carcharias said:
Tommy Iommi had a steel thimble covering one of his fingers on his hand.
Its hard to tell from this pic , I read he damaged his finger after he had already begun playing guitar.
I thought it was his third finger which you can't see.
Plus he was a left handed guitarist.
Tony tells the story of this on the Black Sabbath DVD "The Last Supper", it's not a steel thimble.
He was working in a sheet metal factory, cutting bits of sheet metal, and on this one day he went home for lunch and told his mum that he has had enough of the place and won't go back in the afternoon, she scolded him for this so back to work he went.
As he was cutting the sheets he got his hand in the wrong position and lot the tips of 2 or 3 of his fingers. Can there be anything worse for a guitarist than to damage your fingers or hand?!?.
So instead of giving up playing he created tips for his fingers by getting PVC glue, moulding it into a fingertip and then covered this with leather so he could grip the strings and continue playing.
He carries a bunch of his homemade fingertips on tour with him.
As this happened early in his career you can see it in a lot of photos, it looks like his fingers are taped but in fact they are actually missing.
It doesnt look like that guy in the photo is Tony Iommi.
