I must spend a small fortune on tweezers, soft and harden steel, even resin and those specially made for very small parts, imagine tweeze in hand and a very small part. There are NO replacement parts, then ''ping'' the piece goes shooting across the room somewhere, panic quickly followed by rather a lot of swearing. At the moment I am using Rolson non-megnetic tweezers, the problem is, to much pressure and the ends cross over, not enough pressure and you can't pick the piece up, The size 2A 7A and 3A for plucking hair from your eyebrow, fantastic, but for fine model work, not that good.
I must have brought at a rough guess about 30 pair of tweezers over the last 4 years, now I only have 3 pair left, apparently there's a HUGE mountain of tweezers somewhere and this is where all the missing object appear, either that or they disappear by magic.
What tweezers do you use, the make,what size are they and how long have you had them for ?
Look forward to your reply.

Actually I don´t use tweezers for very small parts, I use a toothpick with a little piece of blue tac or an eqivalent to hold the items in place until the glue sets.

For bigger parts I use a very ordinary tweezer with a bend or a locking tweezer.

Try the bluetac trick - I think you will find that it saves a lot of parts from entering the final orbit ...

Cheers/Jan

I am having the same problem, small parts. Thank you for the tip Jan.

For larger parts I use regular tweesers. If I need to hold it for a long period I also use a push to open set.

hemostats those surgical clamps. come in a variety of sizes and angles

All good suggestions. I use the blue tack trick myself. Lost too many little parts to orbit from tweezers. Another trick is to get some liquid electrical tape from your local hardware store. Dip the tips of your tweezers in that and once it drys it gives them some "grip".

Bob

I use a variation of the Blue Tack trick--a Microbrush rubbed across a Scotch restickable glue stick. This also works well for larger flat pieces like hatch covers, doors, etc.

Bill

Bill, I hadn't thought of trying that, but you can bet I will. Sounds like a great idea.

Bob

Surprised me when so many builders have the same problem, also if no one has heard, there is now a super-glue that doesn't stick fingers, hard to believe that. Tweezers and those tips are great, lifting small pieces is one thing, but securly hold that same piece without it going pinging across the room is quite another, does anyone have any good makes of tweezers, mine is harden steel and the pressure required to close isn't that great, but oddly enough my larger flat nose tweezers seem better at handling small pieces, but, they are to large to get into those places where you really need to concentrate on, swap to the fine 2A Rolson only to have the ends cross over. And back to square one.

Dear Alec:

Haven't gone to Blu-Tack yet, but as an old tool guy who is no longer swinging hammers and wrenches, I do like a good pair of tweezers. Try Rubis brand; Swiss. This one:

http://www.amazon.com/Rubis-Tweezer-Needlenose-Stainless-Steel/dp/B001BDV5OU/ref=sr_1_30?ie=UTF8&qid=1307992714&sr=8-30

is my all-around favorite. The pointy tip closes flat and does not tend to scissors past and "ping." Amazon does not list the entire Rubis line, so will need to google them to find out some other styles and sources. I got mine from surgical and chemical labware supply stores online.
Rubis has some with 2 - 3mm rounded, flat-closing tips which are great for holding PE and sanding or filing off fret nubs. I glued some 600-grit wet-or-dry sandpaper to the inside surfaces of the tips to aid the grip. Love 'em. Also good for flatening bent PE railings, etc. If you go for tweezers, these are the ones to get! If you need a tweezer that can grip like a duck-billed pliers but on a point, get the bevelled-tip ones with a barb. You can haul on these to grab and smash and the tips will not cross up. Cheers, Stephen

Hello Alec,
One of the very useful tweezers on my workbench, for holding tiny irregular or round shapes are the pearl tweezers...these have small cups on the ends and
some are Teflon coated to create a non slip grip.
I am primarily a ship builder and these work great for the tiniest of ship parts.
I have also added heat shrink tubing over the ends of needle nose
tweezers for a better grip on larger parts. Give it a try....works for me.
Cheers,
Joe

Great replies - just receieved a pair via Hong Kong of all places, .99p for two, I was thinking these must be rubbish for that price, really surprised when I discovered they were a lot worse then rubbish LOL but you never know.

I have a dedicated set that I use for PE crew figures. I dipped the tips in the liquid coating used to coat tool handles.