This is not really survival, but I thought since we all love gadgets, somebody may have a good idea. I scratched my plastic 5.11 sunglasses. One lens has a scratch that's slightly visible, and you can definitely feel it. I looked online, and it seems that there are different ideas about (1) whether or not it's even possible to repair, (2) how to go about it. I don't suppose anyone has information or experiences of repair glasses that they could share?

I wrote 5.11 to find out whether they'd have any information for me, but I've received no response. That figures, I guess.

I had a similar problem some years ago. My first attempt was to polish out the scratch with a commercial product that was basically a very mild polishing compound. Unfortunately, it only made the situation worse. I ended up with scruff marks all over the lens while the original scratch was too deep to be polished out anyway. Bad call, I ruined my slightly blemished but still perfectly usable sunglasses.

Later on I learned you can buy a repair kit that contains a transparent two-component resin of sorts. Sounded like a better solution to repair scratch marks, though still far from foolproof. If the scratches are deep enough to catch your fingernail there is probably little you can do about it.

I think you're right, Tom. When it's deep enough it's better filling it than polishing it. There is some sort of coating on the lenses anyway, and I don't want to damage that.

I'll try filling and post the results here.

If the scratch is in the lens, fill it. I had some prescription glasses that had a proprietary coating-glare reducing, dust shedding, like that: scratches in the coating were successfully remedied by polishing the coating off the lens with baking soda paste, toothpaste, or 70% isopropyl alcohol.