Looking for fiddly tweezers

Tools, Techniques, and Reference Materials Tools
1

Ok, tweezers are ten a penny - but, I just tried to re-attach a rocket launch tube to the inboard mount point, alongside the TOW missiles, on the Airfix AH-1T in 1:72.

It took me the best part of two hours to do. I thought I had a reasonable range of tweezers and various holding-things-together tools so figured on it being a ten minute job.

BUT - my usual bent tweezers were just bent in slightly the wrong place/way/angle to let me reach the mount point. My straight tweezers needed to hold the smooth round launch tube at the extreme end of the tweezer which had two results - one was that 99% of the time the tube pinged out of the tweezers and the rest of the time I’d get one side of the mount point to contact the tube, but had no leverage to get the other side to touch. In the end a combination of blue-tac, cocktails sticks, inappropriate language and a new pair of shoes got the job done.

So - can anyone suggest

a) an alternative to tweezers

b) a source of long straight tweezers with soft tips (I’m thinking something like a blue-tac pad on the tip so that it shapes to the part being held, but non-sticky so that it releases from the part when the tweezers are released)

c) standard tweezers but somehow flexible so that I can twist the shank of the tweezer to the angles/route that I needed but that would still grip and release a part like tweezers would.

Any suggestions gratefully recieved,

Kevin

New pair of shoes? - I was an hour and a half late for my shopping trip with she-who-must-be-obeyed, believe me a pair of shoes was getting off lightly!

2

I can give a suggestion for b) that has worked for me keeping parts from slipping, sliding and flying.

Try folding some electrical tape over the ends of the tweezers. It is soft enough to get a grip on the part. I also coated the inside tips of a pair of tweezers with a thin layer of rubber cement (let it dry LOL). It helps me hang on to those tiny glueing pins while painting small parts. Works good for holding the parts while glueing too.

3

I’ve done the electrical tape trick in a pinch, but for a more permanent solution, try coating the inside edges with a little bit of Plasti-Dip. It’s essentially liquid rubber used for adding rubber grips to tools. You can get small cans of it at home repair centers and better-stocked hardware stores.

-Fred

4

Cheers jhande and Gigatron,

I’ll look out for the plastice dip -sounds like a good long term approach.

Meanwhile I’ve been using the rubber cement approach - works well, if I’m patient enough to let it dry fully before I use the tweezers.

Kevin.