Repairing Scratched Lenses

I’ve been pretty hard on my glasses and I don’t always wash them properly before I wipe them clean and I especially don’t always use the special cloth that you are supposed to use so as not to damage the lenses. I found my glasses were getting so scratched that I could barely see out of them any more.  It honestly got to the point where it was annoying me every time I put them on so badly that I was not even bothering to wear them anymore and running around blind.  Since I just bought these glasses not too long ago and the frames are still in perfect shape, I wasn’t about to go out and buy new ones just yet!  I had to find a solution to somehow remove these scratches.  As it turns out, there are several household materials that one can use to resolve this problem.  

Out of all the suggestions I read, everything from harsh chemicals that burn the top layer off of the lens to baking soda and furniture polish, I found that ordinary toothpaste (not gel) works wonders.  It’s a little slow but it works great!

I found my plastic lenses were especially difficult because they had a scratch resistant coating on them that was badly damaged and that was making the lens appear very foggy. It’s easiest if you can actually remove the lenses one at a time from the frames and work on them on a flat surface where you can actually pin the lens down with one hand and get in there and scrub on it with the other. You must use a soft dry cloth and plenty of tooth paste and constantly change positions on the cloth and add more tooth paste.  You can actually feel the scratched surface as you scrub them and you can tell when they are getting polished because you feel less resistance between the lens and the cloth.  I didn’t find that it made any difference if I scrubbed them back and forth or in a circular motion, they became perfectly transparent after enough scrubbing either way.  You have to be patient and scrub for several minutes though, especially if you have to remove a coating like I did.

I scrubbed until my fingers got sore and ended up getting the majority of the lens totally scratch free with only a little bit of the scratch resistant coating left around the edges where it was the most difficult to scrub.  I will wait a bit until my fingers aren’t so tender and I will get the rest it them polished later.  I must say that compared to how they were, it’s like I just bought new glasses, I can see clearly again and I didn’t have to spend any money at all!  I did use half a tube of toothpaste though but after I told Mom what I was doing she said that I was being very resourceful and that she didn’t mind chipping in the cost of the toothpaste.

I can tell that I’m going to be way more careful with my glasses after this though because I don’t want to have to do this again!