A BORDERS engineer has overseen the production of more than 60,000 face visors during lockdown, helping to make them in his own home workshop.

Brian Eadie, of Selkirk-based Eadie Bros & Co Ltd, has previously made sports shoe tags, keyring tools and livestock tags.

But during the pandemic he and his wife Fiona have been making 1,000 visors a day – and their products can now be seen across the region.

Mr Eadie told the Border Telegraph: “The teachers at the Kelso and Selkirk high schools put out a call for anybody with 3D printers and laser cutters in their homes to help the NHS and I answered it.

“But when I started doing the 3D printing I just didn’t have the patience. I was watching a 3D printer make one shield in about an hour or something, so I got the local company in Selkirk to make 2,000 a day.”

The “local company” was Selkirk firm Cademuir Engineering, who took the moulding to produce the head band with production line robots, while Mr Eadie and his wife Fiona made the transparent visors in the workshop at their home.

“We were making sports club membership tags for 30 years, and I still have a biggish business making animal tags, and visors was just something else to do,” said Mr Eadie.

He added: “It was the school teachers who got the ball rolling – Stuart Meldrum, [craft, design and technology teacher] at Kelso High School – and it was all hands on deck. We met a lot of wonderful people in the process.

“But there were so many [visors] needed, we went into mass production.”

With the announcement by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon that face coverings in shops will be mandatory, Mr Eadie is eager to help out.

“We’re hoping to make them [visors] more popular for the general public as well as shopkeepers and hairdressers,” he said. “Whoever needs to wear one.”

The visors can be personalised with colourful strips at the top, or branded with company logos.

Melrose hair stylist Phemie Beattie has bought Mr Eadie’s visors as she prepares for the reopening of hair salons on July 15, calling the mask “a great product”.

Ms Beattie, who is based in the Palma Place salon F&Co, said: “There are some out there you have to build up yourself, and some of the bits keep dropping off, so I definitely think this is a well-designed product.”

Ms Beattie was planning how to protect herself and customers for salons reopening when Mr Eadie contacted her.

She said: “We’re all going to have to be very careful and think about our clients’ safety.

“We’ve done so much in the salon – we have a partition between each chair, we’ve taken away the waiting area so no-one can come in and wait, we’ll sterilise and disinfect everything.

“I had originally been thinking I’d have to wear one of the masks that covers your mouth and nose but I have some clients who are hard of hearing, and I’d have to end up removing the mask to let them hear me.

“So when Brian showed me this product, it was really good.

“It’s comfortable and lightweight and people can see through the visor and lip read if they’re hard of hearing.”