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Re: (meteorobs)Dew prevention on lens with soap
At 06:02 PM 11/06/98 EST, you wrote:
>...I remember as a rookie that I got my hands on
>several tubes of a paste designed to be used on the shields of astronaut
>helmets. we used them inside our masks. Perhaps a similar product is
>available?
I can't remember the actual name of the manufacturer or product, but it's
something like Methuan. Anyway, there are (or were, when I last used it
some years ago) two squeeze bottles, one gray and the other white. The gray
bottle has some kinda foul-smelling, crummy-looking, watery paste that is
used to polish plastic windshields, helmet faceplates, etc.. You squeeze a
little on a lint-free cloth and rub the stuff until it's dry on the
plastic. When you're done, you've actually polished the very fine cracks
and crazes out of the plastic which almost completely eliminates sunlight
glare, such as you see on old scratched car windshields (I never tried
using it as a polisher on a glass windshield, don't know if it'd polish as
well on glass). I used it on the plexiglass windshield of my touring
motorcycle all the time, particularly before riding when it might rain as
the polish left a residue that caused raindrops to break into extremely
fine droplets, spraying right off the windshield while riding on a highway
even in a heavy rain. I discovered that I could actually see better than
cars with windshield wipers!
The other bottle, colored white, does not contain the fine abrasive so it's
effect is to simply provide the coating that broke up the rain drops. But
it's intended purpose was actually just an excellent plastic windshield
cleaner. The gray bottle was both a cleaner and fine polisher.
Later, after I stopped riding motorcycles, I found another excellent use
for the stuff: retarding the formation of dew on my car windshield. Instead
of actually trying to rub the stuff into the glass car windshield, I merely
used it as one might use an ordinary glass cleaner. I'd forgotten about
this until George made his key statement above about the "tubes" of paste.
Clear lens,
SteveH
Shrewsbury MA
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