Fishbladder Woodworking

I have a beard and I wear glasses. Is there anything that works?

Yes, and it is the same answer to both problems. A beard breaks a face seal, and a face seal is what pushes your breath up onto your lenses. Remove the seal and both go away at once - which is why a powered hood tends to suit people who are fighting both.

These get treated as two separate complaints and they have one cause.

A sealed respirator needs a gasket against skin. Facial hair holds that gasket off the skin, so the seal leaks. Meanwhile every exhale has to escape somewhere, and the easiest route out of a sealed mask is up over the nose bridge - directly onto your lenses. So the same seal that your beard defeats is the thing fogging your glasses.

A powered hood inverts it. The blower draws air through the filter and pushes it into the hood, so air moves outward past your face instead of being dragged in past a gasket. There is nothing for a beard to break, and the air moving across the inside of the visor is what keeps it clear.

Ron McGee, who wears both glasses and a beard, told us in writing that the positive airflow keeps his glasses clear. That is his experience, in his words, published with his permission.

Two honest caveats. Glasses under a hood still need to fit under a visor, so if you wear large frames, check the clearance. And this is a powered device: it needs a charged battery and a filter that is not blocked, which is a different maintenance habit from a mask you can throw in a drawer.

The Breathie Thingy

A powered air-purifying respirator for woodworkers. $499 for the first 30 units of each batch, including a spare filter kit.

See the current batch