Neat "Small Shop" PE Gizmo

[Eric Bergerud]

The ancient Greeks and Romans didn't invent a steam engine because they lacked the ability to cast an iron object much bigger than a plow. So Hero's toy remained a toy. No such excuse for a potential printing press however. Wouldn't have met Gutenberg's standards, but there's no real reason they couldn't have put something together that would have beat slaving over papyrus or velum. Nobody saw the obvious I guess. Or maybe they were making ship models.

I just picked up a PE cutting device from Small Shop that redefines the word "simple" and makes me wonder why I didn't figure it the first time I saw PE. It's called a "PE Cut-Out Kit" and goes for about $10. It is several square pieces of jet black plexiglass that comes with an angled clear plastic holder to put over the part. The idea is to cover the part with the holder and use a #10 blade and gently rock pieces off the frets. (A #10 is a scalpel blade and I have them by the gross. Sharp they are, but I never thought they'd work well with PE. They do here. Other blades will do.) With the holder on, small PE pieces can't go flying. You can also make extremely fine cuts and eliminate burrs. Best of all, the black glass makes it very easy to see the PE, so if you have strong glasses on, you can work on the smallest parts. (If they're too small for this device, I doubt I'd get them on the model anyway.) There are several pieces so you can move cut pieces onto other pieces where they stand out very clearly. I also bought their smallest bending gadgets they call "mini-hold and fold." It's actually pretty effective, but I've got a $10 gadget from White Ensign that works almost as well. But no bending tool will do the job if the part has been damaged during removal or you can't find it. The stupid black plastic really helps in both categories. I'm sure wiser heads are using some home made scheme that works just as well, and the parts must cost Small Shop about a dime. But this is one of the best $10 I've spent on modelling. Pic below: check thesmallshop.com for details.
Eric

[biggles2]

Like some other modelers, I use a 6" steel ruler and #11 blade for folding small pieces. Very cheap equipment.

[Eric Bergerud]

Lots of ways to fold, although my slow hands find a dedicated tool useful. I should have noted that I put the folding tool on top of the cut-out kit. It's the cut-out kit that I find neat. I've just never seen any other way to cut PE from the frets with such precision - because you can see exactly what's protected and what's getting cut - and no possibility of a piece taking a flight. And when cut you can clearly see even the smallest part on the shinny black plexiglass. Overall this works for me much better than glass or a hard plastic cutting board.

[biggles2]

I have a folding tool and it's great for large pieces with long fold lines, which is really useful on larger scale models ( 1/48 - 1/35, and larger), but when I started model ship building, with much smaller PE pieces, I found a blade and ruler to be much more practical and convenient.