Hi there fellow healthcare clowns and clown nose afficionados!  As the peri-pandemic stretches out, are you wishing for a better way to stick a nose on top of your facemask?  A nose that you can transfer to a new mask when needed?  As clowning while wearing facemasks and faceshields seems to be our new reality, what to do

I was delighted about a year ago to discover, in Humorkolleg’s Nasenwerkstatt, the Little Stay Healthy Nose that has a magnet embedded in the nose.  Such an ingenious solution, place the nose over the mask, and then stick another tiny magnet (or 2) on the other side of the mask, et voila, nose on the mask.

The little stay healthy nose works great with the standard medical mask, however when i stepped up to a N94, N95, or similar mask, suddenly i was running into problems getting the nose to ‘stick’ .   The wedge shape of the N95mask created a much greater separation between the magnets and the nose didn’t stick anymore. The flat and flexible surface of the medical mask is quite different than the edge of the stiffer N95 mask.  What to do? My first solution was to use a bigger, stronger magnet, and wedge it in, and that kind of works, but I was looking for a more elegant solution.  And i was also wishing to use a slightly bigger nose than the Little Stay Healthy.  What to do??

A friend suggested that I could glue a magnet onto any nose, and that got me thinking and then experimenting, and finally coming up with a solution.  Yes you can glue a magnet to a latex nose with the right kind of glue.  I used barge cement, and that works.  Supposedly super glue, or 2 part epoxy also works.  Yet the problem was that the distance between magnet on the nose and the surface of the mask was still too great. what to do?  Playing around, I realized that stacking magnets on the inside of the nose is a distinct solution. I just added a few more magnets on top of the one glued to the nose.  If you go looking on the internet, you will find these super strong tiny magnets ( nickel-plated neodymium iron boron) that you can buy in 10-20 piece lots.  i bought these , 20 of them, 6mm (diameter) X 3mm (depth).  For the nose I experimented with, I found that 2 more on top of the glued magnet made it tall enough so that the magnet stack reaches the surface of the mask, and then 1 or 2 magnets on the other side of the mask created a solid connect holding the nose sturdily in place.

So if you are wishing to use your nose of choice, try a little magnet and glue magic:) Once you have successfully glued a magnet to your nose, adjust the # of magnets in the stack according to the nose and mask you are using.

Funny enough, after all my experimentation,  i have returned to using the my Little Stay Healthy nose-i really like it’s littleness-and i’m now stacking 2 more magnets on it’s inside to make it work better with the N95s.

Only the nose knows!  Towards the Fun!!