Glass dome -- is there anything to be done?

Hiya,

I have a Zen super dome which has collected a few scratches -- none are showing up on pics as best as i can tell.

Is there anything that can be done to fix scratches on glass? I love the dome...

Thanks in advance.

Wow, very difficult on glass. If they’re not deep sometimes they won’t show. But if serious, usually a re-glass is the only solution.

If you’re near Reef Photo give them a call - they’d be able to advise on Zen re-glass costs.

Cerium oxide will polish glass. Kits with this are available on the net.

Polishing glass is a very long, tedious task!

An ideal method to do this is to chuck the dome in a small lathe that has a very slow RPM to rotate it and wet hand polish it with oxide and water or kerosene.

If they are not showing in images, why screw with it?

Even if a few small ones showed, I'd Photoshop them out before attempting to polish.

You will also remove the coating where you polish the dome, there is a scratch resistant coating to control flare on the outside of the dome. In theory the place that makes the dome could re polish it and re-coat it, but in practice this doesn't seem to a service that is offered. Because the dome is spherical polishing it is fairly straight forward if you have the right equipment and know how (a specialist optical shop could do it) but finding somewhere to re-apply the coatings may be an issue and the cost would probably be more than a new dome.