Well, the weekend before last I got desperate and had my wife pick up the Vulcan Welding Hood. It works pretty good. In the intervening time Lincoln decided to send me a brand new Viking welding helmet rather than listen to me rant and rave about the old Lincoln throw away helmet. Based on the advice of the guys here I looked to see if I good find a drop in replacement autodark lens for the old Lincoln. Sure enough I found one. Exact fit. Seeing as I was on a roll I decided to see if I could find one that fit my plain old helmet with the regular #10 lens. I found one. No kidding. Didn't sound quite perfect when I read the dimensions, but it was close. Turned out out be a perfect fit. Take out the lens and the spacer and the autodark lens snaps right in. Now I have not one (1) but four (4) working autodark helmets.
Ok, it didn't work out quite so good as it sounds. The replacement for the old Lincoln autodark arrived in non-usable condition. The case for it was split, the inner lens was scratched up, and the autodark lens itself was not lined up with the opening in its own case. If I had used it I would have gotten flashed every time I struck an arc. I contacted the seller, they refunded my money, and I proceeded to try and fix it anyway. Not sure its fixed. I managed to force the lens into position, but the circuit board wanted to pop out of place when I did. The connection leads finally took enough reshaping that I could close the case again. A bunch of plastic hippo clips and a few minutes with a hot soldering iron allowed me to "weld" it back together. Out in the sunlight the test button works, but away from the window it only goes dark for a moment then goes clear again. Battery reads about 2.5 volts on the meter, so it might just be a bad battery. I thought I had lots of those 2032 batteries, (the other helmets all use 2450s) but I can't find one now.
From famine to feast in a little over a week. It worked out "almost" as good as it sounded.