Polishing blemishes out of spectacle lenses

Toothpaste? That often contains a very fine abrasive.

And all that work will no doubt have altered the prescription of the lens.

I doubt whether polishing off a few thousandths of an inch from the surface of the lens which is probably a couple of millimetres thick will have altered the focal length by a detectable amount. It may have taken off the anti-glare coating, though...

You will have already stripped any anti-reflection coating- Throw them away and buy some new ones.

They don't have an anti-glare coating!

As they have been attacked witha bit of wet 'n dry and the scratches from that polished out the amount removed may well be more than a few thou. It's the refractive index of the material and shape of the front and back surfaces along with the thickness that give a lens it properties.

OP doesn't say if these are basic single vision with no other corrections applied and both eyes more or less the same, made with "normal" refractive index plastic or something more complicated. I wouldn't like to say that few thou wouldn't make a difference with high refractive index lens, it makes a heck of difference to the required thickness of the lens for the same correction.

No may about it, assuming they had a coating in the first place, most do these days though.

One thing to watch, assuming it is a plastic lens, is if you use a Dremel at too high speed or load the temperature rise can distort the lens. You will only be able to tell when you try looking through it.

DAMHIK.

I've had good results with Polywatch

Works well on watch "glass" which I'd guess is similar to plastic specacle lenses.

You've (rather admirably) used inconsistent units of measure - could we have this expressed in linguini instead?

Bin them. Optically you've probably ruined them already even if you polish the scratches out.

Tim

I always found that T-Cut (or some similar auto paint polisher) worked well on scratched DVDs borrowed from a library.

Single vision, or....?

I doubt you'll get satisfactory results, but fair play if you do!

Rouge is the classical stuff for mirrors. Not that I've ever polished one.

I have polished plastics using your methods, also rouge is better than Brasso or T-cut, but the surface ends up at a different curvature. This will cause anything you see through that bit of the lens as distorted instead of just obscured by the scratches.

Thanks. That looks worth a try.

Meanwhile, I followed a suggestion here to use toothpaste. That got me back to the frosted glass effect, but smoother than before. Further applications of Brasso has now more or less restored the shine, and it's very difficult to see the blemish - it certainly doesn't jump out at me like it did before. When I look at my computer screen through the blemished bit of the lens, text is not quite so sharp as when looking through other parts of the lens - but it's still readable.

To answer a few other questions . . . It's a single vision lens - more or less spherical, about 3.5 diopters with a tiny bit of astigmatism correction. The lenses are NOT coated - Specsavers wanted a lot extra for an anti-glare coating, and I didn't see the point.

Poundland or Aldi for some new ones!

Plastic or glass? Brian

The"proper"stuff to use is"jeweller's rouge.

Given they are mostly plastic, then perspex polish is an idea. you used to be able to get it in tubes. Brian