I have 14 different tweezers and I still cannot find any that hold the tiny plastic and photoetch bits without pieces flying off and getting lost....suggestions?
Mike

I have found those offered by Wilder to be very good as they align really well. If that does not solve your issue then you need to look for someone selling old medical offerings as the ones with interlocking teeth are fantastic at gripping.

I found out that I sometimes, or actually far too often, was pressing too hard and thereby causing the "tweezer launch".
I solved this by learning to not hold the tweezers so tightly.
Another part of the solution was to use the type of tweezers which are opened by pressing the "handles" together.

Image to show the general idea, there are other brands and types. Some with insulated handles for soldering work.


There are also some with a guide pin in the handle:


A small rubberband wrapped around the handle can also assist with controlling excessive force. Pull the tweezer open and let the rubberband aplly the gripping force.
Letting the tweezer, or rubberband, do the gripping allows me to have better control over positioning.

This one has a stop on the guide pin to prevent excessive force:

A small piece of sprue glued/taped to the inside of the handle could act as a stop as well.

If the tweezer needs a lot of force to close then it will be difficult to do the "fine tuning" when pressing them together to apply just the right force to hold small parts.

/ Robin

For hard, slippery things (like plastic parts!) it can help to wrap some masking tape around the tips of the tweezers to give them a sort of "glove" to improve grip.

A couple of things maybe worth mention:

1. I have noticed a difference in spring tension depending on which tweezers I select at a given time. Thus, adjusting my “death grip” or position accordingly will often make a difference when holding a part.

2. During and/or after major CA glueing sessions, I clean my tweezers by lightly squeezing and moving the tips over an old fine-grain sanding stick, then I wipe them clean with a paper towel — sometimes I use a solvent.


The cheap set of tweezers which I’ve been using for several years have performed about as expected thus far. Although still useful, it’s probably time for me to replace them with a new set — shopping as we speak. I hardly believe in an “end all, be all,” but I am hoping for some improvement with my next purchase.

In the end, parts will fly, the Carpet Monster will be fed ... and out of necessity, scratch-building is born.🛠

Happy modeling!🍺
—mike

Similar to Barkingdigger's solution, I CA (super glued) pieces of rubber band to the tips of one of my tweezers. This is good for grip-holding delicate parts that like to vanish.

Buy a small parts holder from Micro-Mark.







https://www.micromark.com/Holding-Tool-for-Micro-Size-Parts-1-8-Inch-Capacity