Eye injuries from flintlock?

I’ve volunteered as an RSO at a public range run by an association. The range requires glasses and hearing protection. Two reasons, to protect the shooters, and for liability reasons. It’s that simple. If you can’t abide by the rules you will be asked to leave.

In this day and age an injury or lawsuit could easily end this place being available to many who have limited options to shoot in our area. Especially with long guns and muzzle loaders.

Louisk said:

I assured her that I'd be protected by safety glasses and I hadn't really heard much about shooters getting injuries from the pan flash.
Any thoughts/experiences with this?

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I was at a local shoot with a friend. He was not wearing safety glasses.

On his third shot of the day, the pan flash shot a small jagged fragment of flint into his right cornea.

I could see the flint particle with my bare eye, but we couldn't get it out with an eye wash or Q-tip.

We drove an hour to the nearest ER. The eye doctor on call couldn't get the piece of flint out of his cornea with a needle. The doctor said it was jagged and hook shaped, and it was deeply embedded. He referred us to the cornea specialist at the university hospital.

We drove three hours to the university hospital ER, and waited 4 hours for the on-call cornea specialist. The first cornea specialist couldn't remove the flint without surgery under sedation. He called a back-up cornea specialist, who also couldn't remove the flint. The third eye doctor also couldn't remove the flint.

They were preparing him to go to the operating room when the flint dislodged and fell out.

So..... Would you rather shoot all day with safety glasses, or spend 14 hours driving between emergency rooms and waiting for doctors?

Harry Marinakis said:

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So..... Would you rather shoot all day with safety glasses, or spend 14 hours driving between emergency rooms and waiting for doctors?

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I SHOOT wearing prescription safety glasses, I just don't have them on all the time I'm at the range.

wiscoaster said:

I SHOOT wearing prescription safety glasses, I just don't have them on all the time I'm at the range.

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At Friendship in June, I had set down my safety glasses and was standing behind the shooting bench at the offhand range. I got blasted in the eye by someone's pan flash.

Harry Marinakis said:

At Friendship in June, I had set down my safety glasses and was standing behind the shooting bench at the offhand range. I got blasted in the eye by someone's pan flash.

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I think that's as good of a case for situational awareness as it is for strict 100% wearing of safety glasses.

If a person isn't paying attention to WHEN they should be worn then maybe it's good they wear them the whole time they're at the range.

When you get to a point in your life when prescription glasses are sometimes needed for your vision and sometimes not and you find yourself switching out between various glasses with different prescriptions and no glasses, then you'll understand where I'm coming from.

I've got three different pairs of glasses that go with me to the range: standard plano safety glasses, prescription safety-rated shooting glasses, and prescription near-vision glasses (for adjusting sights and scopes and dealing with malfunctions and such). When I'm not shooting and I'm not near anyone else shooting and when I don't need the near-vision clear focus, I prefer to wear nothing.

Age-related presbyopia will happen to everybody. Dealing with it is a PIA.

wiscoaster said:

I think that's as good of a case for situational awareness as it is for strict 100% wearing of safety glasses.

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Yes, I am much more tuned to avoid standing to the right of anyone on the line.

The club I belong to couldn’t care if both eyes got blown out as long as you pay your dues, OH wait you can’t shoot steel because of there insurance liability go figure…

wiscoaster said:

I think that's as good of a case for situational awareness as it is for strict 100% wearing of safety glasses.

If a person isn't paying attention to WHEN they should be worn then maybe it's good they wear them the whole time they're at the range.

When you get to a point in your life when prescription glasses are sometimes needed for your vision and sometimes not and you find yourself switching out between various glasses with different prescriptions and no glasses, then you'll understand where I'm coming from.

I've got three different pairs of glasses that go with me to the range: standard plano safety glasses, prescription safety-rated shooting glasses, and prescription near-vision glasses (for adjusting sights and scopes and dealing with malfunctions and such). When I'm not shooting and I'm not near anyone else shooting and when I don't need the near-vision clear focus, I prefer to wear nothing.

Age-related presbyopia will happen to everybody. Dealing with it is a PIA.

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I'm getting there. I need reading glasses and am required to fly with corrective lenses and am getting so I feel better using them for driving too, although I can still pass the dmv eye test without them.

Using non prescription safety glasses for shooting now but have a hard time focusing on the rear sight and target is fuzzier than it used to be. I can really use reading glasses for close in tasks, like capping my percussion rifle and priming the pan on the flintlock. I have a pair of safety glasses with a bifocal reading glass lens that I'm planning to try next shooting session. I don't know if the bifocal lens is high enough it's going to mess up my view of the target, however.

Louisk said:

I'm getting there. I need reading glasses and am required to fly with corrective lenses and am getting so I feel better using them for driving too, although I can still pass the dmv eye test without them.

Using non prescription safety glasses for shooting now but have a hard time focusing on the rear sight and target is fuzzier than it used to be. I can really use reading glasses for close in tasks, like capping my percussion rifle and priming the pan on the flintlock. I have a pair of safety glasses with a bifocal reading glass lens that I'm planning to try next shooting session. I don't know if the bifocal lens is high enough it's going to mess up my view of the target, however.

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I shoot with trifocal safety glasses and do not have a problem seeing my sight with them. I wear them all day every day as matter of practicality.
I shoot strictly flintlock and have only had one time that a gust of wind blew the pan flash under my glasses. Have been very careful when shooting in windy conditions since. The glasses did the job though my eye was irritated for a few days.
LBL