Diving goggles from Popular Science 1940 – “These fine goggles were made by a Hawaiian. Experts consider this type more satisfactory for serious diving and continuous use than the ordinary rubber variety. With a little care and patience, you can construct diving goggles exactly like those used by the spear fishermen of the South Seas and expert Hawaiian divers.” – Link.
4 thoughts on “HOW TO – Make wooden diving goggles”
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These could never work past about 15 feet without discomfort because there is no way to equalize the pressure in front of the eyes. The ocean pressure would try to squeeze you into these small compartments (meaning it would feel like your eyes were popping out of your head). Real diving goggles are called masks and they cover your nose so that you can equalize your mask as you go deeper. You simply blow air through your nose and the pressure in the mask is raised to that of the surrounding water pressure. This is quite similar to equalizing pressure behind your tympanic membranes (ear drums) by blowing air through your eustacian tubes to get the pressure behind your ear drums to match that of the surrounding water at your particular depth.
This maybe true, for the sea-wussies of today. Folks were tougher back in those days! By Golly, we had to wrestle rabid manatee’s just so we could go-a-fishing (when we weren’t hiking 30 miles barefoot to the nearerst town so we could work for 16 hours in a factory) *WEEEZE*
Note that the man in the illustration isn’t wearing any scuba gear. I don’t think that he’s going to dive hundreds of feet.
This project reminds me of the Inuit snow goggles that I have seen in Boy’s Life when I was a kid and in the Smithsonian.
You can also buy these goggles handmade from Philippine fisherman. Just google. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b22541f9b07c8e748e7d04be68c33a1e6f826efa1cb5c191b0d0dbc24d9474e.jpg