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I Feel Ya!

     At 77 I have the normal sight problems. But I find ,now that I have Cataracts growing" They said they had to get Ripe? " I found that even little teensy parts on paper models are easy to do with two things. One is the " As Seen On T.V." Magnifires with lights at Wal-Mart. They fit over your regular glasses and they are not heavy,Like the Hobby Magnifiers

    Second and really more important is good light. I have four OTT brand lights lighting the area from four sides. This has helped more than anything else I could come up with. You have to eliminate shadows.

My local Dollar Tree sells reading glasses up to 3.25 diopter for a buck.

The other thing that helps immensly is brighter lighting.  The brighter the light, the more your iris gets smaller, with a consequent improvement of depth of field.  I use both powerful reading glasses and a positionable light at my bench, and I can see better than my fingers can work.

What I developed is called Fuges dystrophy.  It was discovered by a eye store contracted out by the VA to help cut back their work load.  All they told me was that the VA clinic would be contacting me about eye drops.  A couple days later the clinic called me in and the first thing I was asked was what the store told me.  When I answered him the said "That's all?"  He immediately took me off their schedule and told me that he was personally taking over.

It seems that this particular problem causes fluid to build up in the layers of the cornea.  It constantly changes your vision.  The cause is either heridetary or due to a head injury.  Since nobody in my family wre glasses until old age I have to conclude it was from a incident early in my first tour during Vietnam when I spotted someone and ended up getting knocked out while chasing someone.  Now I wish I had told someone and gone to the base clinic.

Just saying what helped me.  My problem is seeing things that are closer than about arm's length.  They are not only blurry, but depending on distance, I get double vision.  The magnifiers help both problems by changing focal length.  When I'm typing on a computer or phone, I use 1.25X magnifiers, again to correct focal length.  Beyond arm's length, I have 20/20 vision.

@ikar01: Having a similar but obviously less-severe problem with my own eyes, I empathize with you. Good luck with that appointment.

Eaglecash867

You can always get some 3X and 6X magnifying glasses for working on things like that.  Amazon sells them for about 10 dollars for 3 pair.  Hopefully your eye doctor has a better solution, but its something you can fall back on when you need to.

Magnification isn't an answer if the problem one of unclear vision rather than sharp vision. 

My glasses correct my vision almost to 20/20 -- that's sufficient acuity to allow me to clearly see even the smallest parts of airplane kits. But I have dry eye -- lack of normal production of tears -- as a result of rheumatoid arthritis and various medications I have to take. My eyes often sting and feel scratchy, and I often have to wipe the corner of each eye with a tissue to remove bits of thick mucous which accumulate there. If I don't do that, and neglect to use artificial tears, and spend too much time at my computer or iPad, I have trouble reading, much less seeing frame lines on model canopies. The effect is like trying to look through a window that appears clean but actually has a thick film of grease and soot on it. 

Magnification certainly helps, doesn't solve the problem: model parts, tools and supplies look bigger, but not clearer. I can "see" how severe "dry eye" could make model building difficult or impossible.

Bob

You can always get some 3X and 6X magnifying glasses for working on things like that.  Amazon sells them for about 10 dollars for 3 pair.  Hopefully your eye doctor has a better solution, but its something you can fall back on when you need to.