Reconstruction: Medical Needles for couching the Cataract

[Martin Moser]

Hi Cesar,

How do yo do the hole for the needle? And the spiral inlay?

Good question. This is the bit where I (partially) cheated a little. The original has both the thick, spiraled and the thin, ca. 3cm syringe-like needle (it does have a 2mm hole at the tip) in front of it made by rolling flat bronze sheets so that they form a pipe (or a hollow point for the needle). I did that for the needle, but the spiraled pipe is a massive brass rod with ahole drilled through. Obviously not something easy to do as you need to drill a 1.5mm hole over a length of 120mm and was done by a company specializing in "deep drilling" (literally translated from German). From my experience with the needle itself, though, I think I could have done the thick part like the original as well ...

For the spiral inlay basically the description given by Crispus in the "Pugios and silver inlay" thread is true for this one as well. The only exception is that as this is done on a curved surface I was able to use a goldsmith's saw to create the channel for the silver wire. A punch for hammering the wire into the channel proved to be the most convenient method, but I did it with a small hammer alone on the other, massive needle shown. The hard part are the first 1-2cm, as the wire tends to stand up and rise out of the channel again as you continue.

Also you should try and use the punch/hammer in a way as to "drive" (or displace) the wire material towards the direction of the still empty channel (a bit hard to describe in English for me). In other words, you don't want to push the wire back in that direction, where you have already inlaid the channel, as this also tends to rise the material out of the groove again.

Hope this description is somewhat intelligible, if you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

cheers,

Martin