Shooting Glasses

[Alpha1]

As long as its not prescription glasses you are after have a look for a local ARCO store they sell safety equipment.
I use them to order stuff for work they have pages and pages of safety glasses of all kinds from light weight plain and coloured lenses to over specs.
They start from about £3.50 a pair.They are all I have ever used for shooting glasses.

[Christel]

These safety glasses....do they actually protect you if something blows up in your face?

[TobyH]

Thats exactly what they are designed for. You'll have to check exactly which EN standard to look for though. Looks like EN-166 is the one to look for "high speed impact at 45m/s" thats flippin quick!!

http://products.ihs.com/Ohsis-SEO/107467.html

Basically anything physical but not against UV etc, for clear lenses. But they do also have other standards that stop UV etc which you can see in their specifications...

See these as an example:

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/sear ... vc=prev_uk

[Mike357]

Safety glasses will be designed to protect your eyes from everything from splashes to metal shards flying off a lathe. I cannot say for certain that Arco won't sell glasses that will protect you from a shooting related catastrophe but the Oakley web site gives plenty info on what testing the lenses go through and some stores have lenses peppered with shot that are still intact.

You get what you pay for.

[Mike357]

Other shooting glasses are available

[Christel]

TobyH,

They are perfect and I know Ovenpaa is ordering from RS soon.
Thanks for that!

[Robin128]

My Silencios are ANSI Z87.1 Allsafe...what ever that means...evidently there are basic and high levels of protection from the polycarbonate lenses.

[Ovenpaa]

I feel quite guilty about this, I have some nice shooting glasses upstairs that I never wear apart from when I first shoot a new (To me) old service rifle and I soon forget about them otherwise.

I was shooting with the Army last year and had just hunkered down behind a new LMG when they all started shouting and one ran up and gave me a pair of rather stylish ballistic googles, apparently the weapon had a knack of spitting cases out in pieces...

[TobyH]

here's a bit more specific info. Turns out you can only get "low energy impact" protection for glasses (rather than visors/goggles) which is as follows:

EN166 F, classified as low energy impact grade, is the highest level of resistance offered by safety spectacles or glasses, and will resist a 6mm, 0.86g ball travelling at 45 metres per second.

45m/s is 100mph!

Had a look at the ANSI standards and here's a good (if a little complicated) review.

http://www.tasco-safety.com/sglasses/ansi.html

Basic impact (1" steel ball dropped from 127cm) is marked Z87, whereas High impact (500gram pointed projectile dropped from 130cm + 6.35mm ball is "propelled at a speed appropriate to the projector type" whatever that means!) is marked with Z87+.
The main difference between BS/EN and ANSI is that the frames are also tested with ANSI whereas I think just the lenses are test for BS/EN (though I might be wrong on that).

Oh, and ANSI is basically the US version of BS & EN standards.

[Chuck]

Got Bolle and Peltors , peltors cratch too easily.