- Cycling eyewear, in my opinion,
is a vital piece of kit for riding.
Not only do they help protect your eyes
from UV rays, they also give you
clearer vision, as you don't have to
squint looking into the sun.
Or, in the case for some people out there,
where it's windy, raining, or there's some dust
or bugs or a little bit of road debris
coming up into your face.
However, they do need looking after.
(upbeat music)
Now, a really simple way of cleaning
your sunglasses in a hurry is with clean hands,
to run the glasses underneath some warm water
to remove any initial dirt or grime,
then, apply a couple of drops of washing-up liquid
between your fingers and just rub them
in a circular motion on both side of the lenses.
And then, also work that washing-up liquid,
more dish soap around the nose, pads, and the arms,
and any rubber grippers too.
Once you've done this, you're gonna want to
rinse thoroughly with warm water and
if you live in a place with hard water,
so lots of calcium and magnesium,
use distilled water for this process.
This prevents any streaking.
Now, for a fully thorough clean,
if you have lenses that can easily be removed,
or designed to be removed,
you're going to want to take those out.
It's amazing how much salt from sweat
can gather inside of the lens and the frame,
as well as also, around the nose pads
or rubber ear grippers.
And also, the oils from your sweat
can actually damage these bits,
so you are going to want to take
particularly good care of them.
So, once you've done all of that,
you're going to want to shake or tap
the water from the glasses, and in an ideal world,
if you have an air duster, then blast the
water droplets off with that.
Or, you could even use a hair dryer
on the cool setting to remove the water.
Now, a tip here, if you have the lenses
removed from the frame, is to hold the lens
by the edges, so you don't actually
get any smears or smudges on them from your fingers.
Now, what you don't want to be using
for drying your lenses is paper towels
or 100 percent cotton.
The reason being these paper towels
can actually contain tiny little bits
of wood, believe it or not, and in turn,
they can actually scratch up the lenses.
And the same can happen with cotton,
as little bits of particle can get trapped
in amongst them, and when you're
polishing up those lenses, they can get scratched,
and that's not what we want to happen, is it?
Instead, get yourself a microfiber cloth,
or a cloth from an optician's,
although, they eventually do give up
and use those instead, because they
are designed for the job.
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Fogging up sunglasses.
That's a problem which I've encountered
with every single pair of sunglasses out there
whilst riding along.
Now, many lenses do, in fact,
come with an anti-fog coating on the inside,
which does help a little bit, but once
you get that humid weather,
they do tend to steam up, particularly
when briefly stopping roadside,
so here's a few great cheeky little hacks
for you to try and stop yours from fogging up.
First up, shaving foam.
What you're gonna need to do here
is spray a small amount, just on the inside of the lens,
and then, with a microfiber cloth,
simply buff it away until it disappears,
and hopefully, you're gonna be fog-free.
Next up is a product which I hope
every household out there has, some of this:
dish soap, washing-up liquid,
whatever you want to call it,
what you're gonna need to do with this
is add a couple of drops to the inside of the lens,
and get this, you're also gonna add
a couple of drops to the outside of the lens, too.
So, for the inside, you're gonna put it on
and buff it on with your microfiber cloth again,
and then, the same goes for the outside
of the lens, so the outside purpose
is to actually try and repel any raindrops,
or that, or a bit of grease, that kind of thing,
to stop them from sticking onto the lens,
and the inside, it's gonna stop it fogging up.
Now, the next one is something,
which, personally, I've never tried myself: saliva.
That's right, essentially, you're going to dribble
onto the lens and then buff it in
with the microfiber cloth.
I am not going to dribble onto this lens on camera.
In fact, I'm not gonna do it at all,
but you can try it at home, in the privacy
of closed doors, where no one else can see you.
Give it a go and let me know what happens
in the comments.
The final hack for the anti-fog
is to grab yourself a bar of soap.
I do hope that most households out there have one,
and then simply rub away on the inside of the lens,
so you have some streaks of the soap
on the inside there, and then, again,
with your cloth, just rub it away and buff that
until it disappears and hopefully,
that's going to leave you mist-free.
Now, you'll notice that most of these,
other than the saliva, are kind of soap-based.
So, obviously, there's a chemical reaction there,
or lack of reaction, really, to prevent
that misting happening.
So, you could try also, some other soap-based products,
but again, don't do it on your
favorite pair of sunglasses out there
that you can't afford to risk damaging,
because I can't be held responsible
for anything that does happen.
Now, other than those absolutely brilliant hacks
I must say, there are specific products
for the job, too.
So, you've got anti-fog treatment
as well as hydrophobic treatment,
so the hydrophobic treatment,
well, that goes on the outside of the lens,
and it basically, the idea of it is to get rainwater
to not stick and obscure your vision,
and then, of course, the anti-fog
does what it says on the tin, or bottle, in this case,
stops the inside of your lens fogging up.
(upbeat music)
The moment you scratch your sunglasses,
quite honestly, it's heart-sinking,
and there's nothing worse than that
first scratch you get on a lens.
Now, the next method, I can't vouch for,
and neither can myself or GCN or GCN Tech
be held responsible for any damage being incurred.
I have heard that if you use toothpaste
on a scratch and gently rub that in with a cloth,
it can, in fact, remove some scratches.
Now, I have been told that the toothpaste
you need is quite a basic one, so a non-gel one,
a non-whitening, a non-abrasive, basically,
the most basic one you can find.
Have I said basic enough times?
Anyway, let's see how it goes because
whilst I was looking around in the bottom of
Ollie's bag for his dinner money,
I found a scratched up old lens,
so let's have a look and see if
it actually works on 'em.
Well, it's not really done anything, to be honest,
so, I think I'm just gonna go and
put this back in Ollie's bag and well,
he won't notice anything other than
his eyelids will smell ever so minty.
So, there we are!
A pair of sunglasses that are
not only sparkling clean, but also
no chance of fogging up.
Now, you may wonder where on Earth I dreamt up these ideas;
well, believe it or not, when you're away racing,
and in between races, you've got
a lot of spare time on your hands and
when your imagination is as wild as mine,
that's the sort of thing I get up to.
Crazy, I know.
Now, if you've got any ideas for how to stop
your sunglasses from steaming up
or for looking absolutely spot-on,
leave 'em down there in the comments.
I wanna know.
Now, remember as well, to like and share
this video with your friends.
Give it a big ole thumbs-up, and don't forget
to check out the GCN shop
at shop.globalcyclingnetwork.com.
Now, if you wanna win a pair of Roka sunglasses,
Ollie, he's just done an unboxing,
so click just down here for that.
Now, if you wanna clean something else,
how about this time, your drivetrain,
click just down here.