I’m struggling with a new pair of glasses where the hinges keep coming apart. I’m sick and tired of it. We’ve even used LockTite and it’s still happening. Every week or two they need to be tightened. Next time I need to buy glasses, I think I should ask for frames that don’t have this problem but I don’t know how to ask. I have a very old pair, over ten years old and the hinges on those have never come apart or loosened. Is it because they have a different style of hinge? (The hinges on both are too small for me to see, even with my glasses on.)
Is it more likely a quality issue, i.e. the ones that keep coming apart are shitty quality?
As soon as you fold the glasses, you break the Locktite grip. I suggest something like clear nail polish on the threads of the screw, so that opening AND closing action lets the hinge grip the screw enough that it is always being unscrewed and then screwed in again with folding/unfolding.
You have a loose screw, essentially. Locktite is meant to hold it in one position, but the screw must move. But you want it moving in both directions.
I have a pair of glasses where the screw on one hinge kept backing out and the ear piece gets wobbly. I like the look of the glasses but overall they’re junk, I have to bring them in every few months to have them readjusted. Last time they really cranked down that screw and now I just don’t close them anymore. No real need to, so why move the screw.
Take them to an eyeglass shop, in my experience any will fix it, gratis, even if you didn’t purchase the frames from them. They will either replace the screws with a rivet or stake the screws-think hammer and punch the bottom of the screw so it spreads out and can’t come back out-.
Well, of course I wore my old glasses to try to look at the hinge on the new glasses and vica versa.
I did take them once and all they did was replace the screw that had fallen out and disappeared. Can I go back and ask them to replace the screws with rivets? Or would they think I’m batty?
You should bring back your eyeglasses to wherever you brought and see if they can adjust them so the screws don’t keep falling out. . If you just brought your glasses there should some guarantee on them .
The next time you needs buy eyeglasses check out the hinges to see how well made they’re. I have notice that everything is made shitty today and I have to spend more money for good glasses than I did 10 years ago.
Beyond replacing the screws, many eyeglass places tend not to this anymore. When the spring in my hinge broke, I went to a small store and one of the major name places, both offered to send them in for repair. However, the former gave me an address to a small hole-in the-wall shop that just specialized in fixing frames. Less than five minutes later, I had new legs on my glasses.
My brother has hingeless glasses. The legs are made from some kind of flexible metal. Since they are also rimless, I’m not sure there is a screw anywhere in them.
If you have a warranty on the frames take them back and let them know you aren’t happy with the repairs and need a new pair.
Other options, try a jewelry store, where they actually do the work in house or maybe a machine shop, someplace you would trust that they won’t scratch the lens up.
Ugh, I had a pair of those last year. They broke. Twice in less than one year. The metal just snaps where it bends a lot, typically on the arm piece near the eye. Horrible pieces of crap and they were expensive too. I got the current glasses with the bad hinges to replace those. One of the things that occurred to me is that the store I’m buying glasses from is crappy. I like the optometrist there, though. The opticians, not so much.
Everyone knows you can still buy the old fashioned ‘Eyeglasses Repair Kit’ at any drugstore, right? Comes with a small jeweler’s screwdriver and an assortment of replacement screws and only costs $1.99*!*
Well, of course. But it doesn’t solve the issue of being sick of fixing the damn things every 6 or 7 days. I want them to work the way they’re supposed to, without constant repairs.
I too had a pair of glasses once, in which the little screws chronically worked themselves loose. I assumed it was just a fact of life with having glasses.
I got a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers. (Big drugstores like CVS, etc., often seem to have sets like that on sale for $1. I bought an extra set for my then-boss, who seemed to have a similar problem. Previously, I had been borrowing his little screwdriver.) Then, I just made it a habit of tightening my glasses every week.
I had a list of little things to do every week, and I just included glass-tightening on it.
My last several pairs of glasses (up to and including the current one) never seem to come loose, or sometimes only very slightly. But I’m still in the habit of checking it once a month or so.
Just one of those regular little life maintenance chores, right up there with checking the oil in the car, checking the air in the tires, and trimming my fingernails and toenails.
I’m constantly tightening my dad’s for him, and I was going to try using Locktite on them next, but an above post makes a good point about that maybe not working…
Seems odd to me. I’ve been buying cheap $25-ish frames from Zenni for years now and haven’t had a single problem. I had a little “wardrobe” of frames for a while, that I matched with my outfit for the day. Then my Rx changed and I’m down to two pair of progressives because even with Zenni they’re $100 instead of $25. Boo. But still, no problems with screws, and my current pair of rimless has 8 screws.
In my 15 years as an optician I dealt with hundreds of frames where the hinges worked loose. Nearly always it was because the inner hinge (the part on the temple) was a little snug around the screw, causing the screw to turn with it when opening and closing them. The cure was to take the temples off and use a small tapered round file to polish the inside of the inner hinge just enough so the screw would slip through easily.
For similar reasons, tightening the hinge screws too tightly can cause the eyewire screws (the ones that hold the lenses in) to flex and wiggle loose.
This reminds me of the “pilot out the windscreen” issue… the use of wrong size of screw…
(In the airplane, the mechanic was able to tighten most of the screws, but they were easily dislodged…)
Um, they are new, so why not just go straight back and say “hey, fix this properly!”…
I’m going to take them and tell them to fix them properly. Can I print your reply here and show it to them to explain what I want done?
Thank you very much for posting this. This is intuitively what I thought was happening. They’re my only pair, which means I have to carry them around with me, which means taking them off, putting them in the carry case, and putting them on multiple times a day. I can’t afford to have a different pair in each of the places I need them.
