I strive in my job to be invisible. I figure these instruments will be around for 200-300 years, the guys who designed them were smarter than me, and when in proper operating condition they work extremely well. I try to make them to where the designer could look at it all these years on (most of the instruments I work on are 50-90 years old) and see my restorations and say “yes, exactly, that is how we meant it.”. Before the cost-cutting measures, before the rushed assembly line at the factory, there was a perfect ideal of the instrument in the designers head. I want to take it back there. When I’m done, I want it to look like it was born that way. Who did this work? Nobody.