What Is Your Favorite Tool/Accessory?

Here is mine. The little "Thor" stamp press. I use it all the time to remove wrinkles from used stamps. It works great and I have had it for 30 years.



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Tongs, I use them every day.

A glass of wine, while "stamping," and kept a "strategic distance" away from the material.

Watermark tray which is an old black saucer, and shellite.
It helped me find an unexpected rare Australian Stamp.

If using traditional hinges, I never drink red wine while stamping. Not unless I want an album full of Penny Reds!

Scribus and my laptop for making stamp pages.

Tongs, couldn't do anything without them. I have a couple extra laying around just in case I misplace one.

My Scanner. Acquiring high-resolution images of my stamps allows me to view the work of master engravers on my monitor, and show my stamps to other members of the forum. I've also found it invaluable for diagnostic analysis and collaboration on issues such as plate varieties and plating.

Austria 1057:

What an incredible image. Great, great artwork.

Reminds me that I was thinking recently of buying a microscope that can connect to a PC, to grab real detailed images. Don't know if it would work, but it my be interesting to try.

Crappy usb microscope give crappy images.

Hi Classic Coins, what scanner do you use? And at what resolution? I have a Canon LiDE 700F but it seems no matter what resolution I set it at the image always comes out mushy and lacking in detail. I also find that the images are exceedingly tiny. I know that many, many people uses scanners for their ebay pictures and to post to this forum but for me the scan only works acceptably with something the size of an envelope or postcard. Thanks! Wolf-==-

Wolf,

The Austria stamp was scanned at 1200 DPI.

I use an Epson Perfection V370 scanner. In my 20+ years of scanning stamps, I've owned two Canon scanners but mostly Epson scanners. The Epson brand has always been superior to Canon, for my needs.

Finding a good scanner is most important, but it's also important to learn color management by tweaking the scanner's settings, and doing some post-scan color adjustment.

Here is my best attempt with my current scanner. Scanned at 600 DPI (my scanners best resolution.

Along the lines of Climber Steve's answer: a liberal amount of Scotch, applied every 15 minutes over a course of the evening and Ronsonol, for additional fumes.

My checkbook?

Without that, everything else would be somewhat moot.

After using that tool, I too often partake in the Scotch tool to make the "collecting" more palatable, though it reeks havoc with the spelling on the pages I lay out.

C.

That's what I've been doing wrong! Not "applying" often enough!