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As my eyesight fails I work more with my glasses off & task lighting. What are other people doing? Any excelent lightweight headgear lighting &/or magnifiers?
Mike McNerney, Ottawa

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Mike McNerney

Mike, I was at the eye doctor yesterday for a checkup and to well, admit that I'm getting older and my eyes aren't what they used to be. I'm a CADD tech, so for 10 hours a day my world is between me and my monitor. I was/am having a heck of a time seeing up close to read and then looking at my monitor. And it wasn't just there. It's amazing I got the new dishwasher in this weekend, I couldn't see clearly most of the time. The long and short of it is that I need bi-focals. The dr. suggest that I get a pair with progressive lenses. Have a smallish strip for distance, a decent one for my monitor distance and the bottom for reading. So, I guess really I'll be getting tri-focals. He also suggested getting a pair just for the computer, no distance. This gives more room for the other two distances. It wasn't want I wanted to hear, but I can still see. It may not prove to be the perfect solution, but taking my glasses off and getting 8'" away from what I"m doing isn't the best solution either, especially when it involves a spinning blade of some sort.

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Aoibeann

Boy do I feel your pain. I built my shop a little over 4 years ago. I had florescent lighting and at the time I thought this was great. Well my eyes are pretty bad . I had a chance to visit my friend Dave Nichols shop in Malone NY and he had the new fluorescent lights that turn into incandescent fixtures. They are the ones rated with the equivalent of 150 watt bulbs. The bulbs have a tube that twists around a small tube. These things not only give off light ,the spectrum is very good. I came home and tore out all my 4 foot tubes and replaced them with the new design.
I now have more light and using half the wattage. The new lights are fantastic. I have them now over a year and a half and didn't need to replace any. They package said they were guarantied 4 years. I got mine a Lowes.
At my work area I have track halogen lamps. My inlay table has halogen desk lamp fixtures.
I think the spectrum of light is a big benifit
john hall
blues creek gutiars

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Ain't getting old great!?

I have high output "Triton 50" fluorescents and they are bright and color accurate. I paneled my assembly room with white melamine and that helps a lot too. Then there are task lights everywhere but they really start to get in the way. I'll be looking for some kind of visor here soon too. My dentist has one that just looks like a pair of glasses with a small but bright led light right above the nose. They look fairly comfortable compared to the big visors.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

I know exactly of what you speak. I opted to get a second pair of glasses with just the bifocal part of my regular lenses in them, no distance part. They work great for the hours I spend in the shop. They were inexpensive and are great also for working on the computer and reading. Of course, I have to carry two pair of glasses around with me now. My regular glasses have bifocals, but when I get them replaced I'm just going to go with the distance lens and use my bifocal vision pair for up close stuff.
Anyway, that works well for me in the shop. I also have one of those clamp on magnifier/lights that is affixed to my workbench for when i'm doing up close work. Helps a lot also.

Some related thoughts. In my case, I need magifying (Is that far-sighted?). I don't know if this applies to near-sighted. In bifocals or continuous variable lenses, it seems that the eye doctor prescribes a magnification for "reading", and a maginification for "distance". I think that the "distance" focal length is based on optimum accross a small room. So my "distance" lens was 1.25X. In most cases, that would work for greater distances to an acceptable degree. However, my complaint was driving, especially at night, but the doctors just didn't catch on that I needed to have optimum focus perhaps 100 feet out. After spending thousands of dollars on less than perfect glasses, I found that I could use cheap 1.0X or 0.75X reading glasses and they worked much better for driving than any of the prescriptions, because their optimum focal distance was much farther out than the prescriptions. So, you might want to keep that in mind for driving. Usually, these are hard to find in the store, so you might need to go online.

Back to guitar. I often put on two pairs of powerful reading glasses, or even three for some close work, but they can fall off. Of course, it is probably better to get some other magnifiers that are made for the purpose, and I am about to order some. Using glasses relieves the eye's lens muscles from trying to focus, so the ability to focus then becomes even more diminished, but that's the breaks. There are procedures to excercise the eye focusing muscles, but I doubt if they are enough to help in close work. The focusing problem with age is usually caused by the lenses hardening, so the muscles just cannot flex the lens enough.

Ditto for me. "Inside of every old person is a young person asking, 'What happened?'."

I have a magnifier lamp and also a magnifying visor. One of my task lamps has a clear bulb in it, giving a very hard light, though not of the optimal color temperature. I use these at various times depending on the situation.I don't yet have full spectrum lights, but they are on the list. I have a pair of glasses like Lillian mentioned, for computer use. They're made for only one distance range. They're a great help in the shop. I'm thinking I might get a pair especially for the shop, made for a 12 to 18" distance. They can be pretty inexpensive if you get simple frames, or use old ones, and don't get any AR coating or other fancy stuff.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I wear trifocals. One for distance, one for computer screen at about 2 - 2.5', and one for reading @ 18". At work, I have a set of bifocals, that only have the middle and reading distance lenses, and have the Crizal anti glare lenses. They are awesome. If you have not tried them, the difference, particularly when looking at a monitor, is most amazing. It makes images and text just pop out at you, and your eyes do not get nearly as tired. They are a bit more expensive, but well worth the difference. I tried the variable focus lenses, and hated them. Sort of like playing the Trobone, I kept having to move my head around to find the right focus. It was maddening, to me. Old dogs and all that........!

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I work with neurosurgeons every day and have wanted a pair of those for years. You can find them on e-bay for <$150 (which is still just a bit too pricy for me). They are called surgical loups (as you mentioned) and also surgical telescopes and low vision devices. Remember to check out the working distance.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

<groan>
Up until a couple years ago, I had fantastic close-up vision. I could take off my normal glasses, and work on any kind of small inlay work, or purfling mitres etc., and see everything perfectly. Then all of a sudden, I couldn't focus on anything small anymore. Talk about frustrating. I started wearing progressive lenses, but they still don't help me see things really close up. I'm going to be at a place shortly where I need to get some of those magnifying headpiece things that some folks here are using. I sure wish there was a surgery for this stuff, because I'd be in the line already.
The other thing that's bothering me is the stupid "floaters". They bother me most when I'm trying to read, and have a way of floating right where you're trying to read, making things blurry. They seem worse when I'm tired. I'll bet Dr. McCoy could fix this stuff...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

<groan>
Up until a couple years ago, I had fantastic close-up vision. I could take off my normal glasses, and work on any kind of small inlay work, or purfling mitres etc., and see everything perfectly. Then all of a sudden, I couldn't focus on anything small anymore. Talk about frustrating. I started wearing progressive lenses, but they still don't help me see things really close up. I'm going to be at a place shortly where I need to get some of those magnifying headpiece things that some folks here are using. I sure wish there was a surgery for this stuff, because I'd be in the line already.
The other thing that's bothering me is the stupid "floaters". They bother me most when I'm trying to read, and have a way of floating right where you're trying to read, making things blurry. They seem worse when I'm tired. I'll bet Dr. McCoy could fix this stuff...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Ditto here! I'm 55 years old and use progressive lenses, a drop down visor magnifier with two separate lenses, and enough light to darken George Hamilton. I am learning some tricks, though. If I want a 3/64th I will use the high magnification to tape the rule at 3/64ths for repeated measurements. I can then ignore the fine rule lines and concentrate on the tape. Otherwise the rule lines just blur together.

One advantage I find is that as my vision worsens, I see fewer flaws in my work.

The progressive or bifocal, etc. glasses are designed for closest focus at reading distance, which for me is too far away for closeup work. So, reading glasses for me are 3.25X, but I just put together some bifocals with stick on lenses at 5X for guitar playing. I need even more powerful for detail work. Before you invest in $150 surgical lenses, you might want to go on ebay and buy some 6X reading glasses, which is more powerful than you will normally find in a drugstore. They are fairly cheap. You can get a preview if this might work for you by putting on two pairs together of weaker glasses, such as 2X and 3X in the drugstore isle.

Don't forget about the working distance though. That's what makes surgical telescopes so interesting. I've got one of those head visor thingies but at high mag, the working distance (i.e. the focal distance) is only about 6". That's not often practical depending on what you're doing. Surgical telescopes are also high mag but the working distance is closer to 15" or more. The fancy $600~$1000 ones have a customized working distance so that the focal point is where the surgeon wants his hands to be anyway.

p.s. thanks for reminding me about this BTW. A colleague of mine is a former Zeiss surgical microscope rep and he promised to contact some old buddies to see if they had any surgical telescopes sitting around in their basements.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I'm getting far sighted as well. I picked this up from Grizzley about a year ago and use it to center punch fretboards prior to drilling for markers. It's especially nice for locating side markers. Optical Punch http://www.grizzly.com/products/H5781 For other tasks I can still get away with just using a magnifying lamp.

I have worn varifocals for several years now. Great for reading.... great for the computer screen distance, and great for long distance. I remember that they took quite a bit of getting used to... you raise and lower your nose a little, and after a while it becomes natural.

But there's one weird side effect....
Take a straight edge... and draw a horizontal line about 12" long. ... its just got to be straight right?
Take away the straight edge..... and the line looks curved, with an arch up in the middle.

Rod