Does anyone know of any books or dvd's that show how to work with PE...I am intimidated to try to work with PE german tool clamps...I would feel a lot better and more confident if I saw someone actually assembling the clamps...perhaps someone on this forum could record themselves working the PE clamps and/or other tiny PE bits and send me the video file

Hey Micheal .. like they say baby steps mate lol ... i dont think you will find any video files on working with PE but theres a heap of pages telling and showing you how to work with PE .. once you get over the "holy crap" part it;s not as hard as you might think ,,, we all have our way of working with PE ,. develop our own little style in which way we work with it ..i started with big parts and worked slowly down to smaller parts like the clamps your trying now ... a good selection of tools are a must ..with so many different sizes of PE to work with you need many different sizes of tools like pliers and tweezers and surgical clamps work great too .

Hope this helps ya out abit
Check out these sites ..they will be able to help you
http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/TnT_Archives/Photo_Etch.htm

http://hawkeyes-squawkbox.com/2009/01/09/modeling-with-photo-etched-parts/

http://www.paragrafix.biz/instructions/Photoetch_Demo_Handout_2009-144dpi.pdf

This one will help you out bigtime
http://cs.finescale.com/FSMCS/themes/fsm/forums/thread.aspx?ThreadID=91061&PostID=902176&PermaPostID=902176

http://www.am-works.com/store/working-with-basic-tools-operations-p-98.html

That should get ya sorted mate

Cheers

Phill

Thanks man...Learning how to use PE is especially hard for me as I have a medical condition which causes my hands to shake...Bad...I take medication for it which does help somewhat but I am far from cured...its very noticable to people if they watch me work on a model...often times I'm asked "how the hell do you build such good models with such shakey hands!"

I have exactly the opposite problem Michael; my meds cause hand tremors. You just have to buckle down and do it. I willed my way through a fulle pe set for a bmp 3. Try putting a dot of glue on the steady and carefully applying the pe part to it. Sodering pe is a little more difficult, but can be overcome by cutting a small piece of flux and situating it between the pieces.

A ol mate of mine Arron suffers the same problem with his hands as you Michael ..when he uses his air brush to spray lighting i give a heap of crap ..its like cause his hands shake his lighting is amazing ..looks so natural and i give him crap cause hes cheating lol .. swear words soon follow but my god is he good ..he had a play at doing cracks in plaster of paris ..wow ..again cheating and more swear words followed ,,oh well what a mates for huh lol

My biggest problem with my hands is my left hand .. i was ambi but not so much anymore ,,did some pretty serious damage to the wrist ..broke both bones badly and they never reset properly so now three fingers wont work was well as they uses to ,,can't lay the hand flat on a surface because the thumb hooks inwards ,,makes sanding a real pain when i am working on cars ..but like you guys ..you do what you can and just do it

Phill

The medication I take is Propanolol (Inderol) to try and steady my hands...a lot of doctors use it for delicate surgery...