Someone was throwing away their old mask. They got hit by a puck right in the face, cracking the frame, and dislodging the lens. I told them I could fix it. Here it is now.
The crack which you might be able to see in the picture below, went right into where the frame meets the buckle piece (I'm not sure what else to call it) and the frame is actually inside that buckle piece. A bit of the frame was missing inside the buckle piece that was probably long gone in a pool somewhere. I filled up the hole with epoxy, and inserted the frame back in.
I used the extra epoxy to reinforce where the buckle piece meets the frame.
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Even more extra epoxy was used to reinforce the where the frame meets the lens on the other side. This shouldn't reduce any vision since the rubber frame is already blocking that angle from being visible.
Conclusion: Although this mask offers a very slim design which is great for reducing friction underwate, this mask does not seem to be designed.to protect underwater hockey players from the type of injuries that could occur from a puck to the face. I'm suprised I have not heard of more players that bust their nose because underwater masks such as this one offer no impact absorbtion for the nose. Most likely it is players that make careful decisions to not aim their flick at another's face that is making a broken nose so uncommon, as far as I know. I'll get back to this once I do more research. The injury I have seen happen 3 times to three different players was a deep gash below the eye, right about where the bottom of The mask meets the face. I believe, as I might have mentioned before, that this is probably happening because there actually not enough impact absorbtion, so when the puck hits the mask, the mask basically compresses until the frame of the mask is digging into the skin, creating the gash in an instant. I hope where I have added silicone with in the mask will prevent the mask from compressing as much.
