The bane and boon of aging eyes.

About 20 years ago, I first noticed that my near vision was starting to go, ever so slightly. (I had a hard time distinguishing the pins of a min-DIN8 connector.) The eyes are now to the point that for all the fine construction work and fine finishing work, I use a magnifier, a Donegan OptiVISOR^®. (My father taught me about these, even longer than those 20 years ago.) The bane: without something like the OptiVISOR, there’s lots of detail I really can’t see well enough. The boon: with the OptiVISOR, working on little tiny things is probably easier than it used to be before the eyes started to age.

This really came to light today, as I was filling the gaps around the edges of the vacu-form wraps, using epoxy clay. Flaws and gaps that I’d probably have missed with the naked eye, even 20 years ago, were easy to see and easy (though tedious!) to repair with the magnifier.

Occasionally, it pays to take off the magnifier and look at the bigger picture (the in-focus field of view is pretty limited with the magnifier). I saw that one of the vacu-formed details on one of the wraps was dented. Time to learn to be an epoxy clay sculptor!