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Accessories The EyePal Peep Sight Master Kit: Part 1

The EyePal Peep Sight Master Kit: Part 1

by Tom Gaylord, a.k.a. B.B. Pelletier

EyePal Master Kit EyePal Peep Sight Master Kit has eye patches

I said I wasn’t going to report on the EyePal Peep Sight Master Kit by itself, but something blog reader Fred said in a comment the other day prompted this. I plan to continue to use both patches and comment on them in other reports, but today I want to focus on the kit. I don’t know if there will be a Part 2 to this report; but just in case, I marked this as Part 1.

Fred’s comment was that he needed his vision to see when he walks. So do I. Why didn’t the EyePal rifle patch bother me? The answer is what I want to talk about today — when you position the patch on your glasses.

You position the EyePal patches differently on your glasses for rifles and pistols. That’s because you look through different parts of your glasses when shooting rifles, as opposed to pistols, and that’s what I want you to see today.

Pistol shooters tend to look more toward the center of their lenses, though I suppose it varies from person to person. Also, how the glasses fit your face will determine where you look through them. But a pistol shooter is looking straight ahead more than a rifle shooter.

EyePal Peep Sight Master Kit pistol patch
The pistol patch on my prescription glasses as used for an actual test. This photo will be better understood when compared to the next one.

When the pistol patch was installed, I had the same problem Fred reported — namely not being able to see well when I walked with my glasses on. The patch was right in the center of my optimum vision and obscured things I needed to see to navigate.

The rifle patch
In contrast, the rifle patch has a smaller peep hole and is color-coded with silver letters so you don’t mistake it with the pistol patch. I’ll talk more about its performance in a moment. For now, I want to concentrate on the placement of both patches and what they do to your vision.

The rifle shooter puts his head to the side of the stock. As a result, he tends to look through the glass lens closer to the edge that’s next to the nose bridge. A right-handed shooter puts the patch close to the left of his lens, and a left-hander does the opposite in the other lens. Also, the patch tends to be placed higher on the lens than when it’s used for pistol shooting, although it doesn’t look like it in these pictures.

EyePal Master Kit

Here you see the rifle patch as it was installed on my glasses for an actual test. Notice that it’s closer to the nose bridge and a little higher on the lens than the pistol patch.

With the rifle patch installed, I had no difficulty seeing to walk. The patch is high enough that I can look under it and get around with no problem. But each person is different, and Fred may put his patch at a different place on his glasses than I do. Or he may wear his glasses on his head differently than I do. There are many reasons the patches will go in different places, but the relationship between the rifle and pistol patch locations holds for each shooter.

There can be variables, such as the type of rifle you shoot. A 10-meter target rifle will be held more upright, and the patch will be a little lower, where a benchrest rifle gets the shooter down lower on the stock with the head leaned forward. The patch has to be higher so you can see through the peephole.

Close one eye — the big question
Most shooters close their non-sighting eye to make better sense of the sight picture when using a peep sight. Indeed, the EyePal literature shows the shooter doing this. But target shooters know this is not the way to do it! Closing the off-eye causes the peep hole to grow smaller and distort. The more you squint, the smaller and more distorted it becomes. That will ruin a fine sight picture.

I tried it both ways — the non-sighting eye held open and also with it closed. I found that the EyePal is more tolerant of closing the eye than a standard peep sight. If you continue to squint, there’s a point at which the hole will distort and close up. For the best operation, I found I could close my off-eye and find the sight picture, then open it again and hold the sight picture fine.

I’ll go into more detail when I report the guns I used the EyePal with, but I don’t want to spoil the surprises at this time. For now, let’s just say that the EyePal works for me as intended.

author avatar
Tom Gaylord (B.B. Pelletier)
Tom Gaylord, also known as B.B. Pelletier, provides expert insights to airgunners all over the world on behalf of Pyramyd AIR. He has earned the title The Godfather of Airguns™ for his contributions to the industry, spending many years with AirForce Airguns and starting magazines dedicated to the sport such as Airgun Illustrated.

55 thoughts on “The EyePal Peep Sight Master Kit: Part 1”

  1. BB,

    Does the glue come off your glasses easily when you remove the patch? Or does the patch leave a residue? I’m one of those who is constantly cleaning my glasses because I can’t see much without them and I can’t stand looking through smudges…

    /Dave

    • I’ll leave it to B.B., but I think it’s one of those vinyl things that just clings with static electricity. No need for adhesives. If it doesn’t stick anymore, just give it a good washing and it’s good to go again.

        • Edith, any type of vinyl stick-on will eventually collect dirt or oils by it’s very nature. There used to be a toy years and years ago that had various cut out figures (I think it was some type of figure that little girls could dress up by applying vinyl appliques to it). Plus there are holiday decorations that would stick to glass windows (santa claus figures, snowflakes, Christmas trees). They would eventually lose their static cling ability, and you would just wash them off with a mild soap, dry well, and they were as good as new. When I go to my car dealer for service, he puts a little vinyl sticker in the upper corner of my windshield where he writes the milage and date of my next scheduled oil change. When I clean my windshield, I’ll take it off, clean it and the windshield, dry well and stick it back up where it was.

          I was just assuming that these eyepals were made of similar material.

    • /Dave,

      There is no glue. I’m not 100 percent sure why the rubber patch adheres to the plastic lens, but when you apply it, all the air goes out of the bond. It just sticks and can be fussy to remove, but there is zero residue. In fact, if anything, it leaves the lens cleaner than before.

      B.B.

    • /Dave,

      It stays on your glasses with static electricity. No glue.

      Your glasses must be clean for the patch to adhere properly.

      If the patch fails to adhere, rub it on some polyester or nylon fabric to generate some static electricity. Place on lens.

      Edith

  2. I remember the first time I went to the doctor to get glasses back in my 20s. The doctor held up a black plastic paddle with a lot of tiny holes in front of my eye. I was amazed that looking through that black paddle with the little holes in it at how well I could see. I suspect that looking through the EyePal Peep Sight that it would work as well on a shooting glasses as on my prescription glasses since you are only looking through one tiny spot. If that was the case I might just get a couple pairs of shooting glasses and leave the stickers in place on them.

    David Enoch

  3. Jim H…

    If you are out here today, I did not give you any answer about pellet skirts yesterday..

    Skirts are almost always larger than the pellet heads. The head should not fit loosely in the bore. It should fit snug because of being slightly larger than the bore. It should not require brute force to fit.
    If the head were smaller than the bore, it would flop around in the bore and not exit the muzzle with it’s axis in line with the bore. A choked barrel attempts to correct this by squeezing the pellet into line before it exits. I think it is better to have the pellet slam into the choke if it is already inline with the bore.

    The skirts squeeze down when they are forced into the bore.
    They are usually wider than the groove diamiter in the first place. When the rifling squeezes them down, the excess size in the groove area gets pulled inward and does not seal up the bore all the way as you would expect. The air pressure behind the pellet when fired also will not force the skirt all the way into the grooves and seal things up (common belief) unless you are shooting one of the super magnum springers, or get a detonation with a springer. A PCP won’t do it as far as I can tell . Just not enough pressure.

    All this stuff is best considered as “most of the time” . Once in a while things will turn out different for one reason or another.

    twotalon

    • Thanks, twotalon, that is very informative stuff. I guess that is why I’ve seen some of the more popular pellets available in a variety of diameters and it makes a lot more sense to me now. Last night when I got back on the computer I started digging around on the Pryamyd website and found a list of articles that I hadn’t seen before. One of them was about pellet shape and pros/cons of each. It was originally published back in 1997. They did not credit the author, but it would surprise me if it weren’t done by our old buddy, B.B.
      BTW, do very many airguns today come with choked barrels or is this a rarity?
      Regards, Jim H.

      • Jim..

        There are quite a few with choked barrels, but these will be the “better” ones. Of course more expensive. The AF rifles have choked Lothar Walthers on them.

        There is another goody…
        Some guns are choked to a degree by the manufacturing process as a side effect.
        If the muzzle end has been squeezed for the purpose of making ridges for holding the front sight in place, then there will be a choke of sorts.
        Also if the barrel is installed with the tightest part of the bore at the muzzle, then it is effectively choked.

        You do not want the muzzle end to be looser than any of the tighter spots in the barrel.

        twotalon

        • Can you tell when cleaning the barrel which end is tighter? And if the answer is yes, how do you do anything about it if the muzzle end is looser? I was under the impression that the barrel was permanently installed in the rifle like on a firearm. Can you switch them around? I would hope this would be part of the quality control at the mftr end.

          • If you can run a patch or pellet from breech to muzzle with a cleaning rod, you can feel it getting tighter at the end and the opposite from muzzle to breech. Probably best just to order a new barrel if needed.

          • Jim
            aj is right. With some barrels you might not notice if it is tighter at the muzzle when cleaning, but if you push a pellet from the breech end you will feel it get tightest at the muzzle (you hope). A deliberately choked barrel will really feel tighten up in the last couple inches of the barrel.
            You can’t just swap them end to end. You get a crap barrel, you change it out.
            Some barrels (unchoked) will feel about the same all the way through. (not a real problem) Some can be as shabby as a back alley in Tiffin Ohio. (tire and shock busters) Don’t expect these to shoot very good with anything.

            twotalon

      • From Past Blogs and Experiments:

        Airgun Accuracy: Longer Barrel Length will show most improvement in accuracy up to a 10” barrel – choked is generally better, but a good quality non-choked barrel can be good also.

        Power: Springer & single pump improves in the first 10”.
        CO2 and PCP – longer the better upto 16”.
        Firearms = Improves up to 16”.

        General Barrel Quality Ranking by country where they are manufactured (list is over 3 yrs old):

        1. Germany
        2. Czech Republic/Russia/Hungary/England
        3. Korea
        4. U.S. (Only applies to Benjamin Sheridan Crosman and Daisy pneumatic and CO2 guns.)
        5. Spain
        6. Argentina
        7. China
        8. Turkey
        9. Mexico

        When it comes down to it…just ask BB or PA rep for the most accurate airguns for the money. Reading a lot helps. Many say, buy the best airgun you can comfortably afford and if you want to improve the one you have, there are many skilled people on line who can help you.

        My most accurate airgun is a Daisy Avanti 853 with a choked LW barrel, but my 953 (less expensive) with a regular barrel comes in second and the groups ctc at 10M avg only 1 mm (.039″) greater. Not much difference, unless you were a match shooter.

        • ajvenom,

          I believe that this ranking seems to somewhat correlate with the popularity of the use of airguns. A buddy of mine who has traveled to Germany a few times for world class tournaments says that air-gun shooting is almost as popular as bowling in other areas. He also says that the gun laws are super strict. They take these laws very seriously to the point of actually enforcing them, even for visitors.

          Plus, if you consider Germany’s history in engineering and manufacturing, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Even during WW II, money was pouring into Germany by outsiders.

          Victor

  4. The vinyl is the same as the oil change due-date sticker dealers apply to the upper left hand corner of your windshield. I peeled mine off, cut it into four parts, heated a straighten paper clip over the oven flame until warm, and poked a hole in the vinyl. Works for me, and it’s a free test of the concept for you.

      • Not my idea… I read how someone used black electricians tape to do the same thing. So I tried that and gently tacked the tape to my glasses until I found the correct place, and then smoothed it down. Did it to my dedicated to pistol shooting glasses so have no need to move the tape. The hotter and longer you hold clip or needle to tape/vinyl, the larger hole gets. Perimeter of holes melted into plastic are smooth, so image seen is crisper than if same is done with thick paper (like business card). If want to move the disc around, vinyl is easier and cleaner.

        Love your blog… read back two years already.

  5. Ah yes, the eye patch. Wulfraed, thank you for your explanation about making the light rays parallel. I wonder now about redundancy and counterproductivity. What if you have one of those pinhole match grade peep sights like the one for my Anschutz (that costs more than for most airguns all by itself)? That pinhole seems to reduce the light (and make it parallel) as far as can be done. Will the eye patch simply do nothing? Or by reducing light further could it actually cause problems? In my moderately lighted shooting range, I can’t even attempt the Anschutz and even the M1 Garand battle sight gets fuzzy and barely useable over my 2 foot distance for dry-firing. At what point does the light reduction that goes with making the rays parallel work against you?

    The business about closing the off-eye is also kind of puzzling. In high school, I was told by the coach (sporting his National Team shooting jacket) that one should affix a black piece of cardboard on the sights so as to block the off-eye. That way you wouldn’t be distracted but you would still get light to that eye. Now the theory seems to be to keep the off-eye open. However, it seems that the shooting technique of the Russian snipers in WWII involved shutting the off-eye. You can see Lyudmila Pavlichenko doing this on any number of occasions. I think she knew how to shoot! I also find myself closing the off-eye automatically and have to remind myself not to do it. So, maybe this something the body wants to do?

    Speaking of high school shooting, the coach had the idea that all my problems would be solved with shooting glasses where the correction was placed above the middle–rather than closer to the bridge side. He was a gadget freak, and I knew without trying that that method would not work. But it does raise questions about how the head is positioned on the stock. Is there anything to head canting as opposed to rifle canting?….

    Edith, thank you for your nice comments. 🙂 And let me take the opportunity to thank you and all the bloggers for your vast tolerance of my various excursions. I’m sure I would have been run out of any shooting forum or any other kind of forum a long time ago. One forum of pilots seemed kind of offended when I mentioned the case about some pilots who were discovered naked in the cockpit during flight which I thought was extremely funny, but maybe they thought I was insulting them or their professional. I have been called a wealth of useless information. But I do try to bring different ideas back to shooting someway, somehow… And speaking of the blog, I’ve found on trying to fact-check some of my claims on Google that I myself am the leading source of information which could say things about the blog’s popularity or my credibility… 🙂

    Anyway, I’m glad the Gilbert and Sullivan struck a chord. Vince, you get a lot of credit for finding that brilliant improvisation of The Lord High Executioner. If you made that up, then you have very considerable talents besides repairing guns. I’m also a great fan of Benny Hill. When I recommended him in graduate school, I was shot down by a feminist who considered him sexist–something which I should have anticipated. But she did not like the classic Kirk either from the original Star Trek and that tells you everything you need to know about her. Benny Hill played to the lowest denominator which I have no problem with and which he could still bring off such as his expression at leaping aboard a bicycle that was missing its seat. But he could get subtler as when he was doing a dramatization of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He’s shown watching a National Geographic tv show narrating the eating habits of subsistence people while smugly eating a yogurt. Later he has this dialogue.

    Benny: Men like me don’t grow on trees you know.
    Wife (sticking her head out the kitchen door): They swing from them!

    And here’s some more Gilbert and Sullivan:

    Our warriors in serried ranks assembled
    Never quail (or they conceal it if they do!)

    I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if other nations quail at the sight
    Of the troops (the troops!) of Titipoo!

    You can substitute North Korea in there.

    Matt61

    • Matt everything we know is useless… until we need it.
      I think I’m talking for most here and I love your posts. Thanks to you we always learn some new obscur facts that we may someday need.
      Your “useless” facts are like the quotes Rikib use to post for us (I miss him, wonder where he is, hope he’s doing good).

      BB more good taught for Mac coming from my part of Canada

      J-F

    • Matt61,

      We were instructed to attach a slightly translucent blinder to the rear sight. Black was not recommended because both eyes need to receive light. Where black was recommended was for side blinders, that could be attached to your shooting glasses.

      Without some kind of blinder, I find it difficult to shoot with just one eye open. That’s why I attach a blinder to my glasses. Even tracing paper works. I also use the somewhat opaque, slightly translucent plastic dividers that come with three-ring binders. But of course, you can also order such blinders.

      Victor

    • Matt,

      Head canting is mostly taken care of by the eyes rotational muscles. Totally automatic and something you can observe in action by tilting your head to the side in front of a mirror.

      /Dave

    • I’d expect trying to use an on-glasses aperture in conjunction with a good close peep would be an exercise in futility — just trying to align two apertures, your eye, and a front sight would be tedious.

      With just a receiver peep close to the eye, being able to see through the peep means you have the alignment. On a target peep, being off-center with the eye pretty much means you’ll never see the front sight. And a target receiver peep is small enough to do the “depth of field” thing for the front sight..

      Open sights, being a foot or more in front of the eye, are more appropriate for the on-glasses device — to provide the depth-of-field, not as an alignment aid. With open sights you have three line segments that need to be straight:
      target-front, front-rear, rear-eye… target receiver peeps (or those “long-range” tang peeps) basically make the rear sight and the eye one unit, so one just has target-front, and front-rear/eye

      Though I may also prepare to order these disks… I do have a Merit, but haven’t spent the time to figure out where to place it (they suggest having an assistant with a wipe-off marker — you position the firearm in sighting position and once you are aligned the assistant “dots” the glasses dead center of the pupil… then you attach the Merit so the aperture is over the dot, finally clean off the marker dot). These with the simpler sticky mode may be positionable one-handed.

  6. B.B., all the best to you, Edith and Mac. I recently went through the loss of a good friend and great shooting buddy. Luckily, I was blessed to spend some quality time with him shortly before he passed unexpectedly. Treasure every moment, we never know what the future holds. That said, every prayer we can muster is headed your way for a complete recovery.
    Regards, Jim H.

  7. I am right handed but left eye dominant. If I don’t keep both eyes open while aiming it can really play havoc with my POI. Mostly the advice I get is: “Learn to shoot left handed”, but all my firearms are right handed and shooting lefty is sometimes ok and sometimes not. Plus it’s difficult to relearn everything from the left side. I’m curious now whether this eye patch would be helpful or detrimental. Any ideas?

    • Jim H.,

      Each shooter is different, but what you describe isn’t easy for most people.The best way to do it is to mask off the other eye, so the sighting eye is the only one that can see anything. Shooting glasses are made that way. Look here.

      /blog/2008/6/10-meter-pistol-shooting-part-4/

      B.B.

    • Shoot right handed and patch (cover) your left eye. After a time, your brain will switch dominance. This is the current suggested technique for cross dominant shooters. It takes time but it works.

      Mike

      • And this is probably why I’ve never gotten into shotguns…

        Skeet/upland game birds both tend to use the “snap stock to shoulder, point, shoot”… My crazy brain goes “something is approaching my right eye [the shotgun receiver coming up]” and defensively shifts me to left eye dominant — goodbye to “pointing” the shotgun when I’m now viewing across the side of the barrel. If I take the effort to return to right eye dominance I’ve lost the game.

        Rifles, OTOH, are deliberate aimed, which means I don’t have the cross-dominance effect.

  8. Jim,a suggestion about eye dominance if you don’t mind.
    I know a few shooters,both sisters and a close friend,who are either
    ambidextrous or right handed but left eye dominant.
    Some say you should either learn to shoot left handed(more expensive esp. with rifles)
    or retrain your right eye.
    What we found that worked easy and very well for them was to put a non see thru
    cover over the left lens of their shooting glasses.
    This way you can leave both eyes open with no strain and it makes aiming with your
    right eye seem natural.After spending time target shooting this way it was
    possible for the two that are hunters to be comfortable with hunting this way from a stand.
    Stalking this way isn’t recommended lol but you can get within range before you put
    on your shooting glasses.
    Some say this won’t work but if the vision in your right eye is strong enough it can’t hurt to try.
    HTH

  9. I’m headed to the range tomorrow with my .223 so I will spend this evening rigging up something that will cover my left eye and see how that works out. I may have to invest in a pair of those shooting glasses. Never have seen them before. Thank you.

    • Jim H.,

      Surely you use shooting glasses at the range. Our ranges here won’t let you shoot without them.

      You don’t need to “invest” in a separate pair of shooting glasses to accomplish what has been suggested as a trial experiment for being right handed a left eye dominant.

      Take your regular shooting glasses and obscure the left lense of those glasses. My suggestion would be a piece of toilet paper. Still allows light into your left eye (keep your left eye open. I’m not a fan of blinding either eye from light while shooting) but doesn’t allow your left eye to try to dominate.

      As someone said earlier in a comment the most common way to overcome right hand but left eye dominance is to train your right eye. This is one way to try to accomplish that.

      They’re are rare exceptions that retraining doesn’t work. Edith is one of those rarities.

      kevin

  10. I admit to not reading every post to this thread and what I am about to relate may or may not be relevant to this discussion. I returned to handgun shooting about two years ago after 16 years of almost nothing but competitive trapshooting to find that I no longer could bring my guns’ sights into focus. I went to a drug store, trying different reading glasses until the thumb on my outstretched hand was in clear focus. I used them for shooting but the black bull of a 25-yard pistol target looked like a blurry football standing on end and my groups were less than what I would have liked.

    I mentioned this in one of my columns and that generated a response from Dr. Harold Morgan of Morgan Optical (912 W. State Street, Olean, NY 14760; 716-373-0766). Dr. Morgan said he thought he could make lenses for me through which I would be able to see both my sights and the target with clarity. I provided him with my lens prescriptions and the distances at which I usually shot my handguns but really did not believe he could accomplish that.

    Long story short, much to my disbelief, he did! My guns’ sights are crystal-clear and the target is about 90% clear. Perhaps he could help with this concern as well.

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