Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Auto darkening welding helmet for eclipse

Our helmet isn't auto darkening, it's just a regular helmet. Not sure what the tint is, but we use it every time there's an eclipse. I haven't gone blind yet.

The thing is, you don't need to stare at it for two hours straight. It takes so long, I'll just walk outside every now and then with the helmet and take a look and then go back inside and keep working. At 3:20 today, I'll take a look. We're gonna be 91%.

I've never seen a full eclipse, but the lighting is kind of weird when it's going down.

You can take pictures of the sun on your phone.

If you turn your back you still have to be aware of the reflection off the screen. Learned first hand.

I am hoping people bought higher end auto darkening and we see more on eBay.

I watched with my helmet (every 20 min ) in Wi and I still can see

My wife and I watched it off and on during the duration. Nice day to be outside anyway. Welding helmets worked great. Something interesting is the wind has blown all day but during the eclipse it was just about dead calm. Wind picked up at the end of it.

Same here, thought maybe it was just me.

I’ve a #9 in the helmet.

Worked fine in 2017 and today. Though I only look for a few seconds at a time.
Have seen several articles quoting NASA that a 14 should be used.

I appear to be just as blind now as I was 6+ years ago🤷‍♂️

NASA is full of BS the shade of the lens has only to do with the brightness not the ability to filter out the harmful ultraviolet rays.

50 years as a certified pipe welder and u can assure you that a quality auto darkening lense works just fine for welding or the eclipse.

The shadow was 100 miles wide. For a brief time there was a rapid change of temperature somewhere in the atmosphere. It's not surprising winds would do something different under those conditions. Wind will normally die here as soon as the sun sets, and pick up when it rises.
If you dig deep enough into this, and understand the physical relationship between the sun's heat and the earth, you'll eventually reach the conclusion that you understand "climate change".....and it's NOT what the whacko lefties say it is.

If memory is correct one needs to block about 99% of the solar radiation. On our last go around here (2017 SE Oregon) I bought an 8 1/2 x 11-inch sheet of mylar and fabricated a filter for Cookie's 500 mm camera lens. Worked great when tested with the midday sun days before. One could even see sunspots, but that filter does alter the color with only the longer wave lengths (red end of the spectrum) making it through.

The below are from her 2017 efforts and I posted them here elsewhere recently.

A composite with the individual images downsized to fit them on a single page. It was safe to remove the filter once one got into the diamond ring phase.


Totality: a full-size image

God was laughing so hard at all you guys in helmets staring at the sun, he couldn't make the wind blow.

I’ve welded for over 50 years, have never used one.

the safe play... less to go wrong with the old school helmets...