Jewelers loupe

I have a few practice blades to practice honing. I would like to get a jewelers loupe to inspect the edges. I see too many options on amazon and ebay. Any suggestions on magnification strength and brand names for an adequate jewelers loupe that would work for me?

thanks

I use a couple of 10x and 14x eye loupes as aids but I have a jewelers visor that goes up to 100x for final work.salute .hope this helps.

I have a cheap ($3) one, eBay special. It's at 30x magnification and it is sufficient for me. There are times when I thought 40x would be great but you wouldn't need an actual high quality loupe unless you have specific needs/requirements that only an ultra high-quality one would provide.

I recall talking to Oz and his high-quality one stays on the table most of the time unless he is using it to create a silhouette of the blade.

I'm with you Andrew $3 and works fine

As thebigspendur will tell you, optical quality is even more important than power. Very expensive for really high quality, but I've been using one of these from Widget Supply for years with satisfactory results. 21mm 30x Chrome Teardrop Triplet Jewelers Loupe It ain't $3.00 but it isn't expensive as these things go.

got a 30x $3 jobber myself. Works just fine. Just have a good light source so you can catch the reflection of your mirror edge ;)

I have multiple loupes. A professional 10x as well as a few Amazon loupes that are SUPPOSED to be 30x as well as a few that say 10x. They all deliver the same magnification to me. How can that be? Well imo they are all 10x regardless of what the mag says. I also have a 400x veho usb scope that is gathering dust. (not for sale btw). Once your eye is trained enough, 10x will show you what you need to see. Microbevels, chips, scratches etc are all clearly visible imo at 10x. So get a great one, or a good one, or a cheap one. Lighting on these is good to have, so thats a plus as i use my cheapie amazon over the pro loupe. And dont forget to shut the light off when your done! One overnight and the batteries are toast!

Attachment 175556Attachment 175558
Cheap and has a great eye relief. Make it possible to have your eye away from the unit about 6 inches with the lighted other end on the blade. changing rotational orientation changes direction / angle of light to highlight the interesting parts of the bevel.
I give them to students.
~Richard

I use a 30/60x two sided loupe. Cheap, but it works.

Give us the link, Sir Richard.

I buy them a few at a time. Cheap enough to have one in the cave, the shop, and the kitchen where I do my honing.
Amazon.com: loupe 60x
Have fun!
~Rihard
PS the 60x has a UV light position to check currency and bring all that Uncle Sam put into bigger bill to make counterfeiting less easy. It also will show up some fungi.

Get you one exactly like this one. It works perfect & the black part pulls out & pushes in for focusing. There was another article on here showing one of these somewhere. They go for about $5. If you look & see one on auction, copy the title & go to sellers other items & paste the title in the search box & usually a buy it now one will come up.

The one Richard is talking about if you go to Amazon is just like this one.

Thanks to all for the helpful advice. I have just placed an order on amazon.

It's all a matter of what you want to see. If all you want is to be able to see the chips and you have good vision these cheapies are fine. If you want detail and eye relief and good light gathering power then you need quality.

Check out Optical Accessories if you want quality.

I'm fond of my Hastings Triplet. Bausch & Lomb's is the cheapest, probably around $40-50 now for the 10x. It's got the best resolution you'll get short of a full, high-quality microscope. Resolution is the ability to distinguish separate details as being separate. With low resolution, the separate details can just merge into a single blob. Higher magnification without good resolution will just get you a view of a bigger single blob.

The higher magnification you use, the lower your light-gathering ability will be. 10x is a good compromise between seeing what you need to see and the view being too dark to be useful.

Baush and Lomb 10x works for most of my uses but I have purchased larger optics off eBay/Amazon. Still go back to the B&L most of the time.