Tools

Some of you who read this blog participated in a lovely birthday gift of chipping into a tools fund for me. (You know who you are!) So I wanted to show you some things that just arrived from Stewart-MacDonald, a luthiery supply company/catalog. What you see here are an offset fret crowning file (expensive b/c the abrasive is diamond dust), string spacing rule, notched straight-edge, leveling bar, a set of radius gauges, a set of micro-chisels, a precision router base for my dremel tool, and a special vise for working on nuts and saddles. I will happily share more details with anyone who is interested. This wasn't the whole tool fund's worth. I still have some leftover with which to purchase a few other important things that I will get from a woodworking supplier ... a dial caliper, a couple of high quality chisels, a precision straightedge and combination square, and maybe a small bench top belt sander.

The other tool you see here is a set of 1.75 magnification cheap drug store bought reading glasses (in a tasteful lavendar). After 6 weeks of this, I have come to accept that my 43 year-old eyes (while 20/20 and perfectly good for most things) need help to see the tiny increments of a few thousandths of an inch that luthiery requires you to be able to see, draw, chisel, etc. If you follow this blog, you saw me wearing an optivisor in a previous pic - that has much higher magnification, and as such also has a very short focal distance... so I have to be right up on top of something to use those. These handy little specs are helping a lot, and when I look up from the small detail work, I can look over the lenses and not feel dizzy.

Thanks SO much to my friends for making it possible for me to continue to equip this dream.... whether it ends up being vocation or avocation in the long run. And thanks to Elliott for organizing the gift... it was perfect and just what I wanted.