M14 Forum

Bamban

I just want to give an initial field report on the lenses from Art Neergaard. These lenses are part of a package which includes the rectangular aperture. In preparation for two run-what-you-brung M1 matches I decided to try the lens first instead of retrofitting the rifle with the hood and lens.

Background, I used some commercial lenses in my hoods before, but I am not too happy with the quality so I resorted to using cutting out the center of the of cheap Chinese reading glasses and shaping them to fit inside the hood. While I was content with what I had, the quality is still not all there, plus the power of the lenses from the reading glasses vary, not to mention they have no astigmatism correction.

In my conversation with Art about the speed hammer, eyesight discussion came about and told him of my problem. He asked for my regular prescription and assured me he can furnish a good quality lens that has the correction tailored for shooting the 14 and with the astigmatism correction. Though my astigmatism is not bad, but with the aperture lenses available out there, including the ones I fab out reading glasses, there are days I shoot with post leaning, sort of like the leaning tower.

Last week in preparation for the match this last Sunday I started dry firing with Art's lens, unfortunately the match was rained out. Wednesday, I took the M1 with the new lens (rifle is also equipped with a one legged hammer as I mentioned in another thread) and Thursday I went out again to train for this coming Sunday's 2011 Pearl Harbor Match in Houston.

This field experience still has very limited data points, but initial observation, the post and the bull have better clarity from my previous lenses. My shooting eye with the old lenses tend to fatigue out, I suppose from struggling with the astigmatism and less than clear lenses. Two day session on the range with about 200 rounds fired I still find the sharpness to the last shot. Mostly the shots fired were rapid for another reason - to shake down the one legged hammer.

Thursday after the rapid training, I grabbed my 600 yard load to verify accuracy since the last time I shot the rifle at 600 was at the 2010 PHM. All the shooting the last two days was done at 200 yards on the ground, but to test the 600 yard load I went to the bench with a solid heavy metal front rest and leather rear bag, took my time, and broke good shots. I don't want to post the target, people will just call it BS, but I shot the smallest group I've shot on the bench with irons.

One of the enablers for me to shoot that small group is my ability to discern the repeatable bottom of the black. At my young age of 59, shooting is more of a seeing game these days. And fortunately I did not do my usual trigger jerking.

Did the fast one legged hammer help? Maybe, maybe not.... who knows

The journey continues. Life is too short and too boring to maintain status quo.


Art might want to chime in on the lens specs.

art7

According to stories I have heard, there once was someone supplying lenses for hood inserts that were exceptionally poor quality, and they have given the lens inserts in general a bad name. However that company is no longer in business, so the only lens inserts I am aware of are BJones and myself.

I have never seen a quality issue with BJones, so I recommend them highly. The only difference between BJones and my lenses is that because of our respective manufacturing techniques, BJones cannot make astigmatic inserts, while I can. So, for a straight spherical lens if you have no astigmatism, I recommend BJones, while if you need an astigmatism correction, I can supply that lens.

If you have an uncorrected astigmatism, you will get blurryness of the post and target which is more pronounced in one axis than the other. Since astigmatic errors in the eye are not perfectly horizontal or vertical, that blurryness will appear on some diagonal, and make the post look as if it is leaning. A cylinder corrected lens will fix this.

A question has been asked about how these lenses perform in the rotating 1/2MOA hoods, and the answer is that they work perfectly. You can spin a cylinder lens 180 degrees without changing its optical properties. Since the NM hood has two positions 180 degrees from each other, it works perfectly so once you determine the proper lens orientation for your eye and insert the lens in the hood, the hood can still be used to make the 1/2MOA adjustments, without comprimising the lens performance.

As to fabbing lenses out of reading glasses, Nez happens to need a very mild positive power correction to his eye anyhow, so between the correction he needed, plus the +0.5 additional power that you need for an M1, the total spherical power he needed happened to fall inside the range that you can typically buy in reading glasses, so the lenses he fabbed worked reasonably well, just without being able to get the cylinder correction. For most people who can see distance fine, trying this will not work, as even the weakest reading glasses are much too strong to shoot with, and will give you a fantastic front post, but your target will be completely gone.

Art

PS I did see Nez's target, and there were two holes. The first shot, and then all the other shots were just next to it, in one ragged hole. It was impressive.

Bamban

Art,

Thank you, that is good to know about the 180 degree orientation with the astigmatism corrected lens.

Over the years I've searched for lenses with correction to no avail. One local optometrist provided me some good lenses before but no correction and he quit doing them all together.

As I mentioned, shooting at my age becomes a seeing game. With all the expenses associated in shooting high power a good lens properly made is invaluable. Regardless of cost when prorated to the overall cost it is cheap. With the reasonable cost of your lenses, the distributed cost over time is not even in the noise level.

Nez

Dave P

"I went to the bench with a solid heavy metal front rest and leather rear bag, "


You must be getting old!!

But keep the pressure on those ar15 weenies.

Bamban

Dave,

Thank you. I am trying hard, old eyes, Arthritis, and Asthma make it a challenge.

Bamban

Got to test the astigmatism corrected lens at 600 today. Noticeable is the relatively fatigue free shooting eye while laying down at the 600 yard line for 22 shots. Got 5 more lenses on order.

bd111

Since this will be coming up pretty soon for me (just a couple more eye bionics to go), which is better advised - resolve the front sight-target issues with new protective shooting glasses with a grind that complements the IOL in my shooting eye or get a rear aperture lens? For context, I'll be shooting more bolt gun and smallbore, scoped and metallics, than M1 and M1A, though I'll still want to shoot the gas guns when opportunity allows.

art7

In general, I recommend rear aperture lenses to people (and I sell both lenses and glasses).

By putting the lens in the rear aperture, no matter what your position, you are looking through the optical center of the lens, and the lens is perpendicular to your line of sight. It is also far enough away that fog from the humidity on your face will not be an issue. Lastly, it is a lot less expensive. A lens for the rear aperture is $30-40, and the equipment to hold it can range from zero (if you have a NM hood) to under $50 for various solutions to attach it to the rear sight for a match rifle.

In shooting glasses, they typically move the optical center closer to the inside edge, but reality is that your different shooting positions will always look through different spots on the lens, so at least two of the three will not be looking through the optical center. And further - unless you are aiming while looking straight ahead (which you never are in a rifle), you will not be looking perpendicular through the lens. Cost is higher, and likelyhood of fogging is higher.

The only place I see insert lenses scoring less well is if they get something in there, like water if you are shooting in the rain, you have to partially disassemble the rear sight to get them out and clean them - not easy to do during a match.

The only time glasses really shine is in pistols, or rifles where there is no option to attach a lens: an M1 'as issued', or '03.

Art

bd111

Thank you for that explanation. It'll help.

Bamban

Art,

Part of my stool kit is a canned air to blow off any water or dust. Just be careful no to send a refrigerated blast to the lens.

Nez

art7

Yep, canned air is the ticket - I keep one in my shooting stool as well.

Of course, my other strategy is that I don't shoot in the rain.... my mother taught me better than to stay outside playing when it is raining out :-)

cparker

I usually shoot using contact lenses. I have always been told that contacts are not recommended for shooting but it is the only way I have known to be able to see reasonably well through my sights. How would the aperture lens compare to shooting through contacts?

art7

Sorry for the month late response:

Several things to consider - first is that your ideal shooting lens is a different power from your distance vision, by about +0.5 diopter. Unless you are talking about special shooting only contacts, your contacts would not be the ideal power for shooting.

Second is that as you move a corrective lens away from your eye, it's power and magnification change slightly. If you have realtively low power of correction, this can be ignored, but especially if you have a strong negative correction, you have to be careful - moving a strong negative lens from your eye (for a contact) to perhaps 2" away in a rifle hood will have the effect of making the image smaller ( a negative magnification), so for a strong negative, you are better off with contacts.

What you might consider doing is keeping the contacts, and just putting a light +0.5 lens in the hood. That will give you the necessary shooting correction, but when you lift your head from the rifle, you will still have your distance vision.

Final thought on contacts is if you have a strong cylinder correction. Contacts have a heavy spot to keep the lens oriented in your eye. When you form a cheek weld on a rifle, you tip your head by about 30 degrees, but the astigmatism correction will remain aligned with gravity, so it is misaligned for your eye. For mild cylinder corrections, this is a non-issue, but for strong corrections, this misalignment is more of an issue.

cparker

Very interesting Art, and thank you for the explanation!

Lennyo3034

So what would you recommend for people with contacts? Perhaps not wearing them the day of a match and switching to eyeglasses instead? or going LASIK? I've seriously considered getting LASIK if it'll help my shooting.