WIZARD OF THE KNIFE

Taranaki Daily News, 14 October 1933, Page 5 (Supplement)

WIZARD OF THE KNIFE

CRAFT BEHIND THE SURGEON LONDON WORKSHOP MARVELS. DELICACY OF EYE INSTRUMENTS. In a small room looking on to the busiest part of Oxford Street, W., works a man who is the world’s greatest wizard of the fine edge, writes a special correspondent of the Morning Rost. His work represents the last stage in the production’of the minute knives on which surgeons in all parts of the world rely for their most delicate operations on the human eye.. Almost any. fault in the knife may mean permanent loss of sight for the subject of the operation. A flaw in the steel would mean the snapping of the frail blade; a minute variation in the size of the haft would in some cases lead to a fatal escape of fluid from the eye; the slightest failure either in point or cutting edge. would mean violence where delicacy is essential. During the war this same worker held a key position in the Army Medical Service. Requisitioned in .1914, he was responsible for the equipment of the principal surgical instrument repair station in Boulogne, as well as for training the personnel for the smaller repair stations afterward established at Calais,. Abbeville and Rouen. In these improvised stations, and working under conditions of unwonted, almost impossible pressure, staffs restored damaged surgical knives to the same perfection of form and edge a- had been originally produced with all the care which peace-time craftsmanship could bestow. . , T . * • ' EVERY MAN AN EXPERT. The rare visitor to the workshops of John Weiss and Son, Ltd., Oxford Street, who since 1867 have . continuously specialised in the manufacture of surgical instruments, is taken first' to the various workshops where particular types of knife are brought from steel bar to final “setting,” in each' case by one man. The steel is first forged until it is as brittle as glass, then left overnight in a wood fire for before it can be worked. Next, it is tempered by heating in a lead pot and rapid cooling by plunging into water. Each man. is an expert in his craft, but he can only explain that the colour of the steel must be judged exactly right, and that “there are three or four ways of plunging the steel into the water.” I was shown some of the two or three wrong ways, and all that can be said is that each destroys the straightness of what'is soon to be the blade. Again, these men have no need of a microscope or scientific analysis of crystal forms to judge the quality of their work. A brief glance at the “grain” of the steel and they know that it is good—or, very rarely, spoiled. Then on to the grindstone where blades, perhaps only a twentieth of an inch wide, are “hollow ground” with the same precision as is a razor. All the measurements are standardised as accurately as if the knives were machinemade—surgeons are many times more exacting than industry—and the final “wire” edge, which must bend with the pressure of the thumb, is imparted by a lead wheel THE “SETTERS.” There are blades of every shapepointed, curved, straight, drawing, pulling, their only common factor, so far as the ophthalmic department is concerned, being their incredibly small, size. At this stage of the inspection the .visitor feels that these men of the workshop must, indeed, be at the top of their craft. On the floor above, however, are the “setters”—the givers of the final edge, each of whom has graduated through the . workshops, and can tell by slight idiosyncrasies in the blades the maker of every one. Using a series of stones of gradually reduced cutting power, the finest a 100 years old, they gently stroke their blades back and forth, with the motion crudely represented by the stropping of a razor. Each blade must be able to penetrate, with no pressure but its own weight and with every cutting motion, an animal membrane chosen as the nearest possible approach to the texture of the human eye. • Neither the eye nor a powerful lens can detect the slightest difference in the blade, and the balance of hand needed is so delicate that the “setting” of a large blade will for some time after render the best work on a small blade impossible. There are three “setters,” each at the peak of his profession, and the greatest of the three is he of “A.M.D.3’ service—the man responsible for the war-time surgical instrument repair stations.