How To Seal Your Scuba Mask With A Beard

what's up guys this round again from Lake Hickory Scrivener marina in today's video we're gonna talk about how do you seal your mask or your full face mask to your face when you got a bunch of fuzz on it like I do now this time of the year I typically grow out my beard either for the winter months or just simply put for deer season and it does cause problems for me as far as sealing my mask to my face or even my full face mask but there are some tips and tricks that you can do if you got that facial fuzz that'll help you out in getting a good tight seal now the first thing that we want to do is make sure that we have a proper fitting mass so just even if you didn't have facial hair you want to size the mask appropriately for you meaning you want to make sure you get a good tight seal and just like in open water we don't even use the strap to do this basically we're just going to sell it to our face we're going to inhale a little bit look around we're gonna listen for wind or air to escape the mask as you're inhaling through your nose and that's really gonna determine whether or not you've got a good fitting mask kind of the same thing goes with a full face mask which we'll get to here shortly but once you got a good proper fitting mask then what you want to look at is your actual facial features if you look at my clothes here you'll notice that I've actually shaved part of my beard down here on the sides just so that I get a good seal with the skirt now if you don't want to shave yours down then there's other techniques that you can do as well another great option is a hood when you put a hood on the way it's designed to work is your skirt actually fits up underneath the hood just like that all the way around so if you've got that facial fuzz up here on the side all you've got to do is put your mask on after you've got your hood on a course and then pull the sill of the hood up over the skirt itself and that will help sell it as well now moving on down to the mustache area there's several things you can do now fortunately enough for me I've actually got enough play between the top of my mustache here and the bottom of my master so I always get a good proper seal there and I don't really have issues but if your mustache is a lot thicker than mine or you don't have a play there what you could do is actually shave down the top of the mustache just a little bit just enough so that the bottom part of this skirt right here conceal and it's not very much it's only about a quarter of an inch so if you can shave down just a little bit there another great option that I've used in the past course is chapstick I just use this blistex brand here and all I do is just simply wipe a little bit of it on my mustache it works kind of like beeswax does and beeswax work will work as well so you just kind of rub that on and what that does is create a good seal once your skirt is on there so these are some great options for the traditional mask let's take a look at the full face mask with the full face mask of course you're gonna have a seal that goes all the way around and so you're gonna have a wide enough coverage here I'm not sure if you can see it on camera but you're going to have a wide enough coverage here to actually get a proper seal and so even if this is not completely flat as long as part of its flat around your cheek area you're gonna have a good seal the biggest issue I find with a full face mask and facial hair is this bottom part right here so this bottom part of this seal actually comes up to about halfway down the center of my beard underneath my chin here and I don't really get that good of a seal with the full face mask and a beard and so I have to rely on other methods the other method that I use of course is I use a hood now typically speaking with a hood and full face mask I'm gonna use a full face mask hood and if you've never seen one essentially what it is it's just a generic hood that has this clawed skin or seal skin material on it so that the full face mask will seal to it and that's a great option as well because the hood will hide my beard and then the full face mask will actually seal to it now if you don't have a full face mask hood let's say you got a generic hood or a standard hood here you can still do the same principle that you do with a traditional mask basically you put your hood on you put your full face mask on on top of it and then you're gonna actually pull out on the seal itself to seal over the top of the full face mask seal and that will give you a proper seal now you may still have just a little bit of leakage here but depending on your body's profile and your head profile in the water you're not actually gonna be taking on water because the mask even though it's not a positive pressure mask it kind of acts that way when the seal is broke at the bottom so it's actually gonna keep that water flowing out now there's one final way to get a good proper seal and this way of course a lot of people may not prefer and of course that is to simply shave now guys trust me I didn't want to shave my wife definitely didn't want me to shave she asked me to leave this she told me if I didn't at least keep the goatee that she would divorce me and I didn't really want to lose my wife but you know sometimes we got to make that compromise if you're gonna be a diver if you want to have a comfortable dive you may have to compromise it but whether you shave down the top of your moustache whether you shave down the side of your beard or whether you just shave it all off making sure that your mask fits properly and it's comfortable when you're wearing it is gonna make all the difference between you diving safely and you just kind of winging it now I will state this even though I don't have that big of an issue at the mustache area you know personally with my mask I still have a little bit of leakage come in because I do keep the moustache and goatee and so the way I get around that is is I just deal with it when I'm underwater I get comfortable with that little bit of water being in the nose piece of the or the nose pocket here the mask and I actually utilize that water for my mouth starts to fog up all I've got to do is just simply tilt my head down swish the water around to get rid of the fog and then look back up so I can utilize what a little bit of water is inside that mask and it doesn't really bother me of course I do have 30 years experience Dobbin so that plays a big role into it if you're new to Dobbin i would suggest going ahead and making that compromise shaving it off until you get comfortable or if you're going to keep the the beard and the full mustache whatnot maybe shave it down a little bit or put your mask on kind of mark it with some shaving cream and then shave down to that line that way you can compromise you don't have to completely get rid of all your facial hair or whatnot but you can still have a good proper fitting mask as well so guys a couple pointers real quick make sure you have a proper fitting mask make sure you have plenty of coverage the masks are to the skin itself if you can get enough coverage and you don't want to shave that facial hair off maybe use a hood and always seal the hood over the top of the mass Kurt that'll help hold it in creating a better seal use some chapstick or some type of beeswax or something like that that'll work as well and then of course as a last-ditch effort if you need to guys simply shave it off it can always grow back especially in the wintertime if you're not going to be doing a lot of cold water Dobbin and you're only dabbing in the spring in summer months you know shave it off in the spring summer months it's not as hot anyways and then grow it back for the winter time because I appreciate you watching this video I hope you learned something I hope it helps you out and I just want to let you know the struggle is real guys even my mass floods from time to time because of facial hair and it's okay it happens to a lot of us it's how we deal with it it's what's going to define us as a diver and it's going to determine whether we're comfortable or not you know we may have to make that sacrifice or that compromise just to make sure that our mask seals properly but guys I hope you liked this video if you did do me two favors definitely smash that like button for me and definitely share it as well if you've got any questions please put them down in the comment section below and as a matter of fact let me know know what you guys do as far as selling your mask to your face when you have facial hair because I like to learn from you guys as well because as always make sure you follow us on Instagram and Twitter like us on Facebook pin us on Pinterest subscribe to us here on YouTube and as always guys we appreciate your business guys we really appreciate you watching our videos if you liked it make sure to give us a big thumbs up if you're not a 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Channel: LakeHickoryScuba

Views: 14,211

Rating: 4.9482203 out of 5

Keywords: How To Seal Your Scuba Mask With A Beard, Will Your Scuba Mask Seal With A Beard, Shaving Your Beard, Shaving My Beard, How To Shave Your Beard, Growning A Beard, Scuba Diving With A Beard, Lake Hickory Scuba Center And Marina, Instructor Bryan Stafford

Id: JqSR-iAYDzE

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 11 2018