05/11/08

Tools...

Optical Aids

From the time that I first started building models at an age of about 5 or 6 until well into my mid-40s I was blessed with better than 20/20 eyesight. For the first twenty or so of those years, I felt my eyes were so good that for all of my modeling, for even the tiniest of details, the naked eye was the best that I felt I could do as far as seeing how to work on those itty-bitty parts. Then one day, while using a motor grinder on a small motorcycle component (I've been into motorcycling only about 5 years less than I have been building models) I needed some eye protection from the flying filings that I would be generating. The only thing handy at the time were a pair of reading glasses in the pocket of a buddy so I borrowed them and proceeded to work on the part. To make a short story short, when I completed the part and set the glasses aside to examine my work with the naked eye, I was astonished. Not only was the accuracy of the work on the part better than I had done in similar cases without the benefits of even the slight magnification of the reading glasses, but I was also very aware at how my eyes didn't feel the strain of several minutes of very close-up work compared to all the previous times of such close-up work work without magnification.

It was about this time that I was also entering the graphic arts business (pre-desktop publishing) and I was regularly doing micro-work such as cutting commas from sentences and replacing them with other punctuations (hence, the term cut-and-paste). Low magnification reading glasses, available at most department stores, became a standard piece of "equipment" in my graphics tool arsenal. It took a long time to occur to me that if such aids benefited me in my business as well as motorcycling that there would also be benefits to my modeling. The "obvious" escaped me for years until after a series of particularly long sessions detailing some scale models and suffering the obvious symptoms of eye strain that I slipped on an old pair of readers to finish the micro-work that I was doing on a scale plastic model. Not only was I pleased that the eye strain was eliminated but I was astonished to discover that the ease, speed, and accuracy of doing the micro-work were also drastically improved. I used the same glasses when doing some tiny detail painting with a #000 brush...and when the work was done I simply could not believe how much better the paint detailing looked than anything I had done before. The simple fact of the matter was that in helping me to see better the reading glasses were an instant improvement of my modeling skills.

So, do yourself a huge favor. Even if you have the best of vision and don't think you need any improvement, make a trip to your local drug or variety store and lay down three or four dollars for a "throw away" pair of reading glasses. Get the lowest magnification (a rating of 1.25 is the "weakest" you will find) and wear them the next time you are doing any kind of close-up work. YOU WILL BE AMAZED!!!

Types of Optical Aids

Reading Glasses

As I mentioned above, reading glasses can go far to relieve fatigue and eye strain when working on small items or doing close-up work. You don't need to go to an optometrist for a set of good generic reading glasses. If you are a regular visitor to book stores like Barnes and Noble or Borders and others, they generally have several reading glasses displays scattered through their stores. Many grocery stores have reading glasses in their pharmaceutical departments as do drug stores and department stores like Walmart. And they aren't expensive, usually starting in the $4 range. But you will get what you pay for.

Reading glasses are classified by their magnifying power with the lowest power being 1.25x. This is usually good for most people with normal vision and even though you will perceive only a minor "magnification" you will notice it is MUCH easier to perform tedious close-up work for extended periods of time. If you slip on any reading glasses and things become sharper and clearer, then you might want to have your eyes examined for a set of prescription glasses. DON'T use readers as your everyday glasses, even if they make your general vision better and less stressful. Doing so can aggravate any unknown vision issues you may have and make prescriptive correction more difficult.

I've seen readers in excess of 3.0x though I personally only have three pairs of readers at 1.25x, 1.5x, and 1.75x magnification which completely cover all my "normal" close-up and small work needs. The 1.25x glasses are my most heavily used.

Though you can find very "cheap" readers I would invest a bit extra and get some with good metal frames and spring loaded hinges which allow the temple pieces (the part that goes over your ear) to spread easily yet stay in firm contact with your head without you having to bend the frames.

Though you may find pitching $12 for better reading glasses hard to justify, just think of them as another tool that is essential rather than a "convenience." Once you begin using them on a regular basis, you will indeed come to consider at least one pair of low power readers an essential part of your toolbox arsenal.

One other benefit of any kind of glasses is that they will offer a degree of protection against small objects that may get into your eyes such as wayward sawdust or even spatters of glue or paint. They are not substitutes for real safety glasses but they offer better protection than nothing at all. However, modern safety glasses are generally available for as little as $2 and most are designed to be worn over existing glasses so if you need to use a high speed rotary tool for close-up grinding, slipping a pair of inexpensive safety glasses over your readers will do the trick.

Magnifiers

Medium to high magnification head gear such as "binocular magnifiers" and other devices hold a pair of lenses two to six inches from your eyes (unlike glasses) and provide high levels of magnification at very close distances without requiring you to "cross your eyes" (as is required with conventional reading or magnifying glasses whose lenses are 1/2 to 1" from your eyes). Such magnifiers require that you be much closer to your work...in the 6-18" range...than do reading glasses (which work at longer normal reading distances). However, in getting much closer to the work the apparent enlargement of your work is much greater even though the rated magnification of the magnifiers may not seem that much.

Some magnifiers come with handy options such as tiny lights on each side that are positioned to illuminate at the focusing distance of the magnifiers. Some come with magnifying lenses that flip up or pairs of lenses that can be flipped down over each other to provide even higher degrees of magnification. Others, like the ones in the illustration, have individual "loupe" type lenses that can be positioned over one eye for super-magnification for that eye.

Most magnifiers set the lenses far enough from your eyes so that you don't have to be continually raising and lowering the magnifiers...you can simply tilt your head up slightly and look below the lower edges of the lenses to view things normally.

Magnifying Glasses

Magnifying glasses are typically single lens, non-binocular types of devices. When you first begin using them, you may have a bit of difficult focusing both eyes on the work you are doing or you may find that if you are the slightest bit off center when viewing through single lenses that you have a different effective magnification for each of your eyes. You will also find it a bit strange at first to be looking "beyond" the item you are working on to see it clearly. In spite of these slight quirks, single lens magnifying glasses have their advantages.

I would recommend larger diameter lenses...in excess of four inches...over smaller lenses. The price difference is small but you will find the larger lenses much easier to use. Also, go the extra mile and get a glass-lensed unit (as opposed to cheaper plastic-lensed units) which you will find easier to clean, very scratch resistant, and easier to remove those inevitable hardened drops of CA glue that get on them.

Old-fashioned lenses mounted to a handle (the kind you may have used as a kid to focus the sun onto a leaf to ignite it with the sun's rays) are ever useful for quick examinations of items. Because they require the use of one hand, you wouldn't want to use them as a working aid but they are very useful for checking things after the fact.

Other lenses are mounted on stands that can be positioned over your work. Flex stem magnifying glasses are handy. Even handier are desk lamps which have a central magnifying lens surrounded by the light source. These provide a very effective and uniform lighting of your work. Another type of stand is classically known as a proofing loupe. The original magnifiers of this type general have small 1" diameter precision lenses which have a very narrow range of focus and are mounted to a folding stand that is designed to rest right on flat printed material. The lens is typically held an inch or so over the viewed surface...hardly what you want for model building but can be useful for examination after the work is performed. I have purchased a giant version of such a proofing loupe which has a five inch lens and which focuses about 6" above the work surface. This IS useful for micro work such as soldering, gluing, or folding tiny etched brass pieces or doing micro-carving and the like.

Which Is For You?

If you work on models for very long, you will acquire a collection of vision aids. However, the most useful aids that I have found are also the least expensive. I would definitely invest in both a pair of low power (1.25 or 1.5) readers AND an inexpensive head-worn magnifier. Micro-Mark has some high-quality medium priced versions of the magnifiers though I have found very inexpensive, though slightly lower quality units (as low as $6) through dollar-stores, Harbor Freight, and auto supply stores.