HOW WALTER MAKES THE TOOLS

Perfect Touch Is NOT a Store. We are a home-based mail order business. We are not reselling tools we have purchased wholesale. Each of our tools is carefully handcrafted by Walter from his own designs.

The designs of our Perfect Tools are unique. Walter arrived at them after years of experimentation. Our tools are labor intensive -- and the labor is all Walter's! We doubt that you can find tools like these elsewhere, because they are far too small to be made by any automated industrial process. They must be made by hand.

Our carved wood tools begin with a piece of hardwood (birch). Using an X-Acto Knife with a No. 11 Fine Point blade, Walter carves each individual tool into shape. Then he sands the carving marks away with several grades of sandpaper. He uses 600 to 1500 grit sandpaper for the final smoothing (or sometimes 0000 steel wool). At this point the tools are extrememly smooth -- but not smooth enough to suit Walter.

He stains the tools a golden oak color, then waxes and polishes them with several coats of hard wax (Johnson's Floor Wax, for example). He continues waxing and polishing until each tool has a glass-smooth finish.

For the metal-tipped detailing tools, Walter begins with handles that have undergone the same sanding, staining, waxing, and polishing as the carved wood tools. Then, using a small jeweler's anvil and a jeweler's hammer, he shapes each individual metal tip from brass, stainless steel, or silver wire. Under magnification, each tip is shaped, smoothed, and then polished to a high luster. The working tips are as small as one millimeter in width.

The hole in the wood shaft is coated with a tie coat of liquid epoxy and then filled with epoxy putty. The metal shafts of the tips are coated with liquid epoxy and the metal shaft is bedded into the epoxy putty that is already in the hole. The tie coat of liquid epoxy reacts with the epoxy putty, and that reacts with the liquid epoxy on the metal shaft. This forms a gradient bond that reacts all the way from the metal shaft to pores in the wood. The bond is stronger than wood. These metal tips don't fall out!

For easy storing and transport, each of our tool sets is packaged in a small (3" x 5"), reusable, clear plastic drawstring bag.

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