Wear Eye Protection Over Your Prescription Glasses

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Prescription eye glasses are not enough when working with power tools. Unfortunately, the temptation is to trust our glasses "just this once" far too often when making that last cut or finishing a project.

People often make the mistake of visualizing the area needing protection as the diameter of the visible eyeball and lids. This is incorrect. The area actually requiring coverage is the entire eye socket itself. Take your finger and stroke it up over your cheekbone,looking for the rim of the eye socket. Now, stroke around its rim as you would around the edge of a cereal bowl.

Pretty big, isn't it?

If a piece of debris impacts your face high on the cheekbone or to the side of the eye there is a good chance it will deflect along the bone right into your eye socket. The bridge of the nose as well as the ridge of bone under your eyebrow can also deflect wayward debris into the eye. We've seen ricochets shown in the movies, so the concept shouldn't be too hard to grasp.

Proper safety glasses provide coverage around the eye, not just from straight ahead.

Prescription eye glasses are not enough when working with power tools. Yet it is my experience people who wear prescription eye glasses will less often seek out proper safety glasses and eye protection when working in the shop. The tendency is to believe "Ah, this isn't so bad, my glasses are enough".

There are three styles of safety glasses to be found: Safety glasses with slightly over sized lenses and traditional looking ear-hooks, safety goggles that provide a full seal around the eyes with an elastic band for pulling around the back of the head, and clear face shields that flip down from a "hat" shielding your whole face to a bit below your chin.

 

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