The Top 10 Eyewear Maintenance Questions We Get Asked
Living our day to day lives, sometimes eyewear maintenance gets put on the back burner of priorities. Being in the eyewear biz for over 20 years, we have learned some best practices to ensuring the long lasting life in your eyewear.
Here the top 10 frequently asked questions from our clients in Vancouver:
What is the best way to handle my eyewear?
Doing the ‘one-handed-dismount’ puts pressure on the bridge and over time creates stress in the material. If eyeglasses ever break anywhere... they usually break at the bridge – this is true for acetate plastic and metal frames. Putting pressure on the bridge area seems harmless but overtime it creates more stress in one localized area and then one day … SNAP! Same idea when you are cleaning them: avoid holding them in the middle bridge area while you are cleaning them.
THE SOLUTION:
Always take on and off your eyewear with both hands.
To clean your lenses, hold your eyewear by the temple arm, or on the top and bottom of the frame surrounding the lens and clean one lens at a time. Do your best to evenly displace the weight and pressure on either side and that will help ensure the lifetime of your glasses.
2. What is the best way to wash/clean my frame?
We have always been taught that hot water cleans everything the best. However heat speeds up the process of the materials oxidizing and drying out, which overtime will turn an acetate eyeglass frame white.
THE SOLUTION:
Use cold water and dish soap and use your fingers to rub the frame. Once a month is a good frequency for frame cleaning.
3. What is the best way to wash/clean my lenses?
It is important to always try to rinse your lenses before wiping them with a cloth. All the dust and oil collected on the lens can unintentionally be swirled around causing minor circular scratches. So give them a good rinse, and just like how hot water affects frames, it affects lenses too: overtime it can make the lens coatings crackle.
THE SOLUTION:
Use cold water and dish soap. You just want to avoid anything with ammonia like ‘Windex’ to clean your lenses. The harsh chemicals literally ‘eat’ the lens coatings.
To dry the lenses, we find its best to use a clean and dust free cotton towel. After wiping away most of the moisture then go in with a microfiber to get smudges and fingerprints.
4. Can I clean my lenses with a tissue?
No. You are also going to want to avoid using anything paper based to dry off or clean your lenses. The small paper fibres overtime scratch and wear down the protective coatings.
THE SOLUTION:
If you’re going for a quick clean of a pesky fingerprint, using a super clean microfiber cloth will do the trick. But the best way is to give your eyewear the full wash-down.
TIP: Old and dirty microfibre cloths can have dust and particles on them that will end up scratching your lenses, so make sure to wash your cloth often. Microfibres are machine washable, just don’t use fabric softener or put them in the dryer to prevent them going ‘pilly’.
5. …but what if the dirt doesn’t wash away?
If you are finding that there are still spots on your lenses or dirt inside the eye wire of your frames, they probably need a good deep clean.
THE SOLUTION:
Call us to book an appointment and leave your eyewear with us for the day. We will take everything apart and put the frames into our ultrasonic cleaner to get into those hard-to-clean places.
6. How do I take the scratches out of my lenses?
Unfortunately, there is no way to remove scratches out of a lens. Changing the surface area of a lens changes the refractive index and will actually alter the prescription.
THE SOLUTION:
Bring them in to our gastown location to see if your lenses are still covered under their warranty. The general rule is: if you run your fingernail over the scratch and don’t feel it, then that means that the scratch hasn’t gone past the protective coating and should be covered under the warranty.
7. How do I get my eyewear to stop leaving red marks on my nose?
We have a couple solutions for this issue:
Book an appointment with us for an adjustment. Without trying, sometimes our eyewear gets put out of alignment and even the slightest deviation can alter the way our glasses sit on our face.
The eyewear may need to be modified by adding on adjustable nosepads or to have the bridge custom filed to tailor fit your bridge.
8. Where is best to store my eyewear?
Eyewear has to have a very particular alignment to feel wearable and comfortable. Glasses not being protected in their case are at risk of being damaged or lost. Keeping glasses on top of your head or in a pocket unfortunately are opportunities for them to be bent out of shape. Try not to leave your glasses in your vehicle or where they could come into contact with extreme temperatures causing the lens coatings to crackle.
THE SOLUTION:
Our best advice is… If your eyeglasses are not on your face, keep them in your case.
9. My eyewear is broken. What can I do?
If it is a simple fix like replacing a nose-pad or screw, we can do those types of repairs here at MOSH Framemakers. However, if the repair requires more serious work we know of a couple great repair shops that do amazing work.
All Canadian Eyeglass Repair - Their motto is: “If we can’t fix it, no one can”.
Northwest Frame Repair – Mail in eyeglass repair specialists.
Eyeglass Repair Centre – Repairing eyewear since 1983.
10. What can I do with my old eyewear?
If you have any eyewear that you are no longer using, bring it in to us and we will donate it to the Third World Eyecare. (FYI: most optical stores offer this service).
