How to Make Free Lens Covers for Your Binoculars

It’s easy to damage the lenses of your binoculars with a stray camera strap or coat zip and rain or dust can easily spoil your view at the vital moment. Using lens covers is a great way to stop this from happening, but not all binoculars are supplied with them and they’re easily lost.

Finding lens covers to fit your particular binoculars can be difficult and surprisingly expensive. If you’re in need of some lens protection, why not save yourself some money and consider using one of your old socks to make some free homemade environmentally-friendly lens covers?

How to Make Free Binocular Lens Covers

Just take an old sock and cut off the elasticated top leaving a little extra material beyond the elastic, see below:

How to cut a sock to make homemade binocular lens covers.
Cut the sock with a pair of scissors a short way down from the elastic as shown here with the yellow line. (Note: The sock shown here is for illistrative purposes only, it has plenty of life left and will be worn many times again.)

Then simply sow up the end that you just cut with a single straight line of stitches.

How to sow up the end of your homemade lens covers.
A single line of stitching is fine to close up the non-elastic end. To make it look a little neater you can fold the top of the cut edge before sewing.

That’s it, your free binocular lens covers are ready to use.

The elasticated opening of the sock grips around the eyepieces of your binoculars covering the lenses with a soft but protective covering.

 Here's a set of homemade, sock-based, lens covers on a vintage pair of Jena Jenoptems.
Here’s a set of homemade, sock-based, lens covers on a vintage pair of Jena Jenoptem binoculars.

One Size Fits All

These homemade binocular lens covers have several advantages…

  • They’re environmentally friendly
    They’re not made of plastic and they make use of old socks that would otherwise be thrown away.
  • They work really well
    The stretchy sock elastic makes them very easy to take off and put back on and they fit just about any size binoculars.
  • They’re easily replaced
    If you lose them they’re cheap and easy to replace, every pair of old socks provides you with two sets of lens covers.

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