From finney & Smith.....Excellent service....1st Class

Hi there.

I ordered some Hoffman modelers jigs from Finney & Smith yesterday. Less than 24 hours later, they are at the door. 1st Class i would say.

the products are essentially to assist in achieving accurate right angle joints and splices, freeing your hands up to glue or solder. These are simple enough but very good quality and robust products. If looked after I would think they should never need replacing.

there is a couple of pictures coming up and just to clarify, between the metal clamps are silicone pads to help protect the model and any fine detail etc.

I bought 1 splice clamp and 2 different right angle clamps but will only show one of them as there is really not much difference between them. If anybody specifically wants to see the other, I will post again but as I said very little difference.

1st up the splicing clamp.



next the right angle jig,



and the other side of the above.



brilliant idea which should be of great use on numerous projects / builds.

any queries, just ask. I'm more than happy to post further details if anyone is interested.

Just to clarify, I've no connection with any of the above, it's just an honest opinion, review. ( prior to actually using ).

cheers for now.

toto

I had a look at the Finney & Smith site, some good ideas, but for the amount of use I would get from the tools I could not justify that sort of price, 

I use the smaller versions of this type of clamp and a couple of pieces of angle aluminium for gluing but for soldering items at right angles I have a wooden sort of jig I made, somewhat crude maybe but does the job for me.



Or various sizes of these for holding parts of card kits while glue dries



For some more awkward shapes elastic bands come in handy too.

Hi Mike,

Your a bit more inventive than myself. I have seen these jigs before and thought that they would hold parts very precisely.
Your are right, the cost is a bit steep but the quality of these tools is very good. I tend not to hash my tools so would hope that these are a " purchase for life ".time will tell.

I can appreciate that there are always usually alternatives that can be more cost effective but as I said, I'm maybe not quite as quick to spot them. It's just a bit less to spend in the pub and I have something to show for it.

Cheers for now


Toto

It's always nice to have some well engineered kit.  There are probably workarounds as Mike says.  Personally I like to have jigs and gauges, they tend to make the job go faster and you get more repeatability.

I'm still a bit mystified as to what these things do though.  No doubt as you use them, Toto, you will enlighten us.

John

Hi John,

No problem. Basically theatre just holding pieces of your kit together, aligned as you glue or solder them together. I'll get a couple of photo's posted when I start using them. Hopefully that won't be too far off. Once I get the first phase of track laid for Rosebuddy TMD, I'll swap duties for a while and make use of the jigs.

Cheers for now

Toto.

A problem i find sometimes is the clamps can be a bit strong for card modelling and squash the job a bit .  Any one have the answer to this problem ?  :hmm

Hi Reg,

That could be a difficult one given the nature of card. I suppose you could try some card pacers either side of the actual subject piece but that could get a bit fidgety. It may help protect the card model a bit. Try and spread the pressure or "grip " over as big an area of the card kit as possible if you know what I mean.

I don't know if you could get away with using small pins instead. Depending on where you place them you could maybe disguise the pin holes on their removal using painted weathering or something similar. Just a thought.

If I come up with anything better, I'll keep you in mind.

Cheers for now

Toto

Hi Reg,

Just thought, this maybe stupid but well……..If your card kit has the fold over type joints for gluing, would paper clips not help to hold the card at certain places ?

If the above is nonsense, my apologies.

Cheers

Toto

[user=31]sparky[/user] wrote:

A problem i find sometimes is the clamps can be a bit strong for card modelling and squash the job a bit .  Any one have the answer to this problem ?  :hmm

I use clothes pegs at times!
HTH.

Khris

[user=31]sparky[/user] wrote:

A problem i find sometimes is the clamps can be a bit strong for card modelling and squash the job a bit .  Any one have the answer to this problem ?  :hmm

Maybe you are approaching the problem from the wrong angle.  If you are using an adhesive which takes a long time to cure and, therefore, the card parts must be held in position by clamps, etc., change to a fast drying card glue which gives an almost instant bond, thereby negating the need for clamps, etc.  I usually use 'Roket Card Glue'.  It's expensive at around £5 for a 50ml bottle, but is very thin and goes a long way.  I recently bought a small bottle of 'Cosmic Acrylic Glue' @ £2,99 in a craft shop.  My wife, who makes numerous greetings cards, assures me that it will give an instant bond. 

Not one clamp or elastic band used in the making of this:



If anyone has missed this and is interested, the story so far can be found here:

http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=11013&forum_id=21&page=1


Terry

 

I should also have said that quick drying PVA is very good.
Bought a bottle in the UK 2 years ago and have found it here now.

Khris

Hi Terry,

Excellent building. I couldn't produce anything like it  with or without clamps. I think the clamps have their place, especially if you were soldering brass kits where precision is really difficult. Trying to hold surfaces together whilst wielding a hot iron etc. I dare say the experienced will have their own methods for that as well though.

Even if it helps me to get straight plastic kits it will have paid for itself. Time will tell. I'd love to be able to turn out even well built kits never mind scratch build. I envy the truly talented.

Kris, clothes pegs, paper clips, pins, whatever, they all have their uses. I still have to discover some of them yet but I think I'm in the right place to learn. Keep your eye open for the. " for  sale " notices appearing.

For now, clamps maybe mixed with a myriad of other aids will be employed.

Cheers

Toto

Thanks Toto.  You don't know what you can achieve unless you try.  As has been said here many times "He who never made a mistake, never made anything!"  Personally, I make quite a few mistakes in the building of all my models.  Annoying, but once made the mistake is never forgotten. Good luck in your efforts.

Terry

Hi Terry,

I will get round to trying different things. Right now all my limited time is spent on trying to get phase one of the TMD up and running. I've been off all week on holiday and thought I would have seen more progress but have been plagued with all sorts of problems / challenges.

However, I'm in for the long haul and am happy to plod along. A quick question, when you are scratch building, where do you get all you're dimensions etc for your models ? Do you or can you actually by plans or are these right out of your head ?

I would , in time like to possibly have a go at some low relief warehousing and loading platforms for my Dock side or goods yard.

The building that you have posted looks absolutely fantastic. Dream material for me at the moment.  I like the mews type opening  and the double loading doors. My big fear would be trying to get the scale / sizes right. Not to mention the workmanship that I hope would improve with experience.

Cheers for now

Toto

Toto, with regard to the mill pictured above, I actually counted the bricks in photos and estimated the measurements.  There are plans available for buildings.  Old magazines are a good source.  Scalescenes do a low-relief factory kit which would pass as a warehouse.

 Terry

You can also get a pretty good idea from doors, most domestic doors will be around 6'6" - 6'9" high, and between 2'6" and 3' wide, plus a bit for the frame, 2 or 3 inches typical (just measured me front door)

As Terry says counting brick courses will work as well and will be more accurate, but if working from photos not always and easy task. You also get buildings using stone instead of brick, stone courses are not as standard as brick, especially random stone (there I speak from experience modelling te Purbeck area where local bye laws don't allow you to build in anything other than local stone, the few brick houses are mostly rendered now! And that's another example where course counting fails. However all is not lost, get a couple of Metcalfe kits and take measurements of height, width and length, sizes of windows and doors.

Another useful way is to find some etched windows and doors and design your building to use those. You will have some idea of the amount of space you have for a building, let's say a house, the location should define it as a country cottage, a 1930s semi or a victorian terrace or 1950s council houses etc, that decision should help choose the relevant type of window frames, sash, metal, UPVC etc and doors, wood panelled, with or without windows, old solid oak, or again UPVC all of which might have fan lights over them.

If necessary for a bit of inspiration use Google to search for terraced house images, or semi detached house images or whatever type you want, browse through when you find something you like click on the image to get it displayed probably a bit bigger then right click and select "Copy image", then  paste it into a photo application and resize it if necessary so you can study various bits in more detail.

Great building there Terry.    Thanks for your interest  re the clamps guys. i use PVA , and have just discovered today that it is better to let the glue soak into the card for a short while before joining the pieces.  Sometimes ,due to my carelessness  or trying to hurry, parts just don,t always marry together as well as i think they should. Then there is the business of the sloping cut ,thanks to the angle /thickness of the scalpel blade.    I suppose i try to remedy this by forcing joints closed with a clamp of some sort.   Sometimes there is an awkward shaped piece to grip and that is when i usually clamp too hard.
I use the normal range of clamps mentioned here ,and also small aluminum hairdressers sprung clamps ,quite light and not too powerful.  I still; manage at times to distort a piece that has  squeezed a little in my abcence.  ( he lied).  Anyway i thought i would mention this to see if you have similar  occurrences.   By the way i don,t seem to have much success with plastic" G" type clamps ,they slacken off when i let go.   :roll:

Hi Sparky,

Your plastic G clamps maybe just need some packers between the jaws and the subject. I have not tried anything myself yet but I do already have a range of clamp types ( some maybe to big ) but I'm sure that I have a couple of similar G clamps that I got for a reasonable price out of Aldi's. I will try these at some point.

Anyway, whatever works goes.

Cheers for now

Toto.