I’ve been given some sunglasses which I really like. Thing is they’re mirrored, which is ok, but I’d rather they weren’t. I’m wondering if there is a way to remove the coating? I’m thinking maybe using a metal polish, but would this ruin them completely?
There is probably no way to remove it without also taking off any coating that makes them “sunglasses”. If you are willing to risk it, try glass polish. Cigarette ash would also work as a glass polish. I’ve taken scratches out of lenses with it.
Hard to think you could get the coating off without damaging the lenses below, or leaving traces. Are they nice enough that you’d consider visiting an optometrist and getting the lenses replaced?
Well, in case anyone’s interested, I bit the bullet and went at them with a bit of Brasso.
Worked a treat! I now have a nice pair of dark, non-mirrored sunglasses. Job’s a good 'un.
Here is a easy way to remove the mirror coating from sunglasses.
Get some (Bar Keepers Friend) you can find it at most grocery stores.
Take a soft clean rag, put a little bit of the Bar Keepers on it and a few drops of water. Make sure it is very thin, not a thick paste. Lightly rub a coat over the lens let it sit a minute then rub very very lightly. You will see the mirror coating come right off. You don’t need to rub hard at all and you could scratch the lens if you do.
It only takes a minute or two to remove all the mirror coating right down to the frame. No need to remove the lenses from the frame it get all the mirror coating.
Now just rinse with water and some dishwater detergent and you’re all done.
Good luck,
Steve
I don’t know what recipe is used for mirrored sunglasses, but I doubt if it’s an exotic multilayer dielectric stack. If it’s like the old standard optics coatings, it’
s a thin layer of aluminum protected by a thin dielectric (like a quarter wave coating of magnesium fluoride).
For the Fly’s Eye cosmic ray telescope out in Dugway in Utah, they had to re-coat the mirrors on a regular basis, because exdposure and desert winds tended to degrade the mirrors pretty rapidly. To remove the remnants of the old coating, thery used Drano and water. This worked pretty well – no scrubbing needed (but be careful of your hands and face). That ought to remove your mirrored coating and leave just the bare colored glass, if you’ve got glass lenses. If you have plastic, it might takle away some of that, too.
I know this is a zombie, but isn’t this a little dangerous as you could be unwittingly removing the UV protection?
Would this method also remove a polarization filter?
No. A polarizing filter is a film set between layers of lens.
Glass and plastic are really terrible at transmitting UV light. Any glass or UV acts as a pretty good UV block. The most any other coating would do is extend the blocking a little further towards the visible.
The real trick is making glasses that would pass ultraviolet light. This requires the use of fused silica or other exotic glass materials, or fluorine-containing polymers. All of these are more expensive and more trouble to work than ordinary materials, so rest easy. Just about any kind of sunglass is going to be a UV-blocker.
If you could remove the mirroring, they were too cheap to be considered anything more than a kids toy or actors prop.
They were actually quite expensive. Ray Bans.
As Cal notes, optical lenses are made from substances (generally polycarbonate or CR-39) which are dense enough to block UV. Mirror coatings are there to look cool and/or reduce internal reflectivity and glare.
Hi, did you manage to keep the Rayban logo on the lense?
Andy
I’ve still got these they’ve lasted well. I assume there was a logo on them originally, but there isn’t now.
Amazing! 10-year zombie is reanimated and the OP is still here and promptly responds (faster than a mod can come by and close the thread)! How often has that happened?
I’m more amazed someone hasn’t lost a pair of sunglasses in ten years.
My record is maybe 10 weeks. My average is probably less than 10 days.
I don’t believe I’ve ever lost a pair of glasses. Broken through ordinary wear and tear? Sure. Destroyed through carelessness? You bet. Misplaced unrecoverably? Never.
The fact they’ve substantially always been expensive prescription glasses may have something to do with it but even when I switched to contacts + $20 beach store sunglasses I still don’t lose them before I break them.
And im happy this thread exists, as I have mirror RayBans, and the mirror layer has some scratches that annoy the hell out of me, so decided to go at it and remove it 
So will try what was suggested/tried here!