good welding near vision, lenses, other fab-shop activities

Go to the dollar store, or anywhere that sells reading glasses and try some different powers. Buy what looks good. That'll help you decide on which power you want for the flip visor. When you set them down on a hot part and they melt, you won't feel as bad as if you'd been using your expensive prescription lenses. At a buck each, you can afford to stick them all around the shop so you don't have to go get 'em.

Bifocal safety glasses work well for me.

Been there, done that.
Trying to do close inspection while wearing an auto-dark hood which passes only 60% or less light when 'clear' is a recipe for frustration.
I tried putting the correction lenses into the hood and it worked but when I put the hood up I still needed the + diopter lenses to see my progress -
So I recommend getting whatever correction you need in a pair of safety glasses (single focus or bifocals, whatever) and wear them continuously. Flip the hood up to see details. The downside of bifocals is that the close focus lens is at the bottom of the lens pair, so you continuously have to tilt your head up to use that lens while welding and that makes it awkward to see the weld progress through the hood.
I'm guessing what you will eventually end up with is a wearing single focus lens for everything and adapting to it. Works for me.
Carla

Full-lens cheater safety glasses are available now; that's what I use. I'm pretty sure these aren't the ones I'm using (I've spent longer looking for the receipt than it's worth), but they're an example.

I tried the cheaters in the hood and really disliked them. Reading glasses wouldn't work, my eyesight needed serious correction.
One day I was eating lunch and looked across the parking lot and there was a business called America's Best Contacts & Eyeglasses there. I stopped in and ended up with a couple pairs of prescription glasses with polycarbonate lenses for around $100. One pair for close work, like welding, the other bifocals. I wore those when working in the shop, doing grinding and welding and they worked well. No side shields (always hated those anyway). The prescription was alright, the frames had a lifetime guarantee and while not great quality or particularly fashionable, they were comfortable. When the lenses got really chewed up, I could take the glasses in and get new lenses free. I don't know if the warranty is the same as when I bought my last pair, but these were a bargain.
Their optometrist was the one who told me I had cataracts, not the opthamologist I see every 3 months for glaucoma. Finally had the cataract surgery done (prescription lense implants) and will never need correction again. Having cataracts that my health insurance paid for turned out to be a wonderful thing. Except I have to force myself to wear safety glasses now and I'm not very good at doing that.

I see better up close without them too, so I hung safety glasses over every machine tool and workbench, usually on the lamp, with the best/newest at the lathe and milling machine and older or scratched ones demoted to rougher work like grinding.
-jsw

I use bifocals normally, but single focus glasses when welding. Recently I added +2.5 diopter cheaters in the hood in addition for some little bitty tig stuff, plus the single focus glasses. Worked well for close up low power. Like having a magnifying glass in front of the weld. I removed them after that for normal welding. Worked well.
Pete Keillor

Thanks for all responses.
"Dollar store" - yes, that's how worked-out lens strength which works. For commercial / shop work, problem I had was time spent swapping specs - as cannot walk around the shop with the lenses which let me see the weld well. Time is money; fab-shops work on low margins and you cannot make the rate of work if you are forever swapping sight-correction.
Wearing some nice specs with a mild correction - where you can still walk around the shop and do other tasks including marking-out and reading rules / tapes - while having an additional lens-in-visor correction which adds to the specs. correction for the welding is an option I had not thought of...
Thanks again
Rich Smith