This is really less of a lesson, but more of an explanation as to why you might be able to do this kind of work even if you think you hands are too shaky, or your eyes are too bad.
There are two very important things to understand:
- You can magnify the heck of things. When you get older, you lose your ability to focus on things that are close. Magnifiers and reading glasses bring that focus point closer. Depending on the nature of your sight issues, with heavy reading glasses, and a magnifier, you should be able to regain that focus at a much closer distance, and as an equally powerful benefit, things are much much bigger. Unfortunately, the more magnification, the closer you will need to be to your work piece. I have the magnifier right down close to the top of the upper arm, and my face right close to the magnifier. I'm so close that often times when I break a blade, the top arm hits the magnifier, which in turn bumps my face. When you sit down to cut, take a few minutes to work on the magnifier placement and your distance from the magnifier. Unless you have other sight issues, you should be able to find the sweet spot, and see the pimple on a flea. If you have other issues with your eyes that can't be overcome with magnification, then you might not be able to do the more detailed work. Print out the sample pattern on the patterns page, look at it with reading glasses and the magnifier, and if you can get a clear image, you should be good to go. You can only cut what you can see.
- Metal doesn't cut like wood, it is much much slower. But, that said, because of the small scale, you don't need to go as far. So, what this means, is that when you magnify the heck out of things, you see the pattern much bigger, and your cutting rate, because of the very small scale, perceptually is like working with wood on a larger piece. This speaks to cutting at a smaller scale and maintaining control. If metal cut like butter, we wouldn't have a chance. So, cutting small isn't magic, and doesn't require superhuman cutting ability or superman vision. So now you know my secret, I'm not really good, I just cheat.
I'm not saying that you will not need to practice in the medium, like every medium, you will need to get a feel for how metal cuts, and like with wood, it will become more natural with practice. There are techniques that you will learn with a little practice, that makes some of this a lot easier. We will cover these coming up.