in these glasses will dramatically change the preceived color(s) in you work, when I first used them I just couldn't figure out why I was burning thing up, but I soon realized it was the glasses. If anyone is bothered by "scratchy" eyes after a long day at the forge, you can kiss that good-bye if you wear didymium lenses.

I started a thread about this a while back and am one that is working on a follow up. I could not get anyone in the eye profession to either help me out or if they were willing to help were not knowledgable on forging and the dangers of looking into the forge. I have a Johnson forge so I went to the Johnson appliance company (the label on the forge gave them away). I told them that I had one of their forges, provided a link to my web page so they could see that I really did have one, and asked them what they recommend for protecting my eyes when using THEIR product. Today I got an e-mail with a phone number and the guy asked me to call him so we could discuss it. I will post his comments after I talk to him.

Thanks for the update, Bob.

And thanks for keeping the fire under our butts, Joss. :)

I haven't had a chance to track down any info as I've been pulling 12 hour days since I got into the Chesapeake Show...

Hopefully I'll have a bit of a break afterwards...

Look forward to any info Johnson might have for you, Bob... though I wouldn't be surprised if they recommend sunglasses or something. Nobody seems to have good answers on this one.

Bought a pair this summer and added the side protectors. Also added a plastic lense, looks like a bifocal now for the close up work. They seem to work real well.Since I am a little color blind I now judge color by feel (grin) muddy

I wonder wheather things are a bit mixed up here. A forge is hot so it definitely gives out IR (infra red radiation) meaning heat but it is not hot enough to give out much UV (ultra violet radiation) which espially electric welding radiates out a lot more because of the much higher temperatures. If a forge were a (practical) source of UV even a normal incandecent lamp would be a UV source and they are not to any practical degree, instead mercury lamps are used. You dont want your glasses to absorb the IR, you want them to reflect it away (otherwise your glasses would be somewhat hot in a short while). If my memory serves it is either tinoxide or indium-tinoxide thats used to reflect IR, it is practically colorless in the visible spectrum. Then again I might be wrong but I still think IR is the main problem and UV quite a way behind, both can damage your eyes in larger quantities.

TLM

I contacted Johnson Appliance Company. They make the forge I use, so I asked them to tell me what they, as a manufacturer, would recommend to their customers for eye protection. I was VERY dissapointed in their reply.

After several rounds of phone tag, I talked to a guy that has been there for 35 years. The company does not even address the the issue at all. They do not even sell glasses of any kind for looking into the forges. I asked why and he said he has NEVER had anyone ask about eye protection in those 35 years.

He said to treat it exactly as if you were looking into the sun. I asked; "What protection do you need for looking at the sun"? He did not know. He said we need to protect our eye from UV rays. I asked about IR and he does not know if IR is a problem or not. He suggested I go to a welding supply company and see what they recommend for gas welding. He said gas welding would be the same thing and what works for them should work for us.

His recommendation - ask an eye doctor and a welding supply company.

Looks like we are back to square one.

The Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, which operates a full time multiple forge smithy, had the Univ of TN Medical School look in to this several years ago. There is very little UV from a coal forge. The only possible problem they found was simply intensity of the visible spectrum light. Also, on IR, if its too hot for your eyes, its too hot for your face. It';s nice to have the UV protection built into most clear safety glasses, but grey sunglasses dim the glare nicely and usually have UV protection also. The dididyium/gold glasses are made specifically to cut the "Sodium flare" of incandescense in glass and ceramic kilns and enhance visibility of pyrometric cones in the interior of the kilns, state of the melt, etc. These things often involve bending down to look in peepholes. etc. big IR hazard. I have seen Cobalt Blue "Foundry Glasses" offered for use around molten metal operations that are more specifically for incandesent metals. Anybody tried these?

Checked a bit on the physics, the UV depends only on the temperature on the object and up to standard incandescent lamp temps (~ 2800 K) no meaningful amounts of UV is given out from normal forge materials. So it is the IR that should be reflected away, most metal films do it and as mentioned some special coatings do it. I guess that in foundries somewhere they must use IR protective visors.

TLM

In his pages on burner design, Ron Reil seems pretty clear that the best gaz forge burners will definitely yield UVs (from the kaowool if I understand correctly.) This is an amazing site by the way...

www.reil1.net (http://www.reil1.net)

JD

What is made for blocking our IR which is the main
hazard of working around forges are furnace viewing
glasses. Shade 3 is what is commonly used. Although
shade 5 lenses, which is what is used for oxy-acetylene
torch cutting and welding also work, but are a bit dark
for looking at things around the shop. These are the ones with the green lenses. They can be had at safety
supply places, and welding supply shops, and glass blowing supply places. Yes they are really called
"furnace viewing glasses" :)

I still plan on doing more research myself, but a few points to clarify on the subject just to make sure we're all being safe...

First I suspect a difference between coal forges and gas forges as far as potential for harm. A coal forge is partially covered by the coal itself. I suspect even more of a difference between normal forging and damascus work, where one is constantly looking directly into the reflective 'furnace'. What I have -heard- is that dark lenses dialate the pupils and allow more damaging radiation, especially the IR, to enter. I have heard this especially concerning welding lenses as well as sunglasses. I do appreciate the info regarding the furnace viewing glasses, but also trust the source of the info regarding dark lenses... so I will look into it personally because they're -my- eyes. ;) Do you have a source, Kane? Absolutely no offense intended, I just want to check all my sources...

Anyone else who does talk to an occupational hazards specialist or industrial expert, please post it!

To further clarify my concern, I should state that for >>forging blades in a coal forge<< didymium or gold plated didymium may not be as necessary. What I do for ten hours straight sometimes is forge-weld damascus in a gas forge. I have to look directly at the surface of the steel at 1800 F to gauge the activity of the flux... which is something more akin to glassblowing or checking a ceramics kiln in terms of radiation and intensity emitted primarily from the interior refractory.

Bob, I am not surprised by the lack of info on this one... Art hazards in particular are notoriously under-investigated by the medical profession... I just #### glad my calling wasn't printmaking!

OK a small correction, there are some very high filament temp incandescent lamps that send out meaningfull amounts of long-wave U, apparently they are short lived. I found two sites that explain the physics part of this:
csep10.phys.utk.edu/guidr...lanck.html (http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/guidry/java/planck/planck.html) and hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu...rc.html#c2 (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/bbrc.html#c2) . The latter also shows graphically some of the interesting regions. It seems that if the temp is above 2500 K raising it quite fast increases the proportion of UV in the radiation. It also seems that this phenomenon borders the quantum world where a lot of things are counterintuitive and you need a physicist to explain things.

The other part is the effect of UV and how much is needed to damage, this is the physicians part and as you propably know their opinions are notoriously inexact. I guess there is no clearcut limit what causes damage and what not, incerasing amounts cause increasing damage.

Now even if the temp is low enough to have a very small portion of UV if you have a large area radiating the total amounts to possibly damaging. All the smithy forges I have seen a quite small by high temp area, again nothing compared to melting furnaces.

Humans have been looking into camp fires for quite a while ( 1.5 million years?) and it does not seem to have much effect, admittedly the temp is relatively low. This question is partly pure physics: how much UV at a given temp; and partly physiology: how much damage from a given amount of UV.

On IR the physics is clear: a forge sends out a lot of IR. What follows is my speculation: if you look long enough to a hot source the picture of the hot area formed on your retina may get hot enough to cause damage ie. that area gets burned, my best guess is that getting burns on your retina is not a good thing. So on a forge I am still more concerned of IR.

Somewhere there propably is a study concerning furnace workers exposure to IR and UV from the hot surfaces, I'll keep looking.

TLM

I contacted a foundry and asked them one question; "What do your workers wear for eye protection?" I explained I did not want recommendations or any advise, just the simple answer to the question. I did not tell them what I wanted the information for other than a personal knowledge. IF they answer me, we can investigate what they wear and what it protects against.

There must be a place that knows the amounts of damaging components the forge creates. Then at least we would know exactly what to talk to our eye doctors about. They seem to be unaware what the dangers are and therefore cannot answer us. If we tell them that there is IR at a (maximum) set level and UV at a set level and goblins and dragons at a set level, they should be able to tell us what to wear.

This is a great topic! Talking to your local optometrist
is of little help since they are not dealing with industrial
safety for the most part. A place to start research is www.uvex.com they are one of the two big safety glasses manufactures the other is AO, which I think
stands for American Optical. The lens selection part
of the uvex website mentions the amount of light transmitted by their products, I am surprised some of the IR protecting shades still let 45% of the IR through, although blocking 99.99 UV and up to 98% visible light.
The lenses are made to industrial standards set with in
conjunction to AWS standards. (American Welding
Society) I think the welding industry has spent the most
effort in eye protection research. I don't know about
dark lenses causing more harm through dialating the pupil but will try to research it too. An interesting thing
told to me by my welding instructor, was that if you are using gold plated welding lenses to get one shade darker than if you were using the green lenses. Perhaps
this was to lessen the amount of the visible light spectrum that gets through. For a while there I was looking at all the high end glacier glasses trying to find
ones that were listed as 100% UV and IR filtering.
I too have spent hours looking at molten flux, in industrial size furnaces that make knifemaker's forges look like toys so far no retina burn as far as the optometrist can tell. I have not heard of weldors going blind in their old age, so the industry might be doing something right.

Kane,

Good to have you join this topic. We need all the help we can get to find this answer (the right one anyway).


Also, Are you registered? I appears that you are not by your post. If you are not, why not go do it. It is free and we can learn more about you by viewing your profile.

Good to have you aboard.

So guys, any new information on this front? I've been trying to figure out the dydimium thing for a while now. A friend of mine swears by them (no more headaches and scratchy eyes after long hours at the forge) but his aren't gold plated and that seems to be of some importance from what I've been reading.

Guy Thomas

I will tell you in the meantime that I wear didymium and only rarely have the itchy eye... but I have heard claims that didymium lets 70% of the IR in.

I've been playing phone tag with a company called Aura-lense that was recommended to me by a foundry/ forge/ glassblower friend of mine. They apparently produce lenses with stuff in them that haven't even been mentioned so far and also do bifocals so you can have a strong protective lense for looking right into the forge and more visiblibility with some protection at the same time. Could work, could be annoying.

I'll pester them again tomorrow.

Interesting site, though:

www.auralens.com (http://www.auralens.com)

I have been interested in this topic since way back. Having cataract surgery, losing the inner lenses, over 20 years ago. I have recently had new eyes installed, LENS IMPLANTS, so you see this is a real major deal for me. I do not want to risk the new eyes to advertisements or claims made by manufacturers. Upon my request, my eye surgeon did a follow up on the didymium glasses. He highly advocates the gold didyniums and I should not have any eye problems wearing the didymium glasses, while working with the forge. This now is a no brainer for me, get the dydimiums and save your eyes.
KEN (WWJD)

Thanks Ken for the follow up.

Your doctor agrees that gold dydidium protects for everything you need to worry about? That is great. If they protect your eyes with all the problems you've had it should be good for everyone.

I got an e-mail yesterday from the R&D guy at a place that makes safety glasses. He said that we should be using welders lens #3. They protect for UV and IR both. They sure would make color recognition difficult with the green tint. My problem with his comments are they they sounded like a (possibly educated) guess. Our eyes are worth more than someone guessing about a solution.

I just wish we could get someone that knows this stuff to put out an official endorsement on something that "TESTS" have proven to be the right thing. Wish I had the cash to hire a lab to do some testing and determine what is really the best thing.

If I remember correctly, Dr. H. somewhere comments that one of the fine metal mesh full face shields (like the plastic full face shields only metal mesh) not only do a superior job of protecting against flying scale, etc, but also work well as a IR shield. The only place I have ever seen the metal mesh shields offered for sale is at McMaster Carr. Anyone else have one of these?

It seems to me, that the best bet would be asking glass working professionals. They deal with more sodium flare then we do. And the furnace size is larger, even if the temp is lower. For now I'm using the didymium glasses I purchased through a glass supplier (and the best rated set at that). However, I will continue to follow this thread and look in to the gold plated didymium glasses.


Scott B. Jaqua

Where can you buy the glasses at,I don't remember seeing any in the welding supply or any of the safety catalogs I get. Thanks, Mike

May as well put my 2 cents in. A few years ago ABANA addressed this subject in their mag the "Anvil's Ring".An excellant article; I'll see if I can find it. Gold plated didymium was rated tops and non-plated didymium was rated several steps down but is still good protection. I bought some cobalt blue foundry glasses to try. They are way too dark for our use.Centaur Forge offers didyium glasses also.

I would REALLY like to see that article. Hope you can find it.

Just to throw another fly into the ointment have a look at this thread at Swordforum:

swordforum.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=cafe&Number=91851&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&part=1#Post92345 (http://swordforum.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=cafe&Number=91851&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&part=1#Post92345)

Guy Thomas

I found the article. Anvil's Ring, vol.23, no.1, summer 1995.The thread that Guy Thomas posted says it all. Mr. Furrer sums up the article very well. Welding glasses in shade 3 offers better protection than didymium and is far cheaper and easier to get. Gold coatings are expensive and can rub off. Since I'm a cheap kind of guy, I know what I'm getting.