I Was Wrong…Again. I See The Light.

That’s not Starboard.

The other day I published an article on 6 volt dangers and lens color. I said, red faded more than green. I was wrong, and to be even more dumb, this isn’t the first time. And to your joy, won’t be the last. Which this wrongness explains why many older lenses are blue. Now, of course I may be wrong, or blur the facts. But do you really care? We are talking color shifts in green glass.

Thats more like it!

Well it turns out its about manganese dioxide, and oxygen and heat can effect the color. As does Copper. Hey! I did try and look it up, but my pea brain could only absorb so much. But bottom line, your blue lens is supposed to be green.

On ebay, and feels like it would be original. But its not. The rules have always stated GREEN. Imagine the chaos?

Now, apparently some of this chemical stuff, actually makes red more red if that’s possible. This is old glass by the way. Because it was made a different way than today, which is mostly plastic. Okay, now this story just go bonkers.. Ready!

Ya warned you.. But, this is amazing if you hang with me. If you have plastic lenses, I bet they are milky or oxidized. And you may think you need to replace them.. One word… OFF!  Here is one of those YOUTUBE videos on it. And since its on the internet, it must be real..

Man oh man I need a boat ride. Just 2 weeks! Just 2 weeks. COME ON DORA!

13 replies
  1. Rick
    Rick says:

    Ok, I’ll bite and try it on my old Explorer. If nothing else maybe it will form a bug free bubble around my car. Will never need to clean dead bugs off after a trip.

  2. jim g
    jim g says:

    Pete Henkel used to have reproduction lenses for the Chris Craft made back in the 80’s and 90’s out of plastic and they were blue.

    He had the molds made and a company in Michigan that made stop light lenses made them. They were blue because the company was not going to clean the machine out and change it to green for such a small run.

    Their answer was use a yellow bulb like they use in the traffic lights.

  3. Gary Van Tassel
    Gary Van Tassel says:

    Your probably got the red lens fading from me. My experience with plastic lens is the red gets cloudy faster, not color shift. I have 1970’s ship running lights with plastic lenses decorating my boat house. The red is much more deteriorated than the green. The blue shift in glass lenses is something I was never aware of. I wonder if green plastic lenses will eventually color shift as well. Does explain why I see blue running lights sometimes at night. I just assumed it was a senior thing! I just renewed my USCG mariner license. We were doing the eye chart and the Doc asked me to identify a color on the chart. I said it was orange, I know it was supposed to be red for obvious reasons. He argued with me back and forth that it was red. After a short back and forth he started laughing and confessed it was orange as their eye chart had faded over the years!

    BTW, I have the ship running lights from the 70’s because we had to replace them to meet the new requirements in the COLREGS, nothing wrong with them. Heavy bronze lights replaced with plastic. Back to the grandfather thing.

    Thanks for the info, quite interesting.

  4. Matt
    Matt says:

    Dang! Wait, I recalled it right? Red does fade, but green changes. Just to make sure I am not wrong AGAIN! Got to admit, that OFF hack was a surprise.

  5. FrankatFalmouth
    FrankatFalmouth says:

    Hey you got me to go out and try it on my Jeep! It did remove a bunch of gunk.. I did it on drivers side only to see how long it lasts…. Its great how these topics can morph from green lense fade to removing haze from car headlites… Saved me from buying one of those kits and maybe the bugs wont get splattered as much now! …(“Its not just a dessert topping” -Saturday Night Live ref from backintheday!”
    I wonder when /if someone will get stopped for display of a blue forward facing light, but maybe it’d be OK if you had that “police” penant you said you wanted the other day.. 🙂

  6. Chug-A-Lug
    Chug-A-Lug says:

    Stuff works on your old scratched up prescription sunglasses too- takes the coating right off.might have been the steel wool combo.

  7. Mark in Ohio (sometimes da U P )
    Mark in Ohio (sometimes da U P ) says:

    Where is Troy when we need him? I know he can come up with two babes in bikini’s, one in red the other in green. Maybe even spraying off.

  8. m-fine
    m-fine says:

    It’s always sunny wherever I happen to be, so I don’t have to worry about running lights and color shifting.

  9. Jeff Hamilton
    Jeff Hamilton says:

    I can attest that bug spray attacks certain types of plastic. While fishing one day I ruined a brand new depth finder screen with overspray from a can of that same product. In that case the screen became cloudy, unlike the product demo in the video where the plastic clears up.

    • c
      c says:

      That bug spray will ruin socks… Takes the elastic right out. I also heard at one time that the red glass lenses were much more fragile than the green. That’s why red glass lenses are scarce… Anyone?… CQ

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