The Little World

I am constantly amazed at the sort of things that I can do with 8 fingers and 2 thumbs. I mean past the business of slashing car tyres and robbing poor boxes – I mean in the Little Workshop when the time comes to glue something. Because nothing ever cements to anything else without being held by at least 4 of those fingers. Sometimes it is all 10 digits doing the holding and the glue bottle is held in the nose. I do not show pictures of this in case children are reading.

When my fingers, thumbs, and ingenuity fail me I turn to mechanical aids. In reality, I really should resort to them more frequently, and leave the actual cementing to a very small operation at the end. It never hurts to clamp, jig, tape, or prop things before reaching for the glue.

a. The crudest of devices, but one that has put together more wings than Bleriot. The humble wooden clothespeg is a clamp that has a limited throat at one pressure, but that throat can be increased by straining the spring open. You can also afford to carve down the wooden jaws to fit into custom size areas or pad them up for a softer bite. In some cases people use these clamps to hang out washing on the line.

Note that with wings of exaggerated curve over the chord these clips may tend to slip off. I run a line of thin masking tape out along leading and trailing edges to give the clip something to bite into.

A bag of these is cheap as chips.

b. Poke round the desk long enough and you’ll find the terry clip or butterfly clip. These are generally too powerful for plastic modelling, but they are invaluable if you need to hold metal pieces for soldering. You can wrap the large clips’ edges in foam to soften the pressure somewhat

c. A commercial product found in many hobby shops, this blue plastic clamp has no spring action, but can still be snuggd up to a job by finger force. It is not as useful as the maker would have you think – it doesn’t hold steadily very often. The only advantage of this and its larger brothers is that they have a very wide throat opening. Careful, though – that’s just plastic and it will crack under stress. I bought six an own five.

d. These are small woodworking clamps from Bunnings and are the smallest and cheapest they make. The jaws are floating which looks cool but they also tend to swivel when you least want it. The springs are powerful and you cannot de-temper them easily, meaning these clamps may squeeze plastic too tight. However, it is possible to wrap the handle with a rubber band that applies counter-pressure and can ease the force. These are absolutely great for scratchbuilt wooden structures, though.

I also use the larger one to hold Micro products bottles on the bench when dipping into them – otherwise they tend to spill over.

e. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego…These three faithful servants have been in the workshop for over 40 years. They’re made of magnesium, have warped and corroded over time, but can still be the clamps of choice for fuselage assembly. They were made by X-acto and have long disappeared off the market…but if I ever see more in secondhand deals I will snap them up. There was a fourth one in the set but sadly it has disappeared.

I also make use of a 3″ bench vice and regular screw clamps intended for woodworking when there are larger pieces needing a grip. One can never have too many artificial hands in the Little Workshop.