Was working on my AFV club M-88 today and i got to the step where the headlight brush guards come into play . I hate those small fragile parts . I built this kit before so i knew how fragile these parts are , they were beyond use so i had to use evergreen plastic to replace the bad parts . So today I tried this and it worked pretty good . --
The first thing i did was to cut the part off with out totaly destroying it , using my dremel tool and a cut-off wheel . I still broke one of the support arms but not too bad


The small piece of balsa wood is the trick to cutting the flash off the part , it gives the plastic a good stiff backing so will stand up to the stress of the cut from the x-acto with out breaking

One way to get the part to fit the wood is to cut the basic shape of the part into the block

Then you trim away the flash


and here are the brush guards i only broke 2 of them #:-)
I hope this helps some one , it beats trying to scratch build those tiny little light guards .

Hi. Looks like good advice. These things are a real pain in the A-- to get off the spure. I've been using here lately some cutical clippers I bought in the make-up department of the local Wal-Mart store and these work fairly well--depending on what it is I'm trying to cut off the spure. But I do believe your wood backing would work even better, esp. on these types of guards. Thanks for the photos. Any help in this area is greatly appreciated by us all.

Take care, sgirty :-)

thats an interesting idea,my problem is with the struts on ww1 aircraft and i usually end up cutting the whole sprue end off like you have only to damage them trimming off i,ll try the wood idea next time

Thanks for that cool tip!

~Chip :-)

it's a good tip buddy , and i believe that generally cutting with a piece of wood under helps preventing injuring, destroying the knife, and damaging the parts of any kind.
keep up buddy