Daylight magnifying lamp.

As we get older, generally our eyes are not so sharp in focusing to close up objects as they were when we are younger. It has happened to me and about 10 years ago I ended up buying a tabletop daylight magnifying lamp. It changed my model making like nothing else! Suddenly I could see just how bad my modelling was with my own eyes! Being serious it has, over the years, made model making a lot easier, more pleasurable and hopefully aided me to build better models. 

In that ten years the lamp has failed once and needed a new bulb and the cover over the magnifier broke when I dropped the lamp! Last night I switched it on and nothing. New bulb. Luckily WMD HQ has stocks of most things although not always easily to hand. Half an hour looking through various boxes found the spare bulb and with that fitted I sat back ready to commence some relaxing brightly lite and magnified model making. Switching it on saw blankness - just like my face! Check the fuse. That was OK. Then I listened to the lamp! I was not waiting physiatrist like for it to tell me it was fed up of illuminating my poor model making but I was listening for the humming of the transformer in it indicating that it was working. There was nothing but silence. Taking the lamp apart revealed no obvious reason for it not to be working. However there comes a time when you have to accept that it is probably better to stop at that point and replace with new. So toady with my budgetary watch person accompanying me (Mrs. Woody) to ensure no excessive purchases were made we ended up at a nearby Hobbycraft. They had a good choice of various lamps and whilst I was intending to replace like for like I did find one which I thought would be even better for me.

Just like an angle poise lamp, this would be more comfortable to use, had a 2x magnifier rather than 1.75x that my old one had and it was LED so would be cheaper to run. Having made my performance and economic case I got the necessary approval and it came home with me and it is great! 

I really like it and so pleased that I bought it. It almost makes me look as though I am a proper modeller at my workbench!

However in making my case for its purchase there was a bargaining process which saw Mrs. Woody adding this to the lamp at the checkout.

Yes Mrs. Woody does the occasional cross stitch and no doubt she will now want a magnifying daylight lamp of her own! It is a lot cheaper when I go shopping on my own and avoid these impulse frivolous non-model making purchases - at least that is what I would tell Mrs. W if I did not value my continued wellbeing!