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Even though taking care of a SCUBA mask is easy, proper and thoughtful care will help you get the most out of all your SCUBA gear and your diving mask is no exception.
Let’s break it down and find out why!
In episode 006 we’re going to talk about how to prepare a SCUBA mask for its first dive and general SCUBA mask care and maintenance.
Dive into the full show notes here: https://updiveblog.link/updc006
The Under Pressure Divecast is the SCUBA diving podcast dedicated to making SCUBA fun, entertaining and accessible! Join me SKuba Steve as I go over topics related to recreational SCUBA diving, discuss gear and provide easy tips that make your diving more enjoyable, comfortable, safer or more memorable.
Hey, under pressure dive buddies, having the right gear is a great start to getting the most out of every scuba dive. But how we take care of that gear can be just as important. Get your gear on, because it's time to descend into another episode of the underpressure dive cast. I'm your host, scuba Steve. Scuba diving is a fun and exciting adventure sport and take it from me, you can be a scuba diver. And to help you get there, the underpressure dive cast is dedicated to promoting and discussing recreational scuba diving.
So come on, let's make our descent. So what are we going to cover today? Well, we're going to talk about we talked about last week, we
talked about how to choose a scuba diving mask. And we went through, I think every feature that can possibly matter on a scuba diving mask to help you make a good decision. When you need to choose one. This way, we're going to talk about how to prep that mask for the first time you use it, how you're going to clean it on a regular basis defogging storage and travel. Okay, before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about some of the scuba diving news this week. The story that came to mind that I really thought was pretty cool, is there is a new deep dive site called Deep Dive Dubai, in Dubai that just opened last month. It's pretty crazy deep, it's like 196 feet deep, 14 million gallons of fresh water. And it is the deepest manmade diving location in the world right now. So that's pretty cool. It's got an underwater city to explore. And, and I didn't get a whole lot of time to look into the details. But it seemed pretty cool. Definitely worth checking out at least online. And I guess if you're going to do by, and you're not going to dive in the ocean, which not sure why you would do that. But if you need to hit some fresh water first brush up on your skills, this might be a great option for you. Okay, so let's talk about that mask. Last week, we went a little bit long, I do think that we will be able to keep it a little bit shorter this week to respect your time. And so the first thing we're going to do when we talk about a mask is we're going to get a brand new mask, take it home. And before we take it in the water, we want to prepare it for the first use. And if you look in on on the web, you're going to find a couple of different reasons for this. But basically, you might remember this mask from last week. But basically there is a coating that is going to be on the surface of the mask, that is a remnant of the manufacturing process. And if you if you look at different sources, some are gonna say that it's a film leftover from unmolded, demoulding, unmolding, whatever it is where they take the mask out of a mold. Or you may see some references to protecting the surface of the surface of the glass, excuse me. In any case, there is going to be an interfering coating on your mask when you take it home. And we need to get rid of that before we do anything else. And so there are a couple of ways if you've looked on the internet about this, or have you talked to other divers or looked on some forums, there are going to be a few different ways that people talk about getting rid of this mask. film. The probably the most popular way that people will talk about the divers talk about is toothpaste. So just plain old, regular toothpaste. The nice thing about toothpaste is is or the reason we've used it in the past historically is because it's abrasive enough to remove that film, but in theory, not abrasive enough to actually damage the surface of the lens. Now, I have always told people not to use toothpaste on a polycarbonate lens. Because my own concerns about that and there is no no matter what you might read or hear there is no science that backs up the safety of toothpaste on your lens. It won't hurt the functionality of the lens, but whether or not it's damaging to the surface of the lens. Nobody's taken 1000 masks and rub different kinds of toothpaste on them and charted the data, okay about the clarity of the mask. So you're not going to get anything but anecdotal evidence around that. And so we want to make sure that we're doing something has been designed for your mask. So more recently, you will find that there is a product called scrub. There are other products out there that are designed specifically for cleaning scuba masks, and getting those films off. So my recommendation at this point is it doesn't have to be this one. This is not a sponsored program. But this is the one that our shop carries here in Fort Collins. So this is the one that I use, but and it works fine. So the question is, you know, can you use a different brand, of course you can. As long as it's from a scuba shop and designed to clean scuba masks, you're probably good to go. So that's the kind of the
what what we should be doing at this point, when it comes to cleaning our masks. And for audio listeners, the product that I held up is called scrub, and it's a mass cleaning liquid. So the other thing that you may hear from divers who've been been around for a while, or you may read it on forums are see it in articles is this idea of burning off the mask coding with a lighter, I'm not even going to spend any more time on this, don't do it. Okay, that's it. So now we've got that for Oh, the other thing is, you may have to clean your lens a couple of times, maybe even three times with one of these cleaners, whether it's toothpaste, if that's what you choose to do or whether or not, it's a product like this scrub, you may need to do it two or three times to get all of the surface film off. And so you just follow the instructions on the bottle, go through it, and do both the inside and the outside of the mask and you'll get you'll get that coating off. So that's step one. Now that we've got the initial coating off, the next thing we kind of want to do before even before we dive the mask, is we want to check the strap we want to make sure that that we look the strap over so there's a couple of things with that. One, if you're going to use the stock strap, the the silicone strap that comes with your mask, I would highly recommend that you get it adjusted so that it holds the mask on your face but does not squeeze and then learn how to adjust the buckles with your eyes closed. In a perfect world, I would get in in a pool and learn how to adjust the buckles with your eyes closed. The odds are that eventually at some point, you're going to need to adjust your mask underwater, whether that's because you didn't adjust it right on the surface you traveled with it. And for some reason it got Miss adjusted, you loaned it to somebody, they adjusted it differently. And you're going to get back in the water and it's not going to be comfortable enough to do a dive or it might be it might be comfortable enough, but you might want to just get a little more comfort out of it. And if we can do those things naturally and conveniently underwater, it can add to our overall enjoyment of our dive. So make sure you know how to work those buckles. Learn how it feels when it's twisted, when the mask strap is twisted, and really twisted up and wet your hair or and put every accessory that's going to be on your head in a dive. And then try to untwist the mass strap and adjust it to make sure you know what you're doing. In you know, in my case, I don't have a whole lot of hairs. And that's not a big deal. But you may want to put an action camera on
your head and it may have a harness that goes with it. Put that on and adjust your mask strap make sure you understand what it's going to be like
when you're really diving. So that when you're diving and you have to do something it isn't new to you. That's the real takeaway there. All right, so the other piece with the mask strap is of course the snorkel. Normally as divers, we put a snorkel on our left side, you're going to have a snorkel on the side of your head attached to your mask, as well as whatever other accessories you're using, like an action camera or a head sweat or do rag or whatever. So you want to make sure the snorkel is mounted properly and that you can adjust it or reattach it if it comes off. If you're using a collapsible snorkel and keeping it in your bc pocket, you need to make sure that the clamp or the clip is on the strap. And then that goes back to like I talked about last time is whether or not you're going to use a neoprene suit. trap, or a, or the stock strap, the silicone one that comes with the mask, and make sure that they're adjusted properly so that their mask is comfortable. Alright, so regular cleaning, when we do a, there's a couple of times when we clean our masks, obviously, when you first buy one, absolutely you should, you should clean it between dives will clean it, and then between dive trips will clean it. So let's talk about each of those things. Well, when the mask is brand new, the first thing I'm going to do is at you know either after before we use a product like scrub to go ahead and get that coating off of lens, we're going to
go ahead and wash the whole lens frame strap. Everything, you can just use plain old baby shampoo, the really the key there is to use something that's that's supposed to be tear free. for a couple of reasons, one, they're
mild detergents. So they're not going to, you know, they're going to be the least likely to cause any kind of damage to any of the materials in the mask, I would just use lukewarm water, I wouldn't go overly hot. And it doesn't really matter. I don't think necessarily if you use cold water, but I generally use lukewarm water. So that's the first time you're going to clean it between dives. And I think this is really important between dives. There's, if you get on a boat, there's going to be a bucket. Usually there are two buckets, one for maybe even three, one for cameras, one for masks and one for all your other gear. And those are freshwater bins that you're supposed to be able to rinse your gear off in between dives, or at the end of your dive day before you go back to your hotel or whatever. I would strongly encourage you never to put your mask in a public bin. Okay. That's just a really easy way to get contaminants, contagious diseases really close to your eyes. And so I just shy away from that myself, I do agree that you need to rinse your mask between dives. What I do is all swish The mask around in whatever water we were diving in. So literally the lake or the ocean or whatever. And then I just take water out of my water bottle. You know, if even if I've been drinking out of it, if it's my germs from my spit, that's one thing if it's, you know, germs from 30 other people who were on the boat, that's a whole different thing. So between dives, I just use clean fresh water out of my own water bottle to clean my mask off to rinse it off. And then when you get back to the room, so if you're on a several day dive trip, you may want to rinse your mask off in fresh water in your room. At the end of your dive day with the rest of your gear. That's great. So between dive trips, when I get you know, if I get home from a dive trip, whether that's going to the homestead crater in Utah here in the United States, or you know, to a foreign destination, when you get home, I go back to just doing the whole thing in with baby shampoo basically. And then you get ready to store it, I always make sure I store everything dry, so you know leave stuff, it's not uncommon for my bathtub to be full of dive gear for a few days after a dive trip. And then once it's completely dry, then I start to put put it away. The only other thing I want to mention on on cleaning your mask is simply to always over rinse. Even if you're using a mild detergent or a mild soap like baby shampoo, it's always good to go ahead and just get all of the residue off. So just over rinse it until you can't see any more bubbles. And then maybe one more time, and then why to dry. So that's the basics of cleaning your mask, they're not hard to maintain or keep. Obviously, since the masks are attached to the straps, you clean the mask strap at the same time that you clean, clean the mask and there's usually no problem with that. So the reason that we clean the film off in the first place from manufacturing is that it really adds to the masks tendency to fog underwater, meaning that there's a temperature difference between your skin and the humidity in the mask and the temperature of the water. All of that leads to a condition where it's likely that you're going to fog your mask, and that's okay. There's a couple of ways to deal with it. And we will talk about them. As I'm going through this, I just want to mention, if you're watching live, feel free to go ahead and throw questions or comments in the comments. I do watch those while we're doing the program. And I'm happy to address them either in the moment, or I'll take breaks every now and then and talk about questions. And if you do have questions at the end of or that you'd want to put in later, I'll have a contact slide at the end of the show. So moving on, so we're going to, we're going to have fogging in our mask. Even if you remove that film, you're always going to get the potential for your mass to fog. And there are a couple of ways that we deal with that. The first one that you've probably seen a lot of in movies, and you may have seen, you've probably if you've been diving, you've probably seen other divers do it. And that is simply to spit in your mask and rub your spit around, rinse it off, put your mask on, and that it honestly works is a gross? Well, that's up to you, you know,
if you're borrowing someone else's mask is a gross, you know, your perception changes, potentially.
So
what I would say is, is that if you don't have any other solution, it does work. And so that's that's a viable solution to the alternatives that I'll talk about. If you're underwater, and you don't have another solution, which at that point, you're kind of committed, because unless you're very clever spitting in your mask, or applying a defog solution, which we'll talk about in a moment is problematic. But you can learn a little bit of water in your mask, swish it around, and then clear your mask to to get rid of any fog. So there are both pre dive solutions and during dive solutions. And then the last thing is commercial defox. So there's a product called spit. This is the one that we sell at the shop here. And you basically put a drop of it in each lens on a dual mask or, you know, maybe you think you probably get away with a drop on a false single mask, you put two drops, whatever. And you just smeared around the inside of the mask, follow the instructions on the bottle as to you know how long you leave it on or whatever, before you rinse it off. And that will really help reduce the likelihood that your mask is going to fog and lengthen the time that it takes for that fog to happen. And again, like I said, even if your mask fogs, when you're underwater, you do have the option to just put in some, just let some water in your mask and swish it around and clear your mask. So that's defog it is very easy. I always keep a bottle of spit on on my BC. It actually you can get a little, little, I didn't bring mine. But there's a little thing that attaches to this that has a D ring on it. Or a cute little pretend carabiner that you can attach to your bc works great. And then you have it on the surface. So if you're if you got in the water and forgot to put defog on your mask, you can do it then or if your buddy forgot you can do it then or if you're between dives and you're just doing a service interval where you're simply sitting there on the surface. Instead of getting out of the boat getting out of or getting out of the water onto the boat getting out of your gear, all of that you know you can just be hanging out on the surface you can still use that defog to prep your mask for the next dive. Alright, so storing your mask is actually pretty easy. Most masks come with a plastic box like this when you buy them. This mask box actually isn't for this mask but it still goes in here just fine. One thing that I always like to tell people and I do myself is I always put the strap over the mask before I put it away. It just gives one more layer of protection. And there you go. So you can do that if you've got the mass case, when you're traveling, a mass case like this takes up a lot of volume and you may not want to do that. So when we travel you can use the case if you can if you have the volume in your luggage to do that. If you don't or if you'd prefer not to. There are a couple of options out there you can wrap the mask in a towel so if you take or or other clothing that preferably doesn't have a hard point on it like buttons or snaps. something soft if you're taking a pair of sweat pants just to hang out in or lounge pants. You can wrap your mask up in that and if you put the mask strap especially if you're using one of these Third Party neoprene straps. They're, they're soft and squishy. And so they provide good coverage for the mask there. Also, as you can see, they cover a fair amount of the whole lap mask surface. If you do that, and you wrap it in some soft clothes, I've never had a mask break when I was traveling, whether I used a box like this, or a pelican case, which I don't travel with anymore, simply because they're so heavy. And part of the part of the issue with traveling with gear is you always have to decide what's going to happen when I get to my destination and this piece of gear doesn't work. It's broken, it got lost in in, in luggage handling whatever that issue is, what happens to my dive destiny, what happens at the dive destination when that piece of gear doesn't work. And in most cases, for most recreational divers, you're going to be able to either buy a new piece of gear or rent a new piece of gear or borrow a piece of gear to get through your dive day.
Now, obviously that's not ideal, we all like to have to own and use our own gear because we get comfortable with it. It's fitted to us. So that's definitely not the the ideal. But you have to you do have to balance that. The reality of traveling with a bunch of dive gear with what is the impact of that gear doesn't make it. So you know, like I said, when I first started diving, I put everything in Pelican in a pelican case. But it was super heavy. And now it's so expensive to travel like that, that it's simply not
the
the benefit versus the cost just isn't there. So rant aside, you do have to make that decision. If you don't take case, wrap it in some soft clothes. My I've I've heard people putting them in their reg bag, I don't do that because the first stage of your regulator is a big solid mass of metal. And unless you can guarantee that that that first stage is never going to touch your mask, you can get a lot of momentum in with that first stage, just putting your bag down. Okay, so I don't I don't do that, I find a different way to trap travel with my mask. Okay, so that's traveling with your mask. Like I said, I've never had one break, if you take just a decent amount of care of your mask before in or in preparation for traveling, I think you'll have good luck with it. Okay, so
in the gear junkies garage today, not all gear is expensive. And in scuba diving, it's easy to think about all this expensive gear that we use the regulators, the bcds, buoyancy compensators. You know, the cameras whose housings cost more than the camera itself. And those things are, you know, that's all true. But not everything is expensive. So some of the gear that I always make sure that I have that is not very expensive, is actually this stuff here scrubbed to clean the mask, spit to defog, the mask and baby shampoo to clean in between, initially and then after each major dive trip. And really that's it, that's it, I think it's important to have the equipment to take care of our gear every bit as much as it as it is important to have the right gear for the kind of diving that we're doing.
Alright, for the tip of the week, I am I want to talk a little bit about if you're doing short term travel, this was I was turned on to this ideal quite a while ago when I was in, I was doing some technical training for my D co instructor. And what he does if he's traveling a short distance, and now what I do is you actually put your mask just like this. So you fold the strap over the front of the mask. And then you can just shove your mask into the boot of your fin because the pocket of your fin is for most of us, I mean I have size 10 and a half feet so that gives you a gauge which their mask fits very neatly but snugly into into the fin and then where your foot goes obviously. And then that travels very well as long as you generally keep the the assembly that you're you're putting together to travel upright and so I have a bag that I put my my gear in. And so I always put that that whole package and maybe someday I'll do A video about how to put that all together to travel. But the fins are upright anyway. So that works really, really well. And it's a really easy way to know exactly where your mask is going to be and know that it's protected. You know, on on four sides, five sides, bottom, left, right front back, and there's just this one side that's exposed to anything and if you put it in a bag, and shut the bag, there's really it's very hard to damage damage your mask. And like I said, I've traveled with my mask in that exact way without even wrapping it in a towel or anything to add on quite a few trips and never had any problem with the mask at all, and so, pretty easy way to transport your mask without having to worry about the volume of a case or putting it in a bag, you know, and having some other dedicated way to transport your mask. Okay, so leave a comment below. If what's your if you do use toothpaste to clean your mask? What's your favorite toothpaste and why? If you'd like to contact the show, email address is scuba Steve at underpressure dive blog calm or up dive bond calm. Visit the website at underpressure dive blog calm. You can listen to us on the go with your favorite pod catcher. I do want to to say that if you enjoy the episodes, please subscribe and hit that bell so you're notified when we release new content. I do the show once a week on Fridays at 2pm Mountain Time. Thank you for diving with me diving here with me today on YouTube or listening to the audio program. On the left you're going to see a playlist for more episodes for your binge watching pleasure in between dives. Don't forget to subscribe with the button in the middle of your screen. The surface intervals over get out there and dive