- Hello and welcome to the Laramy-K
OpticianWorks Training Center.
Where this week I'm giving you
something a little bit different.
(energetic, bouncy music)
Like I said, something kind of special this week.
Obviously I'm not in my usual place,
wearing my usual attire.
This is very off the cuff, I'm actually in,
I mean literally in the middle of,
working on some lenses for another
video series that we're doing.
One that kind of snowballed, but you are gonna love
when we finally get it pulled together.
I need to create a set of four identical lenses,
and I want those lenses to be a very unique shape,
with some very unique features.
So, rather than just do that behind the scenes
I'm gonna actually kind of let you watch what I'm doing,
Talk about it a little bit and I think
maybe you'll get a little bit better idea about
some of the things you can do by hand
and just how much some of these lenses can take.
This is a lens pattern blank,
and you don't see these very much anymore.
They are still available and as you're about to find out,
they still can come in quite useful.
Most frames obviously are wider
in the A than they are in the B.
So normally one would hold the pattern this way.
What I'm gonna do, because this is a very special test
that I'm gonna be working on.
I'm actually gonna turn it like this and my goal here
is to cut four lenses in the identical shape
and basically what I'm trying for
is kind of like a skull look, okay?
So, what I'm gonna do is,
this will be the top of my head,
this will be my chin.
So, I think the first thing I'm gonna do is
I've got my 35 mark and my 30,
I think I'm just gonna kind of cut across that
and cut across that.
So that gives me kind of my chin there.
And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
I'm gonna try to take this file here and do this.
I don't think I'm gonna be able to,
I'm probably going to have to take it into the workshop.
I'll move everything in there.
But let me see if I can just...
Well that's not too bad, I can kind of live with that.
I've got a little skull action going there.
Alright, and eventually I'm gonna want some eye holes.
So let's set up for that.
I'm gonna just grab my drill index here
Make it a decent sized hole,
let's go with quarter inch here.
Again I can use kind of,
go right in between my 25 and my 25.
Why don't we go ahead and mark that.
And just keep in mind, all I'm doing here is playing.
I'm trying to visualize what my final lens will look like.
Play, experiment, have a little fun.
Yeah those look pretty good.
Alright, I'm gonna drill a hole right there.
That looks pretty good.
Again, I would obviously probably do this in a vice
but my lighting and everything is good here, so.
(drill whirring)
Alright so hopefully you can kind of
see where I'm going with this.
We've got our chin down here,
we've got our two eyes
and somehow we're gonna have to make a little face
a little smile kind of thing down here.
I'm gonna have to wait on that I think
I'm gonna have to do that on the lens.
I don't wanna mess this up because I'm gonna need this
to hold it in the edger.
So that's kind of about as far as
we can go with this at the moment.
What I'm gonna do, I'll show you in just a second,
I'm gonna touch it off on the hand stone
so that this is nice and smooth when it hits the edger.
I simply know from personal experience and just time,
I've made a lot of patterns in my life,
that the smoother the edge of the pattern is,
the better results you're gonna have.
Crucial, if you have a hand stone
and you're working with a pattern by all means do this.
Keep feeling the edge with your finger
even the slightest little bump
will show up in your final product.
When all was said and done, after some trial and error,
some experimentation, trying the pattern in the edger,
this is what I actually ended up with.
And this was I think maybe four,
maybe five attempts working through this pattern.
Bringing it back out into the shop.
Doing some more hand stone work,
doing some more grinding, filing,
and at last after much trial and error
it was finally ready for the edger.
Now the reason I'm using a pattern
rather than trying to do this with individual lenses,
is because I want consistency.
I want to be able to duplicate the shape
over and over again in case, you know,
I ever wanted to use it again.
Obviously I could keep this pattern around
if I had an old edger.
Of course a nice, beautiful new one
lets me save this shape and there it is.
So I could actually recall it up again anytime I wanted to.
I'm far from a great artist at this stuff
but the thing I want you to take away from this,
is just don't be scared.
A polycarbonate lens, a trivex lens,
single vision, no bells, no whistles.
You're talking about a couple of dollars.
Don't be scared to experiment.
There is nothing that I've used here today
nothing that you're gonna see that was special.
I'm using basic hand tools,
a crummy old file out of my toolbox drawer,
a regular dremel tool with an ordinary drill bit.
Guys there's nothing special, this was not a, you know,
a $300 add-on special Drydex drill bit or something.
It's just something that I pulled out of the workbench.
Lens blank, did it all by hand,
I cut, I sanded, I smoothed,
I went on the wheel, I used my own grinding stone.
I started with it, it was a little bit too large,
put it into the edger, it didn't work, I had to take it out.
For every success, you're gonna have ten failures
when you're doing this stuff.
So you have to practice.
(tape rewinding)
For every success, you're gonna have ten failures
when you're doing this stuff.
So you have to practice.
(tape rewinding)
So you have to practice.
In fact, if you noticed my original holes that I drilled
once I had to make this smaller,
so that it worked in the edger,
they don't line up anymore.
So what did I have to do?
I had to create another template.
So that's what I'm gonna do now.
I'm gonna take these lenses, put them over my template,
and drill a bunch of holes in them.
(drill whirring)
Obviously these are not going to be
in the next issue of Lens Fancy Magazine.
But they certainly will do the job for what I need.
What I really want you to take away from this is,
again, just don't be scared.
Try this stuff, do it, pick up some lenses,
practice, play around with it, and with time, with practice,
you can actually make a truly handcrafted pair of glasses.
As always, thanks for watching,
and I will see you again next week.