Steam Punk Goggles

OK, I know, it's been a while since I published my last Instructable, but hey, a guy gets busy.

Any how, here is a fun little project I decided to take on. I needed a pair of goggles to go with my leather steam punk top hat. After reading countless articles on how to make them I figured I may as well reinvent the wheel. So follow along and, as with all my Instructables, look to the image notes for the fine details.

To begin my design process I first needed to secure the bits I would be mounting the lenses in. In my case I chose a couple of 1 1/2 inch PVC plumbing fixtures. These are the bits that attach the drain tail piece to the P trap under a sink.I lined them up on a piece of plane paper, space them about 1/2 inch apart and drew my pattern.

Now, you've got your pattern prepared, lay it out on some nice veg tanned leather and cut it out. Sharp cutting tools are a must. I've also taken the extra few minutes to bevel the leather edges and burnish them. Going for a professional look.

Man, I have a funny feeling these are going to look like Minion goggles when I'm done.....I hope not too much.

But I digress, We need to figure out how the rims are going to attach to the leather head band. Simple, sew them on. But before we get to that part we need to dress them up a bit and get some cool lenses in.

So I decided I would use a saddle stitch to attach the eye cups to the head band. if you've never done a saddle stitch before there are many great tutorials on youtube. Essentially it is a 2 needle sewing method that is very strong. The most trick part of this step is making sure you have the holes in the eye cup perfectly lined up with your marks on the leather. You can do this by making small registration marks between the eye cup and the head band as I have illustrated in the photos.

I used a ball tipped stylus and waxed linen thread in this process as well.

OK, now we are ready to give the goggles less of a flat look by wet forming the nose bridge. Quite honestly I have no intention of wearing these, they are purely for aesthetics, but hey, why not make them functional any ways? And I wasn't entirely sure how this step would work out. I was very happy with the results.

I'm using an old piece of deer antler for a shaping tool, you use what ever smooth stick works for you.

With this step you'll need to decide how you intend to wear your goggles. This will determine how long your head band will be and how adjustable you will need it to be. For mine I decided they would be worn as a hat band on my leather top hat. That means I will only need to make the band one size. A simple snap button will be all I require. YOu may want to use a belt buckle for yours if you want them more versatile.

Your imagination is key here. I found a bag of cool cog wheels at Michael's so that was my starting point.