Shooting with glasses.....Help

[wlc]

Hope this is the right place, if not please move to the appropriate area.

OK, Seems having more and more birthdays does something to your eyes. Getting close to 50 now and have had to use WalMart reading glasses for a few years now for reading and doing things up close when working (end of nose to end of arm sorta stuff).

I've never really had a problem shooting though. All my rifles have been scoped for years and my handgun shooting has more or less concentrated on hitting center mass of the targets I use. That hasn't been a problem either.

I've never shot a handgun for real groups or had the need in the past. Well, now I would like to be able to see how well my new Ruger SRH Toklat shoots and adjust the sights for the range I intend on shooting. If I wear my reading glasses I can't really see the target well, if I don't I can't see the front sight well enough to be consistent. To say my groups (offhand) so far have been poor would bout sum it up.

I know a trip to the eye doctor is in order and had one scheduled, but had to cancel last week because I had the flu. I plan on a reschedule next week.

For those of you with glasses do they work for the situation I'm describing? Can you both see the sights and the target? Any help/opinions welcome. Thanks!!

[jsizemore]

Focus on the front sight and get yourself a merit or other adjustable iris to bring the target into focus. Welcome to old eyes. My local eye doc was a target shooter back in the day and knew where to focus my glasses.

[MarkP]

I am in the same boat very interested in the replies. An older coworker told once me he could tell the age of shooters in his muzzle loader club by the number dovetail blanks in their barrel. Just keep moving the rear site further up the barrel.

[JWFilips]

Being a user of progressive bifocals: I have often thought that if I could get a pair made special for shooting hand guns I would like the Progressive lens be reversed...that is the bifocal part in the upper part of the glasses! Sure would help with the head down crouch position of pistol shooting! I have wore my glasses upside down for this & it worked excellently....front sight sharp as a tack.
I have also experimented with reading glasses over my regular glasses ....& that works well also for head down crouch position...however there is no chance with far vision at all using this method.

[cbrick]

The short answer is no. The long answer is that there are things that will help, for a while. As jsizemore said, get a Merit. It will help the focus on the front site and the target but as time goes on less and less. Eyesight is the reason I haven't competed for several years now, I shot long range handgun for 30 years and got to where I just couldn't see. I used Champion shooting glasses with a Merit where you place your prescription distance lens and a plus diopter lens in front of the shooting eye. The diopter takes away from the target and brings in the sights but it's a compromise and neither are clear. I could use a lens where the target looked great but then I needed to use brail to tell if the gun had sights on it. I could use a lens where the sights looked great but it was like somebody hung a bed sheet in front of the firing line, couldn't even tell if the targets where out there. That left me with the compromise, fuzzy targets and fuzzy sights and in long range competition that won't get you much.

It will depend on your eyes, you can hit fuzzy targets all day if the sights are sharp. If you have to compromise it will be tough. The only thing you can do is to experiment with your shooting glasses and see what works for you but do try the Merit. The Champions worked fairly well for me for a few years but as time went on not so much. Damn diabetes is what did me in.

Rick

[knifemaker]

I am 67 and still have 20/20 distance vision, but have to have reading glasses for short distance. I was still shooting IDPA matches until recently and this was what I did to keep my shot placement accuracy. I purchased off Ebay the aviator style reading glasses that were 1.0 in power. It allowed me to have a sharp focus on front and rear sight and still see a small target 1 inch dot at 15-25 yards. As a result I can still shoot groups down to 1 inch at 15-25 yards if the gun is capable of it. Give it a try. Most of the glasses ran me under 7 bucks.

[GhostHawk]

I switched from iron sights on my Ruger 10-22 back when I turned 40, I'm 62 now, and struggling with iron sights on Mosin's and SKS's past 50 yards. Out to 50 my glasses work pretty good.

I have a few words of Advise.

Bifocals (They are not THAT bad)

Peeps (better than open sights IMO, they help trick your eye into focusing)

Scopes work great for old timers.

[BrassMagnet]

My eyesight has been getting worse for many years.
You can get special prescription glasses made that will work.
What I do is I take my rifle or pistol, actually both, to my optometrist. First, I get my prescription for normal use figured out. Then out comes the pistol and a target. My optometrist will then modify my prescription by adding magnification to my normal prescription. The idea is to force your eyes to focus at a certain distance. You see the front sight reasonably clearly and the target is a little fuzzy, but not too fuzzy. Use the least magnification that will work.
I believe mine is +0.75 magnification added to the normal prescription. It forces my focal length to 36" to 44" and works for most rifles or pistols. My optometrist is a shooter and he says to just add one diopter.
It is pretty easy to get a set that doesn't work. Try for usable, not perfect. Make sure you have a target to look at, too! I have a set that has worked for many years.

[montana_charlie]

My problem is astigmatism.
At 67, I use readers for close stuff, but my vision is generally good ... except for that little 'wrinkle' that causes a distortion of the view.
When younger, the muscles that focus my eye could minimise the effect of that astigatism, but that ability has decreased.

I asked the optomtrist to make me a pair of glasses with a right lens that corrects astigmatism and provides clear, unmagnified, vision at 36 inches from my eye.
He had to resort to using an antique set of try-and-see lenses that was stored away in a back room, but we found a good match for me.

I keep that pair of glasses in my accessory kit, and wear them only when sitting at the bench.
Looking through the tang sight I see a sharp front globe sight, and a slightly fuzzy target bull centered inside it.

I use a 13.2-inch bull at 300 yards, and it looks exactly the same as the 4.4-inch bull I put up at 100.

CM

[jsizemore]

I shot in silhouette like Rick. Started out at 20/10 and could spot folks without the spotting scope. I started shooting for the ironman and things started going south. I bought a Knobloch pistol setup and my doc made me a prescription lens to take care of my mess called an eye. I got a new lens every 3-6 months trying to keep pace with my eye. At Buccaneer with the nice white berms, I started seeing 3 rimfire turkeys on the stand. No amount of adjustment on the iris made the triple image go away. Over the next 3 targets I took turns shooting at each of the turkeys. No connection, so in the case went the open sight guns. I tried Decot Hy-Wyd shotgunner glasses with prescription lens for the shooting eye but it was mostly a waste of time and money. I'm glad I won them at a match. I invested any further money in scopes and german rifles. I started hitting again with lots of practice. About all my open sight shooting now is at 50yards or <. I'm now trying to train myself to shoot right handed while using my left eye. Oh yeah, I went from right eye to left eye dominant. I've tried shooting left handed but I can't pick my nose with my left.

[wv109323]

Have someone measure the distance from your eye to the front sight of the pistol you will be using. Tell the eye doctor that you want a prescription that is in focus at that distance. (like 39" from your eye or whatever) The prescription needs to be corrected for astigmatism if you have that. Or you can ask the doctor what strength diopter you need to correct your vision at that distance.. You can then buy a full lens reading glasses for that distance, Not the silly reading glasses that you look over the lens for distance.It is impossible to get the rear sight, front sight and the target in focus at the same time. You can improve your depth of field ( what is in focus) with an iris. The best way to align the front sight up with a target is to use a six o'clock hold. Your aged eyes will not do what they did when you were young.

[Wolfer]

For several years I had my eye doctor put a bifocal in the top right lens. These are called occupation len's. The left eye was single vision. When driving, hunting etc I saw 20/20.
i could tilt my head forward to see my pistol sights thru the right upper bifocal and see my target clearly thru my left.

If I remember the bifocal focused at 27"

This worked great on targets but when a deer was walking thru the brush it was a lot harder to put it all together. The last few years I just tilt my head down and shoot over my glasses. The sights are still fuzzy but I know where a boolit will land in relation to the fuzzy blob.

A couple times deer have gotten too close and I had to shoot looking thru the glasses. I know from practice that when all looks right the boolit will land a little high. I just hold accordingly.
Its worked every time so far.

Sometime back my neighbor was over with a 22 for me to work on. He was in his 70's and wore trifocals. The sights on the gun were very small and I had trouble seeing them.
I asked if he could see the sights. He said he had this gun since he was 10 and while perhaps he didn't see the sights clearly he knew where the bullet would land.

[Ramar]

About 15 years ago my Bullseye's scores started dropping real fast due to my eye sight. I was getting beat by men 20 years my senior all wearing Rx glasses.


I discovered Norman H. Wong, O.D., (a Bullseye shooter), on the Internet and started reading everything he wrote. I even purchased an optical test lens kit that I used to correct my long distance Rx glasses to enable me to see the front sight and a target bull that was the best to be had for scoring. The optical test lens kit was the secret for me because it enabled me to find the best lens for the actual shooting environment that I was in. It was like bringing the eye Dr. to the range. When I found the best lens I gave the number to the Dr. to add to my long distance Rx prescription dominant eye lens only for my shooting glasses.


I have 2 different dominant eye lens that I put in my shooting glasses; handgun versus long gun. I wear my normal lens/ with a bifocal on my non dominant eye so I can see normal and work up close when needed. I also us a flip down opaque color non dominant eye shield which helps with the eye fatigue and a blackout dot for my dominant eye.


BrassMagnet, Montana Charlie's and WV109323 suggestion is similar to the way I do it but I use the gun and the lenses at the range and find the best for the front sight focus and then add a (+ or -) test lens to it to bring in a better image of the target bullseye.
Ramar

[MaryB]

Only problem I have with glasses is using a scope, my no line bifocals do not line up right so i tend to push my glasses up on my head to shoot. Eyes are not super bad yet use +2.5 for close up work, distance is mostly astigmatism.