Creating a Monster.

I'm not sure where it started. I remember looking at the Oakley Romeos and Juliets and thinking "God those are ugly, and they cost a fortune!" But that was awhile ago. Then, earlier this year, something changed. Something inside of me just clicked, and I had to have a pair. I obsessively pursued them online, reading reviews, looking at pictures, and checking prices.

Eventually I visited a store that had them and completely fell in love with them. All of them. I even tried on the $400 X-Metal ones with Ruby frames - a tie-in with X-Men (the ones Cyclops wore). They were really nice, but someone else had a hold on them and was making payments…Yeah, I thought so too.

Anyway, the upshot is that after a couple more trips to the store and some more research on the Internet, I decided to get Plasma/Fire Juliets. I bought them from a place called SunglassesUSA, who took 15% off for ordering over the Internet. Not a bad price. I enjoyed them for awhile, but then something came up. I found a place that was almost local that I could get the $400 ones at for quite a bit less. So I bought them, not really knowing what I would do with them, but thinking about making a nice profit by selling them on eBay. But I never did. I just kept them both.

So then one day a friend and I were talking, and it came up that the X-Metal color frame was pretty cool, but I liked the Fire lenses more. The upshot is this article - switching the lenses between my sunglasses. Reason told me that I shouldn't touch the damn things because if I screw them up I can't afford to replace them. Fortunately, reason lost.

The obligatory 'before' picture. The lenses really don't look that different from the front I guess

The Ruby ones I didn't use that often, so taking them apart didn't do much more than give me a small knot in my stomach (since I actually paid less for them than the Fire ones), but taking the lenses out of the Plasma frames kind of scared me. I didn't want to ruin both pairs by accident.

But I did get them both out. Oh, did I mention the tool you need for this?

This sucker is hard to find - it's a T6 Torx. Same thing they use on Nokia phones.

Here's where you take the screw out of the frame to free up the lense.

Which results in this. One tiny little screw and a rubber gasket/washer thing. I lost both while working on it, resulting in several minutes crawling around on the floor.

So I did get both lenses removed from both pairs of glasses without (fingers crossed) breaking, scratching, or losing either one. One thing to note though, you DO have to apply quite a bit of force to bend the frame apart and get the lens out. Trust me when I say the frame can take it, and if you don't, you may very well scratch the lens like I very nearly did on the Ruby ones.

Ruby on the left - Fire on the right.

Then came the much easier process of putting them back into the frame. Taking them our requires some bending and manuvering. By comparison, they just snap right back in.

Like this. It killed me to have to stick my big gross fingerprint right on the lens. But I figured that I can just wipe off. Having it slip and scratch because I was holding it with a cloth would suck worse.

One down, one to go...

From there, I just had to find the washer that I dropped and screw it all back together. Oh, and spend about ten minutes wiping fingerprints off of it.

And there we go, all done. Spiffy, eh?

And here's just a weird shot I took while the lenses were out of the X-Metal frames. Shows how oddly skeletal the Juliet frames really look.

Oogah. If I ever have to wear prescription glasses I'm going to use these frames :)

So there you have it. The hybridization of a couple very cool pairs of Oaklies into one that may be even cooler. Well, we'll see. Until next time...