I bought another mask - cleaning issues

[Starfish]

When I bough tmy first mask for class, I also got roped into the small bottles of cleaner and synthetic defog. I was never pleased with the job they did.

Now I have bought a new mask.
I understand that baby shampoo is great as a defog.
What do I do the initial scrob with? I heared toothpaste said elsewhere, but what kind? Gel? Paste?

Help. Thanks, Starfish

 

[boydski]

Just regular toothpaste works fine. I've used the gel and/or paste varieties and they work well. I generally re-clean my mask with toothpaste once or twice a year and it really seems to help stop any fogging problems.

Boydski

 

[luvdiving]

Hi Starfish

Have you cleaned the protective coating from the inside of the mask? Some masks have a protective coating applied during the manufacturing process to keep the glass from being scratched during processing and shipping. Without removing this coating, all the de-fog's in the world won't help. The LDS selling this mask should have said something about this.

Ken

 

[Mario S Caner]

Use a [red]Non-Gel[/red] toothpaste to clean the lenses prior to applying the defog product. Regular toothpaste is just gritty enough to clean the lenses thouroughly without scratching them. If you purchased a defog called 500psi, you did good, otherwise the rest doesn't really work as well.


Sea you in the Deep Blue!

 

[herman]

The regular old white tooth paste is what I use. Put a blob on the lens and buff it around with your finger then rinse. As for defogs, the 500 PSI does great. Lately, I have been experimenting with kids "no tears" shampoos. Rub a drop on, let it dry and rinse as I get in. Seems to work great and the orange smell is not bad either.

 

[greg somers]

Clean your mask and brush your teeth at the same time and save money.Start with the teeth and then spit into the mask...Mmmmmm
There can be only one,
The Thunder from Down Under,
The Gasman

 

[junior]

I've used the Crest tooth paste to clean off my protective coating when I bought my mask. You can use any dish soap like Joy or Palmolive to rub all around the inside of the mask. A drop or two will be plenty. Some dive charters provide "sea snot" for you to use before you dive. I carry a bottle of sea drops and rub that around the inside of my mask to prevent the fogging. I have also spit into my mask and rubbed that over the inside to prevent fogging. I normally use some kind of defog method before each dive. So if I'm on a two tank dive, I'll defog before each dive.

 

[Starfish]

Thank you for the help on the new mask.

I used good old Crest and it worked great.

As for the Cressi Big Eyes. All I can say it WOW! I love the greater field of vision. My husband asked to borrow it when we were testing gear in the pool, and I switched to his mask. I then felt like I was looking through a tunnel. I quickly switched back to the Cressi.

Thanks again for everyone's help. --Starfish

 

[joewr]

Starfish,

I started with superdupercureallwonderful commericial defog--then I went to counter culture spit. The former was effective and costly while the latter was cheap and sometimes ineffective (I have no idea why! Something I et?). Finally, I went to Johnson's Baby Shampoo because it worked every time, it is cheap, it does not sting my eyes if I leave a little behind by mistake. I carry a small plastic bottle of said shampoo diluted 1:4 on the dive boat and willingly share it...

I have used Crest to do the primary cleaning of a new mask (little particles of silica constitute the mild abrasive), but now carry along a small bottle of Dow Soft Scrub for that task AND I CLEAN MY MASK WITH THE SOFT SCRUB EVERY FEW DAYS TO KEEP ANY FILM OR GUCK (highly technical term) FROM BUILDING UP. All part of being anal compulsive!

Joewr

 

[keralucu]

See this thread - which basically says the same thing.

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?threadid=1627

I did have trouble understanding what a 'hocker' was though! Thanks NetDoc....