Optical confusion
Among woodshop safety practices, eye safety ranks at the top. But what about eye health?
Among woodshop safety practices, eye safety ranks at the top. But what about eye health?
All our senses are important, but I can’t image being able to work without the sense of sight and wouldn’t dream of working without eye protection. Not being able to see properly due to avoidable injury would affect every aspect of woodworking, from initial stock selection to final finishing.
Sure, if we need glasses, we get them – especially as we age. And when the prescription gets older it’s fairly easy to tell if it’s time for new ones. But other aspects of vision care aren’t nearly so obvious when changes happen. A perfect example is cataracts, something I’ve recently learned.
My eye doctor has been telling me for a few years that I was developing cataracts, and that they’d eventually need to be addressed. But as cataracts develop you can’t really tell the difference. It is so, so gradual, that everything seems normal. But, normal it is not.
I just had cataract surgery this past week on my left eye. I now have 20/20 vision in it again, everything is brighter and sharper, and most of all everything is the color it’s supposed to be. But if you look at the image above, you can see the incredible before-and-after difference.
On the left is what I see now with my “new” eye: bright, sharp, brilliant colors for the walnut, cherry, spalted maple, poplar and Baltic birch ply. On the right is what I’ve been seeing for the last couple of years: dull, dim, slightly out of focus and lots of yellow.
But I never had a clue. In the woodshop I was making wrong choices with wood selection and finishes, struggling to read fine measurements, experiencing frequent headaches, and getting tired sooner from eyestrain I didn’t know I had. When editing woodworking photography – a major component of my profession – I was doing color correction and white balance all wrong.
I’ll have the same procedure done on my right eye later this week. Afterward, I won’t need distance glasses anymore, my reading vision correction will be much less, and my woodshop will be bright and colorful again. I can’t wait. How about you – been to your eye doctor lately?
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
