Major Eyesight/Shooting Improvement!

F

federali

New member
I thought I'd share. My distance vision is excellent but I'm farsighted and need strong reading glasses. Generally, iron sights on my handguns are fuzzy at best (I always see two or three front sights) and I mostly shoot from memory. I then tried my computer glasses and noticed a considerable improvement in sight clarity. My computer glasses are an old prescription of reading glasses that I grew out of.

So, you know those eyeglass displays in CVS, Walgreens, etc? I mounted a revolver front sight to a short piece of strip wood. I then fashioned a rear sight by folding electricians tape against itself, cutting a rear sight notch, and taping that to the same stick. This is important as you can't use a gun to do what comes next.

I took my makeshift sight picture to BJs. I put on a pair of glasses of +1.00 strength and used my homemade "handgun" to check the sight picture and was floored by the massive sight improvement. Long story short, I discovered that the +1.50 strength reading glasses gave me the sharp sight picture of my youth while still keeping the target sufficiently focused.

I can't wait to fire some real rounds through a real gun. Incidentally, I bought the four eyeglasses pack for $19.95. One pair for my indoor range bag, one pair for my outdoor range bag, one for my nightstand and the fourth, a slim pair with hard case, to carry with me.

I would encourage anyone with aging eyesight to do what I did. It's a real cheap solution that works.
 
When I'm shooting I use an old prescription of my bifocals, from back in the day when my near vision wasn't quite so bad. If I wear my current eyeglass Rx, I have a much harder time focussing on my front sights.

The magnifiers don't work because everything past 20 feet is a giant blur. :rolleyes:
 
I've been doing something like that for years, with similarly good results.
But I use two different lenses, one for the sights and the other for the target distance.
No single lens strength seemed good for both.
Somehow the brain likes it and both target and sights are in focus.
 
This is important as you can't use a gun to do what comes next.
Click to expand...

I took my trusty pre-agreement Smith & Wesson model 41 to my eye doctor's office, demonstrated it was unloaded, let him measure the distance to the front sight and do some mathematics, and tried umpty seventeen lenses. The same bifocal lenses work like a charm for computing as well as shooting.
 
I'd been doing the mild reading glasses routine for several years, then discovered these things and now I'm able to shoot my iron-sighted revolvers with my regular (non-corrected) shooting glasses. A bonus is that the small aperture allows you to keep both front and rear sights, as well as the target, in reasonably good focus.
 
readers

I have experimented with a set of 1.0 readers and the sight picture is THERE, but feel something like a .75 or maybe even .50 magnification might work for me, currently anyhow. I have not seen less than a 1.0 magnification offered in the cheap readers however.

Have given some thought to getting a pair made at .5.

What I SHOULD do is go see the eye doctor,but then I would be admiting I'm getting old.......who wants to do that?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top