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Sorry for the slow reply, been away for a while.

There are several approaches to the problem of presbyopia and iron sights.

0. The obvious, a scope: But we are trying to avoid that here.

1. The peep sight: This takes advantage of the fact that the apeture on the peep sight rather than the apeture of the eye becomes the effective apeture of the total system. This increases depth of field and allows improved sharpness of both the front sight and the target at the same time. One does not focus on the rear sight at all. Drawbacks are that it requires the addition of a peep sight to the rifle and does not work so well in poor light.

2: Apeture on the glasses: There is a device on the market that attaches to one lens and provides a variable apeture like the one in a camera lens. No modification to the rifle. This is also a means of obtaining more depth of field, but requires being able to see the rear sight although it does not have to be overly sharp. Also poor in low light.

3: Shooting glasses with extra lens: I have an acquaintence who uses this one. He has a pair of shooting glasses that have an auxiliary lens mounted on a swing arm like you used to see watch repairmen with. the auxilary lens allows sharp focus on the front sight while the rest of the main lens allows sharp focus on the target. Works much better in poor light than an apeture. Drawback, it isn't cheap and easy, the glasses came from Germany.

4. Cheap way to do the above. Go to the drugstore and buy a pair of stick on lenses meant to go on the bottom of sunglasses for reading. You will want about +1 diopter for long guns, +1.25 diopters for handguns. Find the sweet spot on the sighting eye lens and add the stick on lens.

5: Purpose made glasses: this is the one I use. For handguns, I have the eye doctor add +1.25 diopter to the main part of the sighting eye lens and subtract a corresponding 1.25 diopters from the add on that side. This makes the target sharp to the off eye and the front sight sharp to the sighting eye. At the same time, the close up portion on both sides is set for the same distance so reading is no problem. Drawback, there are a few people that this does not work for. It depends on the brain fusing the two images to make one sharp one. If you are using contacts of the type where one is for distance and one is for reading, you are already using this trick. For long guns it's a tad more complicated. I have +1 dipoter added to the sighting eye and 1 diopter subtracted from the add. So far simple, and you might be happy with that. To go one step further, I have prism added to both lenses to shift the optical center towards the upper left since I am looking through the upper left part of the lens when sighting. (I shoot right handed.) This puts the optical center closer to the line of sight. This is the part that scared the counter girls since prism is normally used in only one lens to correct for misalignment between the eyes. In spite of the name, they do not actually add a prism component, they just shift one lens off center by the appropriate amount and direction. This leaves me with a pair of glasses that are a bit funny since the best view is shifted somewhat to the left and up when walking around but its nice when aiming.

6. Dominant eye problem: I have this problem, I am right handed but left eyed. This is said to be a good thing for hitting a base ball but it's not so hot for shooting. It's at its worst with a shotgun where you are pointing rather than aiming. If you find you are often shooting to the left of the bird (For a right handed shooter.) you should suspect this problem and take the test for it. Hold your shot gun in the correct shooting position and find the spot on the off lens where you see the bead. Cover this spot with a dab of vasoline. Once you have the spot well located, clean off the vasoline and put a little peice of the frosted translucent semi transparent type tape over this spot. I've known people who have had this spot permanently frosted on the lens.

7. Go back to being 21 years old. If you figure out how to do this, let me know.

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