Lee Valley - German Safety Googles #22R73.50 (Rating: 2)
These googles are presented by Lee Valley as combing function and form: comprehensive eye protection (though "not certified for industrial use") and a "cool retro look." The look IS cool, if that is at all important, and the youngsters in your life are sure to point out that you resemble a Minion from the kids' movie Despicable Me. Giving the children a laugh is about as much satisfaction as you can expect from these googles.
I'm a hobbyist, an evening and weekend warrior, but I do enough machining to not want to tempt fate so I thought to replace my unsatisfactory generic factory-sourced safety glasses with these googles from Lee Valley. Because I often work outdoors I ordered the then-available (no longer, per Lee Valley's website) add-on tinted lenses and experienced my first regret: they simply did not fit in the googles no matter how I tried. Strike one.
In the course of a week I may wear these googles for a total of a few hours. Again, I'm a hobbyist and at that most of my time does not require safety gear of this nature, and so I was surprised to find that after a month or so of use my googles were RUSTING! Presumably the brief weekly exposure to sweat leads to corrosion. Metal rusts, everyone knows, but equipment designed to be in close contact with skin isn't treated to prevent almost immediate corrosion? Please. Strike two.
Strike three isn't really a full strike, but it is an irritant. A large part of my dissatisfaction with plastic industrial-grade safety glasses is their tendency to fog over. Fogged glasses quickly come off and are forgotten, thereby undermining their very reason for being. These Lee Valley googles also fog notwithstanding their "shielded side vents." Visual clarity is better than I've experienced with the plastic specs but this really isn't saying much.
Bottom line: buy these googles for a costume or to make little children smile, but if your need is for reliably functional safety eye-wear then pass these by.
These googles are presented by Lee Valley as combing function and form: comprehensive eye protection (though "not certified for industrial use") and a "cool retro look." The look IS cool, if that is at all important, and the youngsters in your life are sure to point out that you resemble a Minion from the kids' movie Despicable Me. Giving the children a laugh is about as much satisfaction as you can expect from these googles.
I'm a hobbyist, an evening and weekend warrior, but I do enough machining to not want to tempt fate so I thought to replace my unsatisfactory generic factory-sourced safety glasses with these googles from Lee Valley. Because I often work outdoors I ordered the then-available (no longer, per Lee Valley's website) add-on tinted lenses and experienced my first regret: they simply did not fit in the googles no matter how I tried. Strike one.
In the course of a week I may wear these googles for a total of a few hours. Again, I'm a hobbyist and at that most of my time does not require safety gear of this nature, and so I was surprised to find that after a month or so of use my googles were RUSTING! Presumably the brief weekly exposure to sweat leads to corrosion. Metal rusts, everyone knows, but equipment designed to be in close contact with skin isn't treated to prevent almost immediate corrosion? Please. Strike two.
Strike three isn't really a full strike, but it is an irritant. A large part of my dissatisfaction with plastic industrial-grade safety glasses is their tendency to fog over. Fogged glasses quickly come off and are forgotten, thereby undermining their very reason for being. These Lee Valley googles also fog notwithstanding their "shielded side vents." Visual clarity is better than I've experienced with the plastic specs but this really isn't saying much.
Bottom line: buy these googles for a costume or to make little children smile, but if your need is for reliably functional safety eye-wear then pass these by.