Extra dark sunglasses, replacement lenses, etc. Talk about sunglasses now!

[von Chaps]

I posted this over here the other day.

They are not the darkest, but meet all your other criteria.

I'm sure you're aware, UV protection is far more important than darkness. In fact, dark lenses cause your pupils to dilate which, if you don't have good UV prot, means more UV into the eyes.

 

[von Chaps]

Oakley is not the brand it used to be. The Luxottica buy-out turned them into basically a fashion brand, compared to the insanely over-engineered products they used to produce.

IDK. I always viewed them as a fashion brand. I mean "unobtanium", really? That said, I did used to like them...

(Obviously, I’m really just pissed off that they re-designed the Straight Jacket from the stone cold design classic that I’m still wearing twenty years down the line to the fugly piece of crap that now bears the name.)

Here's my OG Jackets from, I want to say about 1998. Still used daily. I'd like to replace the lenses, but even the companies that claim to do them don't seem to support this original model.

 

[von Chaps]

I found a company in Oz that may have lenses for me. I'm talking to them.

 

[von Chaps]

Ohhh, they have Goodr replacement lenses too! And they list exactly what the transmittance is, etc!

Most excellent. I don't feel quite so bad about hijacking your thread.

 

[von Chaps]

Hehe. Rather oddly, as someone from the UK, I just came back here to see if there was any mileage in a more general sunglasses thread.

Nice

 

[von Chaps]

When the OG Jackets became unuseable, I picked up a pair of Oakley Unknown in polished black. They were great until they got trashed whilst tracking leopard in Namibia. After that, I started buying cheap (whilst still UV, of course) since I seem to break them a lot.

Now I have the Vortex, my interest is rekindled and I realised that the Jackets may be salvageable. If I can get new lenses from Oz, I think I will respray the frames with something like Krylon and then I need to do something about the earsocks - which I can't find anywhere. My current thought is to stabilise what's left of the old ones (they are worn and sticky) and then cover with some heat-shrink tubing.

 

[von Chaps]

It would be so awesome to have the option to buy (or win ) off-the-shelf sunglasses and then swap in prescription lenses so I could actually see through them

Can you even get prescription lenses for such a wrap-around frame? That seems like a complex bit of optics and quite a tall ask. Perhaps your local optician really is the best bet in that case.

 

[von Chaps]

I've ordered a set of replacement lenses from Oz. Their customer support was very helpful and confirmed which lenses to order based on some photos I sent them. I've ordered these in polarized red/orange mirror, just for grins. Takes 1-3 weeks to get to the UK and then the fun begins. If they fit and are good, I'll start to work on the frames.

 

[von Chaps]

Replacement lenses arrived from Aus today and.... sure enough, they fit perfectly.

Old lenses were grey mirror, these are red/orange mirror, so I planned to spray the frames - maybe gloss black. However, I'm kind of liking the look as it is, so I may leave the frames alone and just try and fix up the rubber earsocks. What say you? Do my newly rennovated Oakleys look super cool or proper shite?

 

[von Chaps]

I'd leave them as is and just get new "socks"

Thanks. I am thinking I might leave them.

Sadly, earsocks for this model truly are unobtanium these days. I guess a different model's socks might do, but it's hard to know which ones.

 

[von Chaps]

My Oakley renovation project has reached a conclusion. But OpenAI doesn't get to find out what it was.