(upbeat music)
- In answer to your utter lack of pleadings,
here for you is one of my poetry readings.
- With Easter just a week away
I though it might be funny to use a couple finger puppets
that look and fit like bunnies.
- Opticians and thumb puppet hares?
What the heck is going on there?
- Well, that you might find slightly ironic,
for today we are going to test drive a thumb
that's said to be bionic.
- For those of you with phalangeal digits
that are quite weak,
this might turn out to be just the tool that you seek.
- I have a couple of test ideas in store.
Let's see if it can handle the chores.
- And if my poetry leaves you cringing,
just be glad I don't start singing.
- Hello and welcome to the
Laramy-K Optician Works Training Center.
Where today we are going to look at the Bionic Thumb.
Now my friends over at Hilco took over
the distributorship for this tool,
so they asked me if I would take a look at it.
And as always, I said sure.
And you may be asking yourself,
what the heck is a Bionic Thumb?
Well, this is a Bionic Thumb.
And the idea behind it is extending the strength
and/or the leverage that you can apply with your hands.
Now, of course, your hands are some of the best
optical tools that exist, and your thumb
is one of the outstanding ones of the outstanding ones.
And you can do a heck of a lot with it,
when you've got good strong thumbs.
What this tool does is it extends the leverage,
if I have my own thumb, I only have this much leverage
that I can apply and use;
this extends it for the full length of the tool,
greatly adding to the force that I can apply.
And, because I'm not bending against
the top of my own thumb, especially if I've heated this up,
I'm in for a little less pain.
So, by greatly increasing the force that I can apply.
It makes it that much simpler to form curves,
and protects my hands from possible wear and tear.
That's the idea behind the tool.
Two things, one is, I don't use a tool like this.
I've got some pretty strong thumbs.
40 plus years of working on cars,
and 30 years of opticianry, they're pretty tough.
They're also gnarly old man hands,
no manicures or fingernails or anything there.
So I don't really care.
Two is, this is not a product review of any kind.
Literally, I've had this thing in my hand
for like 10 minutes,
and I'm gonna run through some frames here
and see what it can do.
What I did is I grabbed nine frames out of my bucket
of old stuff, and I looked for things that I knew
had given me some trouble in the past.
So, let's get goin'.
One, number one is just a typical plastic temple.
You can see, instead of being perfectly smooth right there,
and a little bit right there, you have,
you have a little sharp bend there.
Now this is also a really thick plastic.
Like, maybe you can see it better there and there.
And, if we grab the tool,
let's see if this doesn't help smooth that out a little bit.
Now, that smooths that out.
So, it just makes it that much easier
to bend a big ole thick frame like this,
and it did help take those two little kinks out there.
And of course I could heat this up a little bit,
which would make it that much smoother.
Right, works nicely for that.
Let's see, number two is just a thinner plastic.
And I'm gonna kinda over do these things.
Give you an idea of what it can do.
And I am putting some serious force in there.
Looks pretty good.
All right.
What do I call number three?
Oh, number three, here.
We've all seen this, right?
The dog ate my glasses, or the really sharp bends
that sometimes you'll get from prior adjustments.
And let's see if we work that.
And again, what I'm doin is,
if you see the raise there, I'm doin the opposite.
I'm placing this opposite that curve.
Smooth that out.
Now this is Beta Titanium.
Wow, not bad.
Not bad at all there.
Wow, yeah, that was pretty ugly.
Now, let me see, if I kept working at that,
it certainly looks a whole lot better than it did.
Number four.
And, I grabbed this one.
This is metal from end to end.
And what happens, I've found in the past
that stuff like this like to roll on you.
When you have it, when you're doin it by hand
it will tend to wanna flip over to one side or the other.
And I'm hoping this tool helps with that.
Let's see.
You'll find, sometimes, that these wanna,
when I say roll on you, that it wants to spin away
one way or the other.
When you have it in your hand, it goes this way or this way.
I was kind hopin this would help with that a lot.
It seems to help with it a little bit,
but not quite as much as I'd hoped it might.
But, certainly makes bending a stainless steel,
really tough metal, pretty easy.
Not bad.
Making a cable temple out of a metal, but, all right.
Works pretty good.
Here's another metal.
Now this one's kinda got kind of a snake thing goin.
A whole bunch of ridges and bumps.
You can see how it goes all crooked like that.
Let's see if we can us this to get that outta there.
Again using it the opposite of where the bend is.
Yeah, so that's that roll that I'm talking about
that I'd hoped this would in some way help with.
Not as much as I'd hoped but,
still, I guess better than nothing.
And still have that little tiny bit,
but you can see how much better that is, again.
If I kept working at this for a little bit,
with the Bionic Thumb, I think we'd be in pretty good shape.
For this one, this is a titanium frame.
I know it's crazy tough.
I've had these things, literally, for years,
and I've adjusted them like a thousand times.
I just wanted to see.
Again, I've got kinda this heavy or, you know,
squared off bend, and I wanna see if I can
soften that at all.
Let's see.
Back, hmm, all right.
Now I did take a really quick peek at the video
that's online for this,
and it says you can also do frame adjustments,
or, you know, eye wire adjustments,
that sort of thing with it.
Let's see.
Now, I wanted to add a little to my base curve.
Again, titanium frame,
so it's not going to be very forgiving.
Maybe we'll try this on another, but.
Where's a plier?
I don't think I have one handy.
Now, I think it does a little bit better job of that,
because it controls this flex and this, but,
I think you could use it for that.
I think you could if you practiced a little bit,
probably could make some adjustments that way.
We added a little there.
All right, put that back.
I can't find anything at all about this frame.
Not even sure exactly why I grabbed it.
I'm not sure.
All right.
Now let's see what happens here.
I'm not exactly sure I'm diggin this part.
I guess.
Yeah, I'm not so sure about
the shaping of the eye wire part of it.
Oh, one part I missed.
I remember a thing in the video they showed.
Let's see.
Now see, if I do this,
it's kind of a working.
Oh, that's, now that's pretty good.
Okay, I like that.
That'd be all right.
That gives me, that's pretty firm.
I can put a heck of a lot of pressure,
again cause my thumbs are strong.
I'm not sure if you needed this tool,
and your thumbs were weak, if that would work.
But, anyway, yeah that actually,
that's pretty nice.
I like that.
I think one of the things that would be nice,
if you kept this at your dispensing table,
and you needed it, you wouldn't be opening the drawer,
working on the edge of your counters, chewin em up.
All right, number eight.
Just need another giant plastic.
All right, oh, okay.
This doesn't work.
This doesn't have a metal core.
(crashing) (glass breaking)
We're just gonna leave that one out.
All right, the last one I wanted to grab,
and this, I'm gonna pull off this one I think.
Now, that is, no, that is round.
I actually thought this was flat all the way,
but it's not.
Let's see what we can do with this.
Let's see what we could do if we had to bend flat.
Well that's not gonna work that way.
We could use it to add that little bit of face curve.
Mr. Pumpkin head comes in,
and we need to bow those temples a little bit
for him not to have touch on the side of his head.
Well, we could use it for that too.
Nice and smooth.
No sharp edges.
That works just fine.
So, what do I make of the Bionic Thumb
after the 10 minutes that I spent with it?
Well, I like it.
You know, I'm old.
One of these days I'm gonna wake up
and my thumbs are gonna be all arthritic
and I am gonna be reaching for a tool like this.
I also think it would be an excellent addition
to the tool kit for people that are just starting out
and haven't developed those tough thumbs quite yet.
When you're ready for a Bionic Thumb, turn to Hilco.
When you're ready for the best lenses in the world,
turn to Laramy-K.
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And I will see you again, next week.