Lenses

Tactical Rx specializes in crafting custom prescription shooting and safety lenses. We do one thing and we do it very well. We offer numerous polarized and Transition lens styles, do all of our tinting by hand right here in our shop, and will gladly discuss lens options to help you find the best fit for your needs.  While we strongly believe that lenses are largely a matter of personal preference, there are lenses that are best suited for certain conditions and light environments. To Order Call: 888-807-5165.

Some Points:

* Lenses costs begin at $209 for a clear or tinted, single-vision lens. There are many factors that determine the pricing of the lenses so unfortunately it’s impossible to give full, accurate pricing without knowing exactly what you’re looking for. We do our best to keep our prices fair, and the guideline we use is to imagine that if Tactical Rx employees were buying these on the open market, would they be able to afford them. In general, our Almost Lens prescription shooting bifocal starts at $249, our polarized and Transition lenses start at $259. These lens costs are in addition to the frame costs, which are listed on the frame page.

* If a frame is ANSI z87 compliant, we can issue a safety stamp illustrating that the prescription lenses are also ANSI compliant.

 

How We Make Them

Each prescription lens we make is crafted by hand, with attention and care, right here in our shop. The process uses various proprietary techniques and passes though multiple people and steps along its path to from the point of order to when it arrives at your door.

After we take the lens order from you, the next step is for us to get the lens materials from which we’ll grind your lenses. We source our lens materials from some of the best laboratories in the country, using different labs depending on the specific, unique requirements of each prescription, lens and frame combination. In order to determine these specs, Bret, the owner and Master Lenscrafter, sits down at his desk with paper and pen to apply the optical formulas and make the proper adjustments to ensure that curved, prescription lens of the sport frame will provide clear, distortion-free optics throughout the lens, including the periphery. This is the most important step in the process. (It is, naturally, double top-secret and this is only a mock-up of our Mt. Falcon lens pattern to suggest the measurements and diagrams Bret makes during this process.)

Next, the lens materials arrive in large-format blanks which we then custom grind into the final lens shapes you’ll ultimately see when the glasses are finished and in your hands. They arrive like this Polar Rose-Copper/Blue Flash Mirror sample :

 

And then we grind them. This is the loud part, and the part that sprays polycarbonate lens dust all over our shop and why people always think we came out of the snow. It’s also the part of the process that lets us craft fully-custom lenses with complete control over the lens styles, shapes, and optics. It is also the fun part and an aspect of our lenses of which we’re quite proud. We have a physical connection with our lenses and our product that other sunglass companies who craft prescription lenses simply don’t have. No one else in the world makes custom sport lenses this way. Here’s a little 17-second clip of what sometimes takes up to an hour:

Video: Grinding Video

While Bret or his son Ian, who is apprenticing here at Sports Optical, are the only ones who actually craft the lenses, the rest of us step up to clean, custom-tint and hand-polish the lenses once they’ve been cut. At this step we do a final inspection for quality, looking for any lens aberrations or any other issues that might otherwise make us hold onto an order and remake a lens. We do our best to ship a set of glasses only if it’s perfect.

Final Step: Something like this…