A process has been developed to hand grind and polish infrared KBr lenses with a wide choice of focal lengths. These lenses are designed for coupling the infrared (IR) beam from a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer into a hot filament chemical vapor deposition reactor. These IR lenses are ground using a glass lens as a mold; the mold lens is a commercial glass lens used for spectacles and is available in a wide range of focal lengths. Rough grinding begins with ♯100 sandpaper and followed by a sequence of fine grinding steps under ethanol: ♯400 SiC powder, ♯600 SiC powder, and emery powder. Polishing is done with a CeO slurry in water followed by a chamois cloth moistened with ethanol. As an indication of the surface finish of the lenses, a flat KBr window that is hand ground and polished in the above manner has a transmission of ≳89% at 8000 cm−1 and ≳91% at 500 cm−1; the commercially polished KBr window has a transmittance of 92% throughout this spectral range.