On the silversmith's lathe, the centre of the body is milled out to tolerances of a fraction of a millimetre, the holes are drilled through each part for the screws and threads laid on with a miniature die and tap.
They typically do their work through angioplasty, a procedure in which a miniature balloon is threaded into a coronary or other artery and then inflated to clear away a blockage.
In the midst of the tumult, a messenger from a novelty company arrived in our office bearing a gift for our lapel, a complicated little proposition with a brave button, crossed Irish & American flags, the legend "Erin Go Bragh," and a nice green ribbon with a metal-and-thread shamrock, all topped off by a miniature clay pipe.
Around the same time, Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic started looking directly at patients' coronary arteries with a miniature ultrasound camera that he threaded into blood vessels.
In a study published online tomorrow in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers report measuring the Herculean feat by gluing a cotton thread to the beetles' hard wing-cases, stringing the thread across a pulley, and tying it to a miniature bucket, to which they added drops of water.
The border of the "Paracas Textile" is a miniature Eden stitched in thread.
Dr. Wilson is playing guide to this micro-wilderness -- full of ants, mites, millipedes and springtails in a miniature forest of fungal threads and plant detritus in order to make a point about the value of little creatures and small spaces.
Encased in its own glass world, a miniature laboratory keeps a tiny thread of tungsten burning brightly.
Collect a miniature pair of scissors, a couple of spare buttons, safety pins, needles, and thread in the colors you wear regularly (black, white, tan, dark blue, and red are common colors).
Richard Richard Vallejoss) lives a miniature life.
