The Continuing Adventures of Jud

I have been having one heck of a time with this little gator, and recently realized one big problem that was subtly driving me crazy was that at the distance I was carving it, my eyes were totally out of agreement focus-wise. I have always been weak in one eye or the other due to strabismus (cross-eyed) and never learning to use both eyes together, something babies actually have to learn to do; but now that the eyes are older and less variable in their focus, with one good for near and one good for far, the "off" eye was sufficiently interfering with a clear view at whittling distance to make work near impossible.

And of course, my reading glasses were prescribed with matching lenses which are fine at reading distance, about arms length, but at whittling distance, about 8-10 inches, the right eye was so out of focus... so I took one of my pair of reading glasses over to the local optometrist's office and basically, it was just going to cost too much to get one lens changed to what I needed and the whole exam and prescription thing.

So I went to Wal-Mart and checked out their cheap reading glasses using one eye at a time and at the distance I needed. Turned out the left eye needed 1.25 mag, while the right eye at that distance needed 3.0 mag! So I bought a pair of each, figuring to swap out the needed lens and make my own mismatched pair. Well, the only problem was that instead of the lens frame being screwed on these, it is welded. Tonight I worked it over, and in end, I broke the right hand weak lens getting it out, and cut the frame to get the strong lens out of the other pair, then at a bit of a risk, forced the strong lens into the weaker frame. Well, I made a few nicks with the pliers around the perimeter, but managed to get it done so now have a pair of mismatched mag glasses that work at the distance I need for whittling and I tried them on and what a relief! I can see!!!