I am beginning to realize that some of my kits my be to small for my meathook hands.
I built an MG for my wife and some of the parts were smaller than a rice kernel. One part of the foot pedal was broken and with my largish hands I had to figure a way to handle the part and get it glued back to normal. I have a lot of experience with tweezers firing my parts into the neighbor’s house, so this was going to be hard. I decided to imbed the part into the sticky putty you get from Staples and since I didn’t think glue would hold it without making a mess, I dipped the peddle into a small drop of UV resin and without much trouble it worked.
Hi. Since I was diagnosed with Parkinsons, I figured why when tweezing a part it flys off to “Never” land. So, to solve that I do two things now. First I make sure I am not squeezing as hard, and secondly Make sure all my tweezers have teeth to hold with. If they don’t, Then I make teeth with 180 grip Emery cloths passed through their jaws. Don’t laugh! It works!
something i recently did with my tweezers. I also had the same problem but recently found a resolution. In another post i mentioned the use of plastic dip or plasti dip
I dip the tweezers in the rubber for an inch or so to coat the tips and let it dry for a few hours and now the tweezers grip better and because of the friction added surface the part will more likely not fly away as easily. I hang the tweezers from a vertical surface to let the drips flow down. I hung mine from a metal cabinet with a magnet. this substance i originally purchased to coat my metal tool handles and yard tools.
An additional advantage of the rubber tips on the tweezers is your less likely to damage your plastic parts, especially if they’ve already been painted and you have to move something around this really small
On the Tweeze thing. When you pass the Emery Cloth or Coarse file across the tweezer jaws make sure you have them exactly 90 degrees from the edges.! When I am working on the “SOYA-Third Corps” I am very careful. She has a lot of very intricately molded parts in 1/350. Yup! parts molded in scale! Scary, right? The Dogs and Man are 1/35, “Britannia Metal?” though and very well done. I will do them when the ship is done. With my “Parky” Partner I only get about and hour or so a day.But, I am going to keep plugging til shes done.She also has a very unique way of fitting on the stand. I will explain all later. T.B.
When using small or etched parts too avoid losing or having them disappear after being removed from the etch frame i have a piece of 60 thou plasticard approx 3" x 3" on the bench, i then roll a short length of 18mm Tamiya tape into a tube & stick on the plasticard. Place the part you want too remove over the tape nip the attachment points with blade tip & carefully lift frame away … your part is now ready too use still stuck too tape
Mine is more mundane, but every modeler should have a few pairs of “reverse” tweezers, that are spring-loaded to be closed rather than open. They’re really nice for PE and other tiny parts where you don’t need strength, but do need finesse.
