doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com advice: bi-focals in perscription shooting glasses

I think that is my problem - the FT28 bifocals on my Rangers are big, much bigger than the readers on my nonRX sunglasses. They are too noticeable in my peripheral vision for a day of walking in heavy cover.

I have also heard that standard progressive lenses don't work well for shooting because the focal point is lower than optimal for shooting. But this may vary by person depending your vision and your gun mount (head up vs. stockcrawler).

Allen Lehman who supplies me with Decot shooting glasses told me last yr, progressive lens are not an option with shooting glasses. Maybe this sentiment has changed?

FWIW, Allan has done Decots, Zeiss and B&L Ray-Bans for me as well and the work has always been of very high quality.

If you are having issues w/Rx shooting glasses, he can likely help you get something that you will be comfortable using & keep you from making a poor choice.

edit: one additional note: you can also get the focal point of the on-eye lens set to be dead on or spot on when you have the gun mounted rather than in the general center of the lens as it is frequently or normally done, but doing so means that there will generally be some barrel distortion if you are not mounting it EXACTLY the same every time or make any slight adjustment in alignment or shooting different guns or having facial changes due to weight gain or loss and the glasses will not be good to drive with or even walk around wearing them because they will be slightly out of focus &/or distorted when looking straight out of them. I found that out the hard way and it wasn't Allan that made those particular lenses for me. Was a time I thought that having zero correction on the off-eye lens & the on-eye lens exact focal point offset as described above would be the cat's meow. It wasn't, at least not for me.

Have a second set made with just your distance prescription.. I did and I shoot better.

I am a Bifocal glasses wearer and went a different route. I wear contacts as I hate glasses. I solved the bifocal requirement by using one eye distant and one close.

For shotgunning this works great for rifle shooting not as good.

I have a contact prescription that makes my left eye the reading eye and my right eye the distant eye. This also solved the potential issue of cross-eye dominance

It took a week or so to get used to it, but after I did I now wear that set up 100% of the time whether down range hunting, shooting, even jumping out of airplanes. I have been set up like this for more than eight years to include Iraq and Afghanistan trips.

My eye doc gave me a prescription standard no line progressive eyeglasses for those few hours of the day at home I wear glasses.

Perhaps yours could give you a shooting glass prescription for your shooting eye and the reading eye.

As an FYI, I went the contact route to the extent of getting the new variable focus lenses, but my old stubby fingers had a very hard time getting the lenses out which are good for only 24 hours. Ended up with red, painful eye at times. They may have been a brilliant solution for shooting but my primary emphasis was not having to insert glasses in my Bell hemet for Track events at Road America.
Eventually, last year got some straight temple Persols with line bifocals that work fine in helmet, never did get to try the contacts for shooting.
So I spent a few hundred $$ and some pain and frustration but if you have good manual dexterity then contacts may help. Contacts would have solved a multitude of problems for me.-Dick