Surgical marking and measuring instruments answer one question between them: how much, and where. Seventeen instruments sit in this category and they split cleanly into two halves that have almost nothing in common except the word marking.
The first half carries the measurement. A template holds a known diameter, a caliper holds a distance, a rule holds a scale, and a grid plate holds both while you cut on it. The surgeon brings the judgement and the steel holds the number. Freeman and Grossman areola markers press a chosen circle onto skin. The McKissock keyhole pattern sets out a whole breast reduction in one placement. The McKissock and Martin mammaplasty calipers span a curved path from the sternal notch to a nipple that does not exist yet. The Castroviejo, Ginsberg and Jameson calipers hold small distances on a graduated scale, the surgical ruler takes the straight ones, and the Sheen grid plate measures a cartilage graft and then gives you a surface to trim it on.
The second half finds the measurement. A flap demarcator has two jaws: one takes hold of a dissected skin flap and stretches it to the tension it will be closed at, and the other marks the line that has to be cut. Nothing is read off a scale, because the overlap the jaws have closed on is the answer to how much skin is spare. That is a question no template can ask. The D’Assumpcao markers do it on a face with a ratchet, the Pitanguy demarcators do it with an inked jaw on a face or a torso, and the Lockwood does it on a deep or thick abdominal flap with angled shafts and the widest blade in the range.
Everything here is reusable steel. None of it is a disposable ink applicator, and nothing on these pages is sold as one, which is worth saying because the two get confused constantly in search results. A steel instrument that applies surgical ink and a single use plastic one that contains it are different products at different prices doing different jobs.
Prices run from 12 dollars for the surgical ruler to 65 dollars for the gold plated Martin caliper. Every instrument is cut in our own workshop and sold direct, which is why the same patterns from catalogue houses are often three to twelve times the price. Every one carries a three year replacement warranty against manufacturing defects, and stock items ship from the workshop while backorder items take 10 to 12 working days to make.