You’re going to have to help me out here. Why should I not smell my mask? I breathe through my nose, mask-smelling is pretty much mandatory. If you follow my helpful Coffee Bandit advice, mask-smelling is the entire point.
I would cheerfully revisit this tangent elsewhere, but no, I don’t have a Keurig and I’d very politely refuse or refund one if it were offered as a gift. I do get excellent use out of my collection of phins that I purchased from the local Vietnamese grocery, for when I’m entertaining and conversation over coffee is the point more than the coffee itself.
By the time the coffee is brewed, you’ve forgotten why you wanted to go outside in the first place. So you don’t use a mask, you do get a tasty cup, and life is good. I expect they’d filter the germs at least as well as any other homebrew device listed in this thread too.
Good news, rboyce. The germs aren’t all getting caught on the outside surface of the mask unless it’s atomic levels of thinness. They’re making it some distance through and then getting stuck; the thicker the mask, the more likely this will happen. So you can probably have a snorf or two of your mask and not get sick.
And frankly, the large reason people are getting sick is because they’re going maskless to giant “superspreader” events. While I can’t rule out the occasional, ah, used-mask-whiffery as an infection vector, it’s going to be vanishingly small.
So anyway, your #1 rule isn’t bad, but maybe it should be like #4. You could replace your #1 with, “For heaven’s sake, don’t go cheap! Is your life only worth ten cents to you? Use the best-quality mask you can afford, because you! are! worth it!”
Really? I almost set the kitchen on fire when I did that (but it was almost at a minute, not 10 seconds when I pulled it out). Different filter composition, different powered microwave? I dunno. I do know that it takes almost 4 minutes to set a linen tea towel on fire, but once again I had to open the door and let the air in before it caught.
@Acierocolotl I was trying to be a smart ass when I posted that. I know that coffee filters are easy to find, I use them for other things than coffee, though, hence me trying to sanitize them in the microwave.
The thing is, microwaving items really does sterilize them pretty quickly, though I expect you need an industrial microwave with really good radiation distribution. I don’t view myself as strictly responsible for people here, but when we’ve got a thread about cutting corners to save a literal dime, I didn’t want to contribute on the cheap side.
But anyway, here’s the cite. I do want to stress the “proper modifications” and “radar-absorbent materials” in the summary. That’s square in the "don’t do this at home!’ category.
Besides, I love coffee. I make myself only drink a little bit a day, so I make sure it’s the best I can make.
Actually, this thread is about risking one’s life to spend a few pennies. Depending on the make coffee filters run 3-20 cents each. The last box of surgical masks I bought cost 23 cents each.
If your life means so little to you that you are going to cheap out on something like this, you will buy the cheapo filters (which I won’t use because they are too flimsy), as well as whatever you are using to attach the 4 filters to your face AND spend time fiddlefarting around with your makeshift mask before and probably during use to save or spend maybe 15 cents a day either way.
I’m too lazy to bother. I don’t bother trying to sanitize my disposable masks either. I know I am being very wasteful, and that’s alright with me at this point in time.
