# A Poor Retired Plumbers lack of Vision



## Coleve (Oct 31, 2012)

Hi there Fraternity.
This is just a short post advertising message targeting the members who like me hate it when your faculties start to dimmish somewhat as time and age creep over the horizon and steel those precious abilities from you, increment by increment.

Well, if that last paragraph doesn’t cheer you up what will.

Ok so not going to dwell on all the many inadequacies my good wife informs me I have as according to her I don’t have enough time left to write them all down,
So, I am dealing with only one, and that is my ability to see what is in front of me, literally. Now my long sight is fantastic with no problems whatsoever, but put a Dewalt manual in front of me and I am Knackered. 

I first found my eyesight fail me at the tender age of 45 and fought it tooth and nail until I retired and at which time my good wife dragged me down to a glasses quack who tortured me for over an hour and eventually handed me a detailed description and prescription of all my eyesight failings.

I was then dragged over to the empty your wallet section and a designer pair of spectacles was thrust upon my proboscis to which my audience all cooed and awed and told me how sophisticated I looked 

I chanced a look into the mirror and all the sophistication drained away as I noted the price tag hanging down from my right ear. I surmised at this point the designer must be a multi-millionaire by now.

So, as I left said shop with the answer to my impairment clutched in my sweaty hands, I thought about the tools I could have bought but not be able to see with the money.
As it happened the glasses did not see the month out before I broke them and they ended up in a man drawer. So, what next.

Well, I ended up buying a load of cheap reading glasses and planting them about the house as I cannot for the life of me find them when I place them down, and I now just replace them as they break.

Concerned that my eyes would eventually suffer I visited my doctor on another matter and asked him as to what I had done and he admitted he went down the same route as me and hasn’t noticed any difference. So, the doctor says its ok, good enough for me.

Now the next dilemma was the workshop which is definitely not the fountain of youth for the body, but definitely is for the mind.

Over the years I have tried umpteen methods of improving my eyesight in the workshop, some useless, some deadly and some with measured success, I have tried safety glasses with and without prescription, over glasses, shields and so on, but never that euphoria moment when body and mind comes together and agrees this is the solution, until now.

Which is the reason I am writing this post as it may also be a solution for someone.

Up until now my prescription safety glasses have to continually be used and set aside repeatedly due to one feature, i.e., the depth of field. Now in reading glasses that is not a problem as you are usually at a set distance from your face, but in a workbench situation while standing up your field of vision is much greater, subsequently requiring the constant on/off.

So where is this leading you may ask, well after many years of wearing my ears down I decided to take a chance on these safety glasses.
voltX Vision Safety glasses which I purchased from Amazon. They make two versions of this and I do not know who the Crystal Version Stacks up, I think it is just a different colour but not sure.

So why am I extolling the virtues of these particular units. Its all about the depth of field. I have had them about two weeks and I used them continually on my last post the tidy storage and I never had them off my face. Especially working at the bench. They covered all the 6ft bench without any problems and they allow you to walk about with them on without any blurring.

They are a good fit, never tiring and a decent price. Don’t know the longevity of them, time will tell.
Based on my experience with them I am going to purchase another pair for the house as they are better than my reading glasses.

So that’s it lads and lasses

Colin

Looking to the future somewhere in Scotland


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## kp91 (Sep 10, 2004)

Colin, I had to go the bifocal route, but I had the prescription written up so that the distance was about 18 inches. I do a lot of interaction with consoles, logbooks, alarm panels, etc... None of which are at the "reading" distance that eye doctors think people read at. I don't like the "on-line" type, and I still prefer a gap to look under the lens so going down steep shipboard ladders isn't terrifying.

Hopefully you find something you can work with to keep the hobby enjoyable and safe


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## DesertRatTom (Jul 3, 2012)

I've worked with optometrists for almost 40 years and found that decent quality progressive lenses do the trick for me at nearly all disances. These are the lineless multifocal lenses. The cheapest ones caused a distortion for me, but the middle priced ones are OK 

The covid lockdown has caused me to lose some of myfar sighedness, so some of my older prescriptions are just right now. The eye doctor you go to makes a big difference. I would never get a lens prescribed by an M.D., and most new optometrists are just as bad. But I found a few OEP optometrists who have a deep understanding of prescribing for functional and occupational lenses. There are a few in the UK, but the MDs have artificially restricted their scope of care in recent years, mostly over money issues. The ones I go to also offer vision therapy or visual training, which is how I find them.


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## woodworker47 (Dec 19, 2008)

I had cataract surgery several years ago. I had the “super” lenses put in and I no longer need to have cheaters to read or glasses for driving. The nay exception is for long term driving. I do have prescription sun glasses to enhance my vision. At first I was really mad about this but realized that I only wear them less than 5% of the time. I can drive around town with no problem. Now the problem was what to do with all of the cheaters I had laying around.

Colin, one question about your purchase. Does the anti fog work? I find that most do not work. As soon as I put a dust mask on, my safety glasses for. Not good in the shop.


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## Biagio (Mar 2, 2013)

Hi Colin, 
my presbyopia kicked in quite suddenly. One day, I had great vision, particularly near vision which was almost microscopic, and some astygmatism which was only an issue shooting at 600 metres in the army. The next, I was in Paris, had a hired car delivered to the hotel, and could not for the life of me read the road map supplied, to get out of Paris. 
After cursing every French cartographer (and French makers of most other things, which always seem to be counterintuitive), I happened to step out into the bright sunlight, and could suddenly see again. Since then, I only do intricate work with enough light for a small sports stadium, but I did need specs.

At first, they were only readers. About two years later, on a beautiful mild evening after a great day of trout fishing, I discovered that the Evening Star was actually a hitherto undocumented double planet. Before I could hasten to consult an almanac, as the sky darkened, I noticed a proliferation of double stars - up to that point, I had only been able to recall Rigel in the Orion constellation, and the faithful Canis Major trailing on the Huntsman's heels. So from that time, I needed distance glasses.

After a few years of juggling two pairs, sometimes misplacing both on my head, I decided to try bifocals, but was persuaded to go the varifocal route. I soon abandoned them. Apart from almost killing myself more than once, going down stairs, I used to get a headache in shops, having to adjust gaze from the price tag to the item description, to similar nearby items, etc. My head was oscillating vertically, like those radar antennae on ships, once they have locked on to an incoming threat. I went back to bifocals, but find them impossible for sustained reading or computer use.

So now, I have a spread of specs around at any one time, and usually only use coarse language when I find myself driving out the gate with my readers rather than my bifocals on my face. But as you point out, the workshop is the _rem_ _acu tetigisti_, so I am very interested in your experience. I notice from your posting, that the VoltX is a 2,5 diopter. Would you know what diopter your conventional readers are? I use a 2,5 reader to get a bit more "distance" in the shop, but lose out on detail that I would need a 3,5 for. 

I have been eyeing some purportedly adjustable specs (a milled knob near each lens allows the tension in the frame to be adjusted, allegedly changing the refraction), but the proposition sounds dicey, and yours may be the safer bet.

Incidentally, I took some comfort from a lecture by a local professor of ophthalmology some years ago. In his experience, the ability to adjust to multifocals varied inversely with the IQ of the wearer. The Lord giveth and taketh away.


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## marecat3 (Nov 30, 2010)

I have been waring glasses since I was 9, my eyes kept getting worse about every 6 months, they eye dr told me if I got contacts it would slow it down, got them my last year of high school. It worked for a time then I was given a precision from my family dr for something not related and guess what the side affect was. It caused my eyes not to focus when I looked down to read and up. Now I have progressive glasses and I still have to take my glasses off when doing very close work. Still don't see as well as I think I should but it is what it is.


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