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This kind of work requires good vision. No? My vision has degraded over the years. I went in for a Lasik consult. I did not qualify! My eyes were perfect. But my lens' sucked. I don't have cataracts. Just stubborn lenses. I did not know there was a procedure for this. Corrected near (reading), intermediate, and far. Posting this for anyone who is dealing with this as well. 20 minute procedure. Replaced my lens' with a Panoptix multifocal lens. Right eye for now, left in January. Went from 20/50 to 20/25 in one day. Its even better now. Probably 20/22. I'll know better Wednesday. Downside is it is expensive, I hate glasses. If you hate glasses, check it out.

Mike, I'm glad you've found something that works well for you, good luck in January!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Neat! Mines still ok but I start to notice degradation..

Mike - I wore eyeglasses as a child, being very near sighted. By age 20 I was doing very fine and detailed work in the machine shops and of course - in guitar repair. By age 29 I was wearing tri-focals in safety glass. I still wear tri-focals at 64, and sometime in the late 80's I bought a pair of magnifying lenses with LED lights to read precision tools in the shop, and another pair for doing fret work, and all the many repairs in lutherie. It's absolutely necessary to take care of my eyes! Now I'm fighting floaters, which are no fun at all. I get my eyes checked twice yearly. Like you - no cataracts yet. Our eyes are precious, so do what you have to do. There are some repair jobs I can do by Braille (so to speak), but I don't want to try driving that way.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Eye surgery sounds frightening to me so I just use glasses

I started needing them to read about 3 years ago and it just seems to get worse with time. So far though my arms are long enough to hold a menu or even a book far away enough that I can read it. For guitar stuff I just use cheap drug store reading glasses.

But that does sound nice. I'd love to be able to see perfectly and trouble free again. What was the procedure called?

About 15 years ago my wife got Crystalens lens replacements for cataracts. These lenses are self focusing. Hers were pretty good for several years, but gradually scar tissue grew over the adjustable mechanism, so now she needs glasses. But at least the cataracts are gone. Her eye doctor gave a presentation at a ophthalmologist conference many years ago slamming the product. That was because many of them did not work at all even from the beginning.

So your brand is working for you, as did my wife's at first. Years down the road, perhaps you will need glasses.

It's cataract surgery. But its a very advanced type. The normal version is mostly covered by insurance. What I had was not covered. I technically do not have cataracts, but my lenses had become quite inflexible. See option 3. https://maynorandmitchell.com/treatments/#cataracts

I agonized over a year before I did it. So I get the scary part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw78Ze78zGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtRNO-JRY-A

I have watched a lot of videos from this guy. He really covers it all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isf5POrNEUA

The Panoptix multi-focal does not "self focus". Also, I saw somewhere that femtolaser can be used to remove scar tissue.

I just wear 3X progressive lenses, I've had progressives since I started needing glasses about 20 years ago, when I was 45. They were probably only 1.5 times at first. I use a 5X led magnifier I bought at Menards that works really well. If you could have a foot between the work and the lens it would be even better. Your eyes get used to finding the right spot to look through, and your mind blends thing too. It was easier at 25.

My wife had cataract surgery, every once in a while the lenses get water under them and need to be zapped. Such fun. She had it once over a year ago, and now needs it again.

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Why be normal?

I am dealing with the same age related creeping decrepitude many others of my generation (boomers) are. I have a pair of bifocals which I wear when I want to see clearly semi near and far. For close work I use a pair of dime store cheaters (actually several, so I don't have to remember where I put them ). I sport a pair of shades on sunny days to help slow the formation of cataracts. I also like to wear eye coverings when working in a shop environment.
Although I don't always wear glasses, it doesn't bother me when I do, and the extra eye protection they sometimes offer I see as a plus.

I've worn trifocals since I was in my thirties--I have a lot of astigmatism and progressive lenses just didn't work for me at all. I'm headed for cataract surgery one of these days--my neighbor is having it done this winter with the Panoptix lenses. I'll wait and see how it works out for him and then decide on how to go forward. I've worn glasses since I was 6, so I'm used to them, and would probably feel naked without them.

Dave

I am facing needing cataract surgery. I am nervous as I had complications years ago with Lasik. I remember sitting in the waiting room for my third surgery to correct the problem and within an hour I saw maybe 20 or so other patients. Then I remember having read 95% of Lasik surgeries have no complications. One of the 20 I saw was probably going to have a complication of some sort. I learned to be realistic when evaluating surgeries outcomes. We have been conditioned to think that 90% is a good score. I now turn it around in my head to 9 out of ten as it is easier to imagine how it applies to me.

Having said all of that I am really interested in advanced lenses, and I appreciate your post and the comments.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

I have astigmatism too, and sometimes they say it is different from where it was. My biggest problem when I was working, was in depth perception. Checking parts on the CMM I had trouble going down to touch off the part, I was too far forward, or behind, I don't remember which; I just wasn't where I thought I was. Looking in the door of the lathe, sometimes it looked like the tool was going to smash into the stock. I never had that problem before. I'm not afraid of anything, and don't spook easily; but I did hit Estop a couple times.
Sometimes setting necks can be a problem. And sometimes getting things centered. I find myself marking several centerlines. That's usually not good.
Tri-focal cataract lenses? Sounds like a good option.

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Why be normal?

15 years ago I had cataracts in both eyes and was basically going blind. Doc thought I had them so early and so bad due to many years of exposure to high-power radars in the military. Anyway, had surgery in both eyes and I've been able to see great for the last 15 years. Not perfect but sure as hell better than going blind. I get by with readers (I've got them stashed everywhere!) and my OptiVisor.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I tried those progressive lenses (glasses). Could not stand them. Some people tolerate, others like me, not so much. Panoptix are new in this country, been available for years outside the USA. Hope u enjoyed the videos. That operation video was hard to watch... huh? The most annoying thing I am dealing now is how light comes through the incision. Like I can see artifacts off to the right. Perfectly predictable. And as eye heals, it goes away (so they tell me).

I've used progressive lenses in my glasses for about 20 years and they work fine for me still. When I first needed glasses, I was still walking the floor joists on the second story and found they didn't work well for that nor trying to follow the cut line with the skilsaw. The progressives solved those problems. I quickly got used to pointing my nose where I was looking and tipping my head up or down for the focus. Cataract surgery is in the future though.

There are several eyeglass lenses that would be more applicable to what we do, but are dedicated to shop work. They would have mid-range (arms length to a few feet) in the top with close reading in the bottom. Before getting a permanent change through surgery, I'd recommend having it simulated with contact lenses. During my +30 years as an eyecare professional, I've seen many cases of regret. While numbers are involved in vision correction, in the end, it's how the brain interprets the pictures it receives from the eyes and the ability to fuse the images into a three dimensional picture. What works for one person may not work for others.

Brent

Brent,

Once the lens goes, there are no real glasses options. Glasses wont fix cloudy lenses. My eyes were a few years from that.

We all have to face age related vision decrepitude sooner or later. About 3 years ago I faced a problem in my left eye that had me considering if I would be able to continue. The symptoms and treatment are similar to macular degeneration - i.e. you loose the macula, and the risk increases with age. Thankfully it is not macular degeneration and my eye responded to treatment which involves an injection into the eyeball. The drug costs around $3000 per injection and I was having the injection once a month. My country has a universal health system which pays most of the cost for which I am most eternally grateful! Now the injections are every 10 weeks, and I hate it, but is better than blindness. I still have a blind spot in my left eye, but it is much smaller now and the brain fills in the gap from the right eye. Apart from that, reading glasses are now mandatory, started at 0.5, now 2.0.

As long as we're talking about guitar work and eyes, it's good to remember that it's within our power to make our work safer for our eyes. Eye injury is unlikely but possible given what we do, and over the years the chances of risk add up. Go bars can go sideways, table saws can throw objecs, and a grinder sprays tiny pieces of metal—a single scintilla in your eye is a serious problem. I aim to wear wrap-around safety glasses in the shop at least 90% of the time. I have bi-focal safety glasses, but I mostly wear 1.0 "reader" safety glasses for medium work and 2.0 for close work, with 5.0 magnifiers for very close work that has low risk of eye injury. Because of cataracts, I had my lenses replaced a couple of years ago; for me, it seemed the best option to go for best distance vision and wear glasses for close work.

If you wear your regular glasses in the shop, next time you replace consider getting them with high-impact lenses. (https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-informat ... nd-answers.) It doesn't cost much more and it's worth it, though wrap around shop glasses add additional protection.

When I started using readers in the shop, because they don't have a lot of depth-of-field I started to get back and neck problems from awkward positioning to get close enough. That's why I have more than one power of glasses. I also learned that the brighter it is in the shop the easier it is to see fine detail and I don't need to contort myself so much. Bright LED shop lights have gotten cheap and don't draw a lot of current; I now have lots of them. Finally, putting white pegboard over the benches reflects light, brightening the shop so seeing fine detail is easier.

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Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."

I have a somewhat obscure problem, in addition to the normal lack of focus with age.

I have monocular polyopia in both eyes. What that means as that each eye sees multiple images. Thorough checks show that there is nothing in the retina or nervous system and the cornea or lens is not distorted enough to cause this. Probably the normal aging that causes the vitreous humor to get thin and watery left me with floaters that were just there from birth but were the same refractive index as the vitreous humor before the vitreous humor thinned out. My best compensation is just reading glasses. I still do not understand how these glasses can make these images converge. However, prescription graduated lenses were worthless. Very expensive IZON lenses were also not as good as just cheap reading glasses. There is no cure, except perhaps removing all the vitreous humor and floaters and replacing with water--but that is dangerous and an eye doctor will not attempt that for the degree of difficulty that I have.

This crept up on me so that it took me years to realize what was going on. I thought that rays of light around street lights were diffraction from the car glass, until I finally looked out an opened window. I thought that apparent ghost images on TV were bad reception. It took me years to realize that tail lights of cars in the distance at night were just from one bulb and not a cluster of eight bulbs. Unfortunately, I learned to play guitar always watching the fingerboard. It took years for me to realize that there were a lot more that 6 strings appearing in my vision. By then it was too late to reprogram my reflexes to never try to look at the fingerboard, but to the extent that I can avoid looking, I play some parts better. I find that very strong glasses can let me watch the fingerboard, but when I first put them on, the neck appears perhaps one inch longer and bent about one inch along the length. After playing a while, my brain adjusts--which is just proof that my eyes were never really helping. Now I have four vertebrae in my neck fused. Although I do not have difficulty bending my neck, my spine surgeon warns that excessive bending will cause the adjacent disks to deform and impinge on my spinal chord. So I avoid looking at the guitar when playing now out of fear of further surgeries.

I had many eye doctors not identify this, so I helped them with a lot of research on the Internet. I do not really think it is that rare, but the doctors just go through a cookie cutter routine for the more common problems.

I've had cataract surgery myself and have handled many patients over the years. There are many options open to people. A sizable percentage of people need some form of correction afterwards. Multifocal IOL's work for some people, but the odds of 20/20 vision for both far and near are in the minority. Some doctors have recommended 'monovision' lens implants, where the dominant eye is corrected for far and the non-dominant is corrected for near. There are so many variations, it would take a textbook to list and discuss them all. I just recommend caution before doing something that will be permanent.

For the shop, I have dedicated mid-range single vision glasses--same as the center of my trifocals.

When I tried progressive lenses, no lines were ever straight, and the normal distance vision part of my lenses was smaller than a pea--I have a very high amount of cylinder correction for astigmatism, and that was the culprit. When a tight piece of string is curved, something ain't right.

So I went to trifocals which have been great, except when using power tools. There's something very unnerving about running a board through a tablesaw, hitting the lens transition and having everything jump visually. Not safe. The single vision mid range glasses are great when I'm using machinery. They're actually good for computer distance stuff too.

Dave

Dave, when you say "single vision mid range glasses" are you talking about dime store reading glasses, or is this something special? Source? Sounds like what I need.

No, these are prescription glasses that are single vision, but instead of single vision at distance, they are single vision with the added magnification to match the middle band of my trifocals. If you don't wear prescription lenses, I would imagine you could find some dime store reading glasses that would work. The middle band of my regular glasses have about half as much additional magnification as the close up band (which works like reading glasses). If you wear readers, you might try some readers with about half of the magnification of what you've been using and see how they do.

Dave