Etchmate vs. Hold and Fold
I'm just curious about the experiences others have had with these products. They aren't cheap, but we all, being modelers, have a natural love of gadgets, whether they be practical or not. Since it's quite an investment for something you won't use every day, I'd like to know what people think of these things, and what experiences they've had with them and generally how the various aircraft, armor and other types of modelers feel about these things.
Etchmate is the one everybody is familiar with, for folding photoetched parts. They also make something called the Multitool for making cylindrical shapes with PE parts. It comes in two sizes. They also have the Grab Handler, also expensive and specialized, for making various sizes of, well, handles. Handles for armor, or for aircraft radios, black boxes or FOD covers. Or for making any perfect square or rectangular wire shape in miniature. Very miniature on the smallest level of the tool.
Then, I recently came across a brand called Hold and Fold, by a company called The Small Shop. I get the impression they mosly cater to model railroaders and serious ship builders, as well as diaramists. But they put out a PE folding tool similar to that of Etchmate, made of nicely milled, solid and heavy alloy parts. The difference is that the Hold and Fold comes in several widths, instead of one. The smallest is called "The Bug" and it is only two inches square, perfect for almost any aircraft modeling need, and it has three sides with different sizes and shaps of protrusions for folding boxes, or 45-degree bends as well other demands for bending PE. You just unscrew it, turn it to the appropriate side for the job at hand, be it folding an ammo box or a long L shaped girder. They also have milled their bending tools with dyes for folding handles, instead of adding an extra tool to the mix.
Also, Hold and Fold makes their own type of tool for making cylindrical parts. Like the Multitool, it's designed to make cylindrical shapes from the size of jet exhaust pipes to 1/35 scale 30 cal. cooling jackets. H&F's approach is a heavy milled aluminum base with several sizes of half-round cuts made in it, from about 5/8" down to machine-gun barrel size. They also provide aluminum dyes that perfectly fit into the concave round cuts, and by placing the flat piece of PE brass or whatever metal part over the convex part of the base, and pressing gently with the cylindrical dye that fits the size of the tube you want to make, you get a perfect half-tubular shape. Then, you remove the dye and brass part and flip the base over, where there is a thick rubber mat glued to the bottom. You finish the jet pipe or cooling jacket by rolling it gently on the rubber mat with the round bar-shaped dye and, voila, a perfect cylinder. It's a completely different approach than the Multi Tool, in which you basically wrap the brass around the appropriate section of aluminum tool, shaped like a graduated cylinder that steps down from large at one end to very small at the other. It also has a conical shape on the large end for those tough intake spikes and similar shapes, and is marked for precise alignment.
Obviously, if you have any of these things, you don't need my, admittedly, inadequate descriptions, but even if you don't, you've seen at least one of these things in the magazines. What I'm trying to get a handle on is how people feel about these things. Do you use them a few times then go back to the tried and true needle-nose pliars? Or do you find them consistently helpful? Obviously, I've found them most useful for elaborate shapes, such a cockpit tubs and ejections seats, because I do aircraft. I can see that armor modelers, who have much larger PE parts to deal with, and face problems with kinking and wrinkling, like being able to screw their parts down and use the long blade to fold them up uniformly from one end to the other (for small parts they give you single-edge razor blades, but if you want the long folding blades, you pay dearly for these from the tool company. I suggest buying the long blades for folding at the hardware store at about a quarter the price). I recently used the long, straight side of one of these metal-folding tools to do a set of flaps for one wing of a 1/48 airplane model, and did the other side my old-fashioned way. There was no comparison. To make the long bends of short sections of metal required for flaps, the Hold and Fold and Etchmate were invaluable, while my needle-nose-made flaps for the other side had kinks and curves that didn't belong. Of course, when it comes to ribs, none of these tools will help one bit.
Anyway, whether you own and of this stuff, plan to own it, or, like my friend and modeling partner, find them impractical to the point of being patently ridiculous, I'd like to know your opinion. Thanks,
TOM