I figure just about everybody has tried toenail clippers, but did you know that they make the curved ones just like the fingernail clippers, plus the straight clippers, if you was one of the ones that tried the curved ones and they didn't work well, I couldn't get them to work well either, but then I got out my old set that has it straight across, now these are the best plastic sprue cutters, I've been able to cut so close, that sometimes, one or two scrapes with the x-acto, and you can't even see where it was. Sometimes I got to cut the sprue out away from the piece, so I can work my way in to it. This is way better then trying a knife to get the piece off, cause some pieces are so fragile, the snap from the knife will break the piece, and with the toenail clippers, it never snaps, it might be a pain in the butt to cut all the way around the piece to get to it, but at least you won't have a broken piece. Hopes this helps someone.

Kerry

I'll stick with my mighty Xurons -- Testors sellls them cheap!

I've got both Xuron and some other "no brand" ones I bought at electronics shops. To be honest on plastic I didn't notice any difference between the two...
Ciao

I've found out already, that this is just about like being a mechanic, one tool isn't going to fix everything, once in a while you will run across some sprue that will need something special, but the knife is to risky on a lot of fragile pieces, the part will break, before the knife will cut the sprue, and it makes it real tuff when the part is about 1/10 the size of the sprue.

So far and many kits made my noname clippers work very fine !! cheap and nice

I have about 4 different sets of nail clippers (curved and straight) and find they work great. However I was able to get the squadron sprue nippers for free when making a large order at Military hobbies (HEHE). They have the ground flat blades and are nice for slipping into the tree when you don't have alot of room to get nail clippers in there, but don't really make any cleaner/closer cut than 99 cent nail clippers.