Wooden goggles for diving down deeper

[wdaf]

Did yo know that wooden goggles (like still used today by indigenous divers) can be used to dive down up to 20m without getting a mask squeeze?

 

[Charlie99]

Nope. I didn't know that. Is it true? Why do you think it is true?

 

[DevonDiver]

There'd be three explainations:

1) Local witchdoctors could cast spells for the goggles to over-come Boyle's Law.

2) Wood is porous, thereby allowing some air to be drawn from the material into the (very small) airspace on descent, helping prevent squeeze.

3) The goggles do actually squeeze, but local divers endure the discomfort.

 

[wdaf]

There'd be three explainations:

1) Local witchdoctors could cast spells for the goggles to over-come Boyle's Law.
2) Wood is porous, thereby allowing some air to be drawn from the material into the (very small) airspace on descent, helping prevent squeeze.
3) The goggles do actually squeeze, but local divers endure the discomfort.

Locals do it - YouTube - Sea Bed Hunting On One Breath
A friend dove to 10m - YouTube - Amazing Wooden Diving Goggles
And i myself dove to 21,3m (1 witness, and video to come)

1. We call them quack doctor here ... at least me and my friend didn't consult them, not sure about the guy in the video ;-)
2. I dove the 21,3m with one goggle version made out of pure epoxy. The goggles also did not flood.
3. Small pressure yes, but for some reason i had in 21,3m less pressure than with speedos at 5m.

Any other ideas or explanations???

PS:Sorry, cant post URLs yet.

 

[cdarroch]

Maybe has something to do with the comparative rigidity of the wood? Like your scuba tank, the air in the mask won't compress if it's not in a flexible container...?

 

[Lee Taylor]

<- injection molded plastic part designer and mass manufacturer

BUT, I can produce 50 thousand plastic ones in the time it takes you to produce one wooden one

 

[DevonDiver]

Like your scuba tank, the air in the mask won't compress if it's not in a flexible container...?

Ummm...a mask/googles are always going to be a flexible container.... on account of the fact that your eye balls / face makes up part of the container.

Maybe the local pinoy divers have special inflexible faces?

 

[bleeb]

This made for a bit of an interesting mental exercise.


Not that I think this is what's happening here, but I wonder if you could make goggles or masks at least partly out of some material that passes water vapor but not liquid water. Sort of like a super Gore-tex. If it vaporized some of the surrounding water fast enough, you could go down without having to manually equalize, and you'd end up with a mask filled with a little bit of air and a lot of water vapor. Don't know if it would bother your eyes any, but I'm guessing it wouldn't.

 

[Charlie99]

The other approach is to have near zero air volume. Then your eyeballs just have to protrude and bulge a tiny bit to equalize.

 

[DevonDiver]

Shush....keep quiet...or someone at Spare Air will invent a mini-mask cylinder...