(quick tempo jazz music)
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oval, adult, PVC, semi-hard, prima donna, American,
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silicon, vinylon, gold, silver, (mumbles), titanium,
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harmony, junior, baby, polycarbonate, air cushion,
hypo-allergenic, bio-medical, glass.
(inspirational rock music)
Have you guessed what it is yet?
Well, today we are going to talk about nosepads.
This all began back when I got my first Sios catalog,
probably almost six months ago now, and I sat down with it
and I went through it page by page and lo and behold,
I turned one of the pages and I said, "Whoa, I didn't know
"they made those!"
And it's just been buggin' me since that I wanted to share
it with you and I will at the end of this presentation.
Now, you're all familiar with the Hilco catalog and
the Sios catalog.
Well, I sat down with them and I did a count.
And to give you an idea of the variability in nosepads,
Hilco offers 129 different pads
and 46 different style straps and briges
for a total of 175.
Sios, 124 pads,
10 straps and bridges for a total of
134 different styles.
So, I think that gives you a really good idea of the
variability, the number that you might need to actually have
on hand to make repairs, and the overwhelming variety
that comes on all of those different frames that are
out there on your board.
I just wanna cover some things that, you know, come up
on kind of a routine when talking about nosepads.
There is no way I'm gonna cover everything today.
We're gonna get into more of that when we get into the
nitty gritty of dispensing and adjustment.
But, just gonna hit some highlights since we brought it up.
And, I'm gonna tell you about that really cool pair of
nosepads that I didn't know existed.
Tools; just know that there are all different kinds of
tools for adjusting nosepads.
I'll give you some close-ups there.
These are two from Sios.
I have always favored, this used to be called the European,
the longer nosed, the narrower.
It lets you really get in nice and tight behind there.
Never gonna brace or hit the frame and kind of create
a tension that you're break something off.
Speaking of breaking things off, that just doesn't
happen as often as it used to since the quality
of frames has gone up.
This has always been one of my favorite tools, it's a little
tiny pair of jewelers pliers from Vigor.
And that really lets you get in and
make some really fine adjustments to your guard arm,
which is really what all this is about
as far as adjustments go.
Rather than trying to do it with the nosepad pliers,
I always really liked these little guys as well.
We have some aids, so to speak.
I really struggle with these a little bit.
I understand their purpose.
I think if you're a newbie and you're tentative and
you haven't done it much, it might be a really good idea
to have one of these.
I suspect I've only got a couple years before I get the
old man shakes worse than I do already.
They have their place, but it's also in a way a little
bit of a crutch.
I wanna make sure that you practice enough and
do this enough that you actually get competent enough
where you don't maybe necessarily have to grab for
something like this every time.
But, let's say you were, in fact, worried about damaging
the lens while you were doing this, you tend to
slip or something.
That's called The Fish, that wraps around there.
Obviously I could take my fairly sharp, fairly small
steel screwdriver and, you know, I could really mess up here
and I am not gonna hurt anything.
(laughs)
Deliberate, I'm gonna scratch the lens, okay?
It's not gonna happen if I'm using this to protect it.
And, there's also The Ghost which does kind of
the same thing.
And, I think everybody has a version of these things.
But, there again, I'm not gonna hurt anything if I slip
while I'm working on a nosepad.
Again, work on this yourself enough to be competent
where you don't have to worry about that.
One other thing I always love to touch on when I'm talking
about nosepads is the use of an asymentrical pad.
Meaning that you have a rounded edge and a flatter edge.
And, just so you know, if you ever have the flat edge,
that faces out towards the world.
Your rounded edge faces in towards your customer, your eye.
So, if you ever see that backwards, you need to
swap 'em around.
That's so you know, in case you ever have to
figure that out.
There are variations of this tool which is designed
to work with pop off pads.
A lot of you probably have the fork which looks just like
this part alone.
And, that works like so.
You just kinda reach in there and pop that out.
Now, the beauty of a tool like this, the tweezers version,
the plier version is a tool that looks like this but has
this head on it, is that it allows you to support the
guard arm while you're popping the pad out.
Of course, I'll get you a closeup of that.
Which, completely eliminates the risk of damaging the
guard arm, removing the guard arm, or of course,
breaking it off, which would be the worst possible thing.
And that, this let's you pop it right off.
This is a handy little tool as well.
So, we've got different kinds of nosepad tools.
A little adjustment pliers.
We've got our Fish and our Ghost, our protective pieces
for working with nosepads.
We've got different tools for popping pads off.
Find one that you like and you use.
It's another thing, on all of these tools,
don't necessarily feel like you're locked in
to what you have available at work.
You're an optician.
If you find a tool that really works a whole lot better
or reduces the chance of damage, simply does a better job,
you know, I think I might invest in that tool myself,
even if your employer maybe isn't willing to.
But hey, that's just me.
I've got the two cool ones I wanna show you,
but since I pulled this tray out anyway, let's take a peek
at a couple of the other specialty items that come
with this tray.
We've got a picture of the guard arm that they're
designed to go on to.
Tells us what material they are.
We've got our old clip-on style B&L's there.
Handy to have around.
We have got a post style round.
I would say these are kind of meant for
for rimless eyewear like a silhouette design.
That particular ones are hard.
They also come in this really squishy silicone as well.
And that comes in three different sizes: an 8, a 9.5,
and then these kind of whopping ovals.
And I'll show you a trick.
Let me pop this open.
These are a version of that in a rectangle.
And, if you ever need to pop these on and they don't go in
real nice, let me show you a trick on how to get those in.
If you can see that, it has the raised ledge there.
And you've got something that looks like that.
Sometimes they just pop right in for you real nice and easy.
If they don't, this is how they installed windshields
back in the day before glues.
This is just nylon cord.
You can use a thread or just about anything else you wanted.
Pop that in there.
And...
just pull.
Oooh, voila!
(case snaps)
And last, before our new cool ones, these are the
old style silhouettes.
And these are kind of interchangeable with the new ones
and the old ones.
Just some other stuff that comes in the kit.
You know, grab these catalogs and look through 'em.
And the two that I really wanted to share with you,
this one I knew about.
These are actually, you ready?
Titanium nosepads.
Which I think are pretty darn cool.
There's some titanium frames that come with these.
You could always swap these out yourself.
You had a really cool metal frame, you didn't wanna
destroy the look of it, there is a titanium nosepad.
Which, of course is lightweight and hypo-allergenic.
And these are the ones that I was amazed about.
These...
are glass.
How cool is that?
Glass nosepads.
And before you go havin' a hissy fit,
they're hardened glass.
They are considered unbreakable.
And let's face it, if that little tiny piece broke off
and it just went away, I don't think anybody's going to die.
My guess would be, these would be the perfect answer
for that person that says they are allergic to absolutely
everything, including titanium, plastic, air, water.
This might be your perfect last resort.
I just thought those were cool.
Probably also extremely easy to clean.
You could use hot water, soap, dish washing liquid,
and get those probably as clean as the day they went on
for a long period of time.
So, those were the ones that I wanted to share.
Just kind of a quick overview of some things that are
related to nosepads.
Again, we will get into a whole lot more down the road.
As always, thank you so much for watching.
If you're watchin' me on Facebook, gimme a like.
If you're watchin' me on YouTube, hit that subscribe button.
Make sure that every lens in your optical life
comes from Laramy-K.
I will see you again next week.
Today, about the miracle of the nosepad.
Miracle?
(deep sigh)
(uptempo jazz music)