Does anyone have a suggestion as to what power lens is best for rod building. The choices seem to be 3, 5, & 10 diopter. I know that the builders eyes play into the equation (I wear 1.75 cheeters for reading) but thought there might be some general guidelines. I have been looking into the Luxo KFM magnifier as it offers an assortment of lens combinations.

Ken,
The more powerful the diopter, the closer you have to be to the object to focus. The ones I have are around 2.5 or 3 and it's a nice mix of mag and comfort. Tried higher and for general work it's too much for my tastes. Go try them on and see what suits you. The nice thing about the head wo9rk oned is you can look right under them for normal viewing.
Have fun with your early Christmas present!!

In my opinion, you should get the diopter that has a focal distance that you can work with. The higher the magnification, the shorter the focal distance.

This means for a high magnification lens, you'll either need to bring items closer to your eyes, or you'll have to bring your eyes closer to the objects in order to see them in focus. Obviously, bringing your eyes closer to the objects puts your head in a forward position and sets you up for possible neck problems.

My advice would be to set up at your workstation and measure the distance from your eye to the rod and play around with it to figure out what range of focal distances you can live with and still keep your neck in a relatively neutral posture. Then get a lens that is within that range.

Erik

Ken- I use the Optivisor binocular magnifier with the #5 lens plate which gives 2.5X at 8 inches and couldn't be happier with it. I can sit at a conmfortable position and my work is perfectly in focus.

I bought the #10 lens plate which gives 3.5X at 4 inches and found that I had to lean over, almost on top of my thread work, so I went back to the #5.

Pete Kornegay

I bought a 3 and works for me but my eyes are OK just my hearing gone after years of working HF talking to acft over the Indian, and Pacific oceans with my job.

Myles
Brisbane, Australia

OPS!!! acft means aircraft.

Like Pete, I use the Optivisor binocular visor with #5 lens and find it works well with my bi-focal glasses.

I also put on the Optiloupe accessory and have found it useful to help view "professional overwraps."

Stan

Please don't confuse diopters of lens power with magnification as they are totally different units of measure. Standard line of thought is "Use the least amount that you can to get the job done."

I also found the #3 Optivisor lens was best for me, with the #5 I had to move too close. Important note, the Optivisor can be used with or without wearing other glasses, so experiment. My best combination was #3 together with my computer glasses. Your eyes WILL be different.

So, is the diopter (power) any indicator of magnification at all?

At 27 I may be needing one of those just to keep my wraps straight. Good thing you can use them with or without your glasses.

Ted, generally speaking, the higher the diopter of lens ---> the higher the magnification but there are so many variables here that this is not always true and there is not a Direct correlation between dioptric power and # X magnification. A diopter of lens power simply tells you where the focal point of the lens is. Such as a +1.00 diopter lens tells you that the image of a distant object is focused exactly 1 meter behind the lens. A +2.00 diopter lens will focus that same distant object .5 meters behind the lens. Magnification or the perceived size of the image is controlled by such things as thickess of the lens, the optical density of the media, and the radius of curves of the lens and other criteria as well. That's why fish look different in size under the water than when you catch them and view them in air. Although I still haven't figured out why the fish that I catch are always minified when I take photos and show them to friends, they really were bigger than what the photo suggests, ha.

Minified fish!!!! LOL!!

That always happens to me too. Thanks for the explanation. I'll be getting one of those Optivisors pretty soon at this rate.