I recently found an adjustable Merit eye disc that had been hidden from me for years.
Using it doesn't seem to help at all any more.
Are my old eyes (67) now unable to gain from a smaller aperture?
Seems so.

Helps me at 76.

Ed

If you don't wear a ball cap, you might try that to shade your eyes. Sometimes if you cut down the amount of light getting to your eyes, you can see better. Might help, might not.

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protocalldesign.com

What are you using it on? I have a couple on some of my match .22 LR rifles. I get real close to the rear sight and never seem to have a problem.

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USMC 69-93 Combat Pistol Inst.

The good thing about the Merit, is that it increases depth of field making it easier to focus on the front sight. The disadvantage is that it restricts light and dims the image. As we get older, it's harder to focus closer so we get bifocals or progressive lenses. You may find that you now have to close down the aperture so much that there's little light left.

I have gone a different direction and use a flip-down 0.75 diopter lens. It allows me to focus well enough on the sights but doesn't totally blur the target. My Merit sits unused in its little plastic box.

The lack of light seems to be the problem.
Also the older I get the more fuzzy things seem to be growing inside the disc.

At a rifle match a couple of years ago I became aware that I was almost competely unable to see the 100 yard bull through the peep sight on my Garand. Did OK with pistol shooting though.

Until then I had not been back to optometry for 5 years, as cheap cheaters from the pharmacy were working fine for reading and and other close work. When I went back to my optomitrist he told me I had cataracts. I was astonished, as I had felt that my distance vision was good.

Cataracts ampify glare and reduce the amount of light getting to the inner eye. No wonder oncoming headlights at night had become such a problem. I thought I needed my windshield replaced because of a gazillion tiny chips from road grit. Nope. Cataracts. Welcome to senior citizen status.

Have you been checked for cataracts? They sneak up on you.

I received a PM asking for more detail on the flip-down diopter I mentioned above. I thought I'd post here in case other folks are interested.

Often, people use flip down lenses for close work or reading. They clip to your prescription glasses and act as bifocals. It's easy to find them with too much power (for shooting) at various sources like Target or Walmart. Most only go down to 1.25 diopters. With some searching, I found a 1.0 diopter lens. Even that turned out to be a bit much for shooting. I could focus perfectly on the front sight, but the target was too blurry.

My eye doctor is a Bullseye shooter. His advice was to pick a power that focuses perfectly about 2 feet in front of the front sight; not on the front sight. The intent is to get a reasonable compromise.

So I tried this in 0.75 diopters:

Clip on Flip Lens – ShootingSight

It works very well. I can focus on the front sight quite well enough (not perfectly) and the target is adequately clear. A good compromise. It makes sense mathematically, since a diopter is the reciprocal of focal length in meters. So a 0.75 diopter lense focuses at 1 1/3 meters; about 52 inches from my eye looking through the distance portion of my glasses.

Murdock;


Yes, had them removed.
Glad I went, Glaucoma had destroyed much of the vision in one eye, caught it before it got worse.
I urge all of you to get a checkup. Some eye diseases, like Glaucoma are painless and you have no idea you can become blind until it is too late.