Working with Photo-Etch

Go to the cosmetics aisle at your supermarket or drugstore and get a cuticle scissors with a fine flat point and a fine point tweezers they really came in handy.

Oh dont forget the magnifying glass/table light...your eyes will thank you..

good luck

I use the small pair of scissors in a Swiss Army knife for cutting off the parts. It's very accurate, easily controlled and seldom requires clean up.

There was a lengthy discussion not too long ago on Photo Etch bending. Check out the following:

http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=40837

I have figurede out how to cut things out with out mucking them up. I have figured out how glue them. What I haven't figured out is how to get those nice crisp bends with 1/48 cockpit panels. Anmy help would be very much appreciated. B TW, are there any FAQs or good web sites that cover working with PE?
Thanks,
Dale Neidhammer
dneid@austin.rr.com

As for the tools:
www.missionmodels.com make some tools that make working with P.E a dream.
They are a little on the pricey side but they will last you a lifetime of P.E fun.
You can get by without them, but they will save you a lot of heartache.
There is also a ad somewhere in the FS magazine that offer a "scissor" like cutter for crisply cutting P.E parts. Sounds like a good investment.
Hope this helps somehow.

another tip, use CA glue. ordinary styreen glue won't work with metal.
And get some good tweezers for holding small PE parts.

My favorite tool for working with PE is a simple ceramic tile. They are about 0.50 each at stores like Lowes or Home Depot. They are very hard and very flat and come in very handy.

I use an X-Acto knife with a #10 blade (rounded, not the pointed #11 blade) and a ceramic tile to get the parts off the frets. The tile keeps the parts from bending, but it's kind of rough on the X-Acto blades. Use a very small file to carefully clean up the part after cutting it loose.

PE parts are easily bent. Another use for a ceramic tile is to straighten them back out. Put the part on the tile and flatten it back out with the back end of an X-Acto knife.