This tool is a 'hand graver' and was given to me in 1958 by Bert Allen during my apprenticeship as an electrical instrument maker at the White Electrical Company in Amwell Street in Clerkenwell. This area of London was the traditional home of scientific and electrical instrument-making in London.
The tool has a wooden grip and brass ferrule, the cutting portion is of steel.
The 'graver' was hand-held and used in conjunction with a small belt-driven lathe.
I produced small components which I would later assemble into larger sub-assemblies for the very skilled movement-makers - which I was later to become.
The tool is quite old. Eighty year old Bert Allen gave it to me saying, "George Edgecome gave that when I started here when I was a boy, so look after it."
To this day, though I no longer use it, I treasure it as a memory of my start in working life and part of the great instrument making history of London.
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