iron sights and old eyes

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Leverluver
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iron sights and old eyes

Post by Leverluver »

Just got back from the best evening with rifles I've had in five years. Hauled out two 86 45-70s and the Sharps 45-70 along with the 405 Winny. I really haven't shot rifles in that long. The reason is because I couldn't see the front sight. Ya see I'm well along into trifocals and if they had another focal, I could probably use it too. I finally got tired of looking at my gun safe (filled for my retirement) knowing that virtually all of it was useless. I talked to the eye doc and asked what would happen if he made the right eye trifocal (mid range, actually computer monitor range) and left the left eye normal long distance. (I asked, wouldn't the right eye see the sights and the left eye see the target and wouldn't they superimpose? BTW, I shoot with both eyes open. He said no it doesn't work that way. Well I put it off for a few more months and went in and just told him to do it. They said no warranty and don't call him if I barf on my shoes. Well just because you have a piece of paper on the wall doesn't mean you know everything. The glasses worked great. I see the sights and I see the target. I guess my investment in the safe will got shot a lot in retirement after all. If you shoot with both eyes and find yourself in the same boat, you might give it a try.
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Borregos
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Borregos »

Interesting, thanks for the information :D
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Tycer
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Tycer »

That's great! Really great info! Thank you thank you thank you!
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by crs »

Congratulations and good shooting.
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earlmck
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by earlmck »

Hmmmm.... Very interesting!
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hightime
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by hightime »

Lord knows I need help. Thanks

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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Old Savage »

Glad that worked out for you. More should try it and see if it works in general. I could watch the ground swirl in front of me when they gave me glasses to correct my astigmatisms at 90 degrees to each other. My eyes keep changing and it does not bother what happens with the scopes but the irons keep varying sometimes eye to eye. So, I keep rifles each way. I do know that what others say they see and do shooting irons is not what I see and do.
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Leverluver
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Leverluver »

You don't have to be so far along that you also have trifocals. Not even saying that the trifocal is the perfect strength. When I go in again for my next exam, I will TELL the examiner to find the correct prescription for the right eye of shooting glasses by measuring the distance to the front sight and MAKE that the focal length. What I did was a shot in the dark as my trifocal's focal length is really closer than that but it worked so well that for the next year at least, I'm not complaining.
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MacEntyre
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by MacEntyre »

My eye doc says mono-vision glasses (one eye set up for distance, and the other one for near or intermediate) usually work on folks that have less binocularity, and who are very adaptable. Works well for some golfers. It's done with contact lenses all the time, but glasses sit farther away from the eyes, and require more eye "teaming".

It wouldn't work for me, because I have almost no binocularity.
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by AJMD429 »

Leverluver wrote:Well just because you have a piece of paper on the wall doesn't mean you know everything.
I remind my patients of that every day... :D Often without trying... :oops:

I had my eye doc make my trifocals with the transition very high, so I could do really close work without having to look 'down my nose'. The tradeoff is that for far distance I need to tilt my noggin down just a bit to use the tops of my glasses. They said the same thing - that it wouldn't work - but it works great!

I find the Williams FP 'ghosted' makes the front sight go from 'blurry double' to sharp and single, and believe it or not, the Marbles Bullseye rear sights does the same thing really well. For my old/nearsighted eyes, at least.
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rogn
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by rogn »

Having done the old eyes and compounded it w/ chemo, I wound up being functionally blind. Couldnt read a street sign at 20 feet. Did the cataract thing. OK, most of the cataract surgery involves replacing the lenses w/ different focal ranges, supposedly the best compromise. So, what yer ophtho did was essentially the same thing. Except your lenses are easier to change than mine. With good light and dime store cheaters iron sights are at least as good as when I was 35. Also, most people dont have symetrical vision anyhow and few of them are upset by it. We just adapt. What you cant do is have them so far out of sync that the brain just stops using input from the worst one, like "lazy eye" back in the 40s & 50s.
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by bdhold »

custom shooting glasses - great idea
Alphawolf45
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Alphawolf45 »

rogn wrote: Also, most people dont have symetrical vision anyhow and few of them are upset by it. We just adapt. What you cant do is have them so far out of sync that the brain just stops using input from the worst one, like "lazy eye" back in the 40s & 50s.
My eyes are badly out of symmetry.. I have right eye works well to my front sight and left eye does well at short range. I am okay out to 100 yards with iron sights .What sort of glasses will let you see both front sight and the rams out at 500 meters? I want to eventually shoot BPCR silhouette but I really cannot see that far....Will it work at the longer ranges to use both eyes using glasses corrected accordingly? Leverluver, how far are you shooting?
Leverluver
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Leverluver »

Yes, these are custom glasses for shooting only. I wouldn't even want to drive to my shooting spot with these on as things are screwy looking using them as normal glasses. It's funny but as soon as I start using them for shooting, the "peculiarity" of the combination goes away (for me). Just in case, I had them tinted a mild yellow. It helps with target aquisition and also keeps me from grabbing the wrong glasses when I go out the door.

I was shooting from 50 yards to over 400 yards. I have an old friend of a white rock (basketball size) out at ~350 yds that thought that it was long ago rid of me but I smacked it many times with every rifle I took with me. This is with standard buckhorns (M95), williams and lyman peeps (86s) and a hadely cup (sharps). The fronts were all small bead except the sharps which had fine cross hairs.

Obviously how well you do at long range depends on how well your vision can be corrected for that distance. Even as my focus increasingly sucked over the years, I have always been able to be corrected to better than 20-20 for distance.
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Don McDowell »

Nothing feels as good as getting a good set of shooting glasses and being able to shoot decently. Glad to hear you can get back to enjoying the shooting. :D
Leverluver
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Leverluver »

Thanks Don. Happy to be back in the game.
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by harry »

I had the Lasik mono vision surgery about two years ago, left eye for up close and right eye for distance. It has worked out very well, some of the really fine print I still need readers for but I have to take the right lens out. My cost for the surgery with lifetime touch ups was 2700.00. No more foggy glasses, no more lifting up my glasses to use bino's.
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joepb
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by joepb »

I love to shoot open sights, but have not found the correct eyeglasses. What part of Wyoming are you from?
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a__l__a__n
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by a__l__a__n »

My first post :shock:

I've worn contact lenses for decades. In the past few years my optometrist has given me a monovision prescription which has been (for me) completely unsatisfactory. So in my most recent visit, I decided to try bifocal contacts. I've resisted the idea for years, mainly because it makes no sense to me. Rather than having a top half with one prescription and a bottom half with another, they have a small dot in the middle with one prescription, and a transition around that dot to the other prescription. Like I said, makes no sense to me.

But it works wonderfully! I can now see both the front site and the target with the same eye!

Oh well, there goes another excuse ;-)
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jeepnik
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by jeepnik »

Interesting idea. I solved it, at least for shorter ranges by using ghost ring sights. Otherwise, I use holo sights, red dots or scopes.
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Don McDowell »

Another option that several shooters use is the Knoblock shooting glasses.
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Sixgun
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Sixgun »

Leverluver........whatever works for 'ya. :D

This is what works for me. I had the eyeglass man put in a bi-focal (at half strength) in the upper part of my left lens...my dominate eye. These are my designated shooting glasses.............---------------6

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Leverluver
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Leverluver »

I tried to get him to do that also but evidently he dropped out of eye school before he learned how to do that :lol:
Ray Newman
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Ray Newman »

My vision is not the best and has not improved. Seems it took a big dump when I turned fifty and that was 17 years ago. I always said that you can’t hit what you can’t see and I thought that my shooting days were quickly “going south”.

With my normal glasses, I saw double front and/or rear pistol sights and a very blurry target. For rifle shooting, acquiring the target in the sights was a chore, then I labored to see the sights clearly. Even though my Rx changed yearly, nothing seemed to help.

Then I discovered Decot shooting glasses:

http://www.sportglasses.com/Default.asp

Now after my yearly eye examination, I mail the Rx to Decot with the old Decott lenses and frame and in about two weeks, they are returned with new Rx cut in new lenses.

I have them cut a bifocal in the upper left corner of the right lens so I can see the pistol sights clearly. This year, new lenses were approximately $125.00. I wear the same frames that I first purchased about 15 years ago. recently, I purchased clear lenses and tinted clip-on sun glasses from Buffalo Arms:

http://www.buffaloarms.com/Products.aspx?CAT=3788

Was not exactly a cheap initial cash outlay, but I can see again….
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by guido4198 »

I've been using Shooting glasses made for me by Bud Decot since the early 1980's. The lenses are easily removed from the frames. That simple feature allows me to change lense tints according to the targets and/or background. As my eyes aged, I called them and they fixed up a strong eye lense just for seeing the sights. The weak eye was left alone, which lets me see the target. Works real well. Adding a Merit eye disc to this set-up REALLY helps.
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by cfplinker »

I've been using full lens readers for years with open sighted handguns although more recently I have had to add a 5/64" diopter on them to sharpen up the 50 yard targets.
I have gradually been installing aperture sights on my rifles and now I don't have any with the notch type rear sight. A few months ago I started noticing that I was getting two groups on each target. Started paying more attention to what I was seeing and found that I am now seeing a light gray circle in the center of the aperture. If I raise the post all is well until the bottom of the post touches the bottom of the gray circle. Then all of a sudden I see the top of the post at the top of the gray circle and it stays there until I raise the post far enough that it clears the gray circle. So now if I see the post at the top of the gray circle it actually could be anywhere in the circle and thus the group will open up consideraby.

Has anyone experienced this and what did you do to overcome the problem?
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Old Savage
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Old Savage »

I use aperatures - I just let somebody like Leupold or Weaver put lenses in them rather than attach the lenses to my head. :)
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Sixgun »

Old Savage wrote:I use aperatures - I just let somebody like Leupold or Weaver put lenses in them rather than attach the lenses to my head. :)

Geeze OS, the way you are always getting poked in the head and the chest by all of those protruding objects, I am surprised you can see at all! :D :D ----------------------------6
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Re: iron sights and old eyes

Post by Model 52B »

I have also replaced all my conventional sighted rifles with tang mounted aperture sights. The aperture effectively increases your depth of field, and brings the front site into focus.

Pistols were becoming a problem and while a pair of +1 readers worked fine at 25 yards or less, they made the targets too fuzzy at 50 yards. This year at the eye doctors I ordered a pair of progressive readers that have no correction at the top and go from there to my +1.5 reading correction at the bottom. It works great with conventional pistol sights as I can use just enough correction to focus the front blade and still see the target reasonably clearly.
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