Cleaning your loupe March 01 2013, 0 Comments

The surfaces of each lens in your loupe have had several special coatings applied to them during manufacturing, which are designed to maximize contrast, color saturation and color fidelity, while minimizing flare.  While the last coating which gets applied is a special anti-scratch coating, the lens surfaces can nevertheless get scratched eventually, and as such, when cleaning your loupe, it’s always a good idea to be gentle.

If dust or loose grit is the only problem, the best way to get rid of it is to gently brush the surface of the lens with a soft, camel-hair brush or give it a few blasts of air using a bulb-style air blower (such as the ones used for camera lenses). Avoid using pressurized canned air, and especially avoid grinding the grit into the lens surface with a cleaning cloth!

Smudges and fingerprints require a bit more effort, and here too, you should be as gentle as possible. Start by taking a soft micro-fiber cloth (such as the one we deliver with every loupe) or a piece of lens tissue (folded, not bunched up), breathe onto the lens surface (never dry-clean a lens) and gently wipe the lens surface in a circular motion. Repeat if necessary using a fresh piece of lens tissue or a clean portion of the micro fiber cloth. If this doesn’t work, try dampening the tissue or cloth with a few drops of methanol (alcohol), or an alcohol based lens-cleaning fluid, and try again by gently wiping the lens in a circular motion.

Alcohol or lens-cleaning fluid should never be applied directly onto the lens surfaces. Doing so can possibly harm the lens coatings and/or compromise the adhesives that bind some of the lenses together.

If you’re away from home and need to clean dust or smudges off your loupe, and do not have a micro-fiber cloth or lens tissue with you, a clean cotton t-shirt or similar cotton-based material (preferably old and not freshly starched) should also do the job. What you never want to use are facial tissues, paper towels, polyester-based materials, or any type of coarse or abrasive fabric or paper surface, as these will inevitably scratch the lenses of your loupe!

Finally, please be careful when using your loupe, as the lower element of the optics is only five millimeters away from the loupe's bottom edge, and it can easily get damaged or scratched if you bump it against a sharp object.