assembly jigs

[a380]

hello all,
as i start my next model i have been thinking about one of the most frustrating problems i faced during the last project and ways to alleviate it. in a nutshell the issue was how to keep everything 'squared up' while assembling very small parts. i found holding multiple pieces at the needed angle while gluing, a hit or miss affair at best, resulting in an often sloppy finish. a simple example would be the triangular bulwark supports that have a lip on the exposed edge. gluing the right angled strip, which in my scale was 1mm wide, 6mm tall and made of .40 cardstock involved a lot of hair pulling! a really difficult part was the cable reel on the aft deck. gluing the brackets on both sides of the reel so that they were parallel and symmetrical took hours and multiple re-do's. a not too clear picture is attached. hope i am explaining myself clearly enough. i used tape, small clips, aluminum blocks (given by a friend who has a machine shop) to try to hold the shape while applying the glue. this 'jig' was the best i could do but things constantly slipped and i kept raking my brain to figure out how to lock the pieces in place while the glue set.
anyway what do you do in similar situations? what tools/jigs/techniques do you use? i would love some ideas. are there any jigs available for small scale work? micro-mark sells some jigs that are interesting but they look too bulky for really small, delicate part. i am wondering if you have come up with solutions that you created yourself and would like to share. there was a post about using a sand box to hold parts together a while ago. interesting idea that i am going to explore but again, i feel it's good for larger assemblies like wings and fuselage of aircraft models. i have one idea myself and that is to use lego bricks. i figure i can use the variety of pieces to make a specific jig i need and use the gap between the individual bricks to hold at least a thin piece of card. what do you think? i bought some bricks recently and plan to experiment this long weekend.
sorry for the long post but hope to have a fun conversation going. i will try some other modeling forums as well and see what's in the knowledge base.
thanks

[G.A.G.]

Two cents worth regarding

the triangular bulwark supports that have a lip on the exposed edge

If you first place a small piece of thick tape (tamiya tape would do) spanning a bit of the deck and then going up the bulwark, then holding the triangular piece at the proper angle would not be that important, as you could push it against the side of the tape into its proper place. Hope the description makes sense.

I am on the same boat as you with the cable reels though!