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The NUTTER© by Small Shop
 

The NUTTER©
by Small Shop

By Karen Rychlewski

The folks who first brought you the Hold & Fold for bending photoetched fiddley bits have gone and done it again! Another tool you didn’t know you needed—that is, if you need to make nuts and rivets in sizes from teensy down to invisible.

The Small Shop is calling this gizmo “A Revolution in Ultra Detailing” and that it truly is. Using the ‘punch and die’ system as a springboard, The NUTTER© was designed to be an easy to use system incorporating a proprietary metal foil with precision machined punch tips called ‘probes’ and a simple ‘tool head’ that clamps the foil in place.

The small cardboard box contains: the NUTTER© Tool—the spring clamp base unit which works similar to the Hold & Fold but has a rubber surface on which the forming will be done; the Probe Handle—a 3 inch (7.5 cm) solid metal cylinder with knurled surfaces for your fingers to grab; a 6 by 6 inch (15 by 15 cm) square of the special foil—laminated of lead/tin alloy between layers of a tin alloy; a DOME Sheet—a 12 by 2.5 inch (30.5 by 6.2 cm) roll of relatively soft white plastic used between the foil and the rubber on the NUTTER© Tool; and best of all, seven hard brass Probe Tips which produce seven different sizes of hex nut or round rivet. One handle, seven tips—yes, the tips screw into the handle and are interchangeable.

At the moment, the seven tips include three sizes of hex bolt: exterior dimensions of 1.0 mm, .75 mm, and .5 mm (because bolts have a hole in the middle, these three also make round rivets or knobs of .4 mm, .3 mm, and .2 mm respectively) plus 4 sizes of flat or ‘squashed’ rivet: diameters of 1.0 mm, .75 mm, .5 mm, and .25 mm (by ‘squashed’ I mean somewhat domed but not true hemispheres). Already in the works are additional Probe Tips: more sizes of hex bolts and nuts, different types of rivet heads, square bolts, and tree leaves. Can washers and screw heads be far behind? The mind boggles...

Up until now, modelers who needed nuts, bolts, rivets, knobs, and the like as replacements or additions to a model’s surface had a choice between photoetched items (commonly attached at one or more points to a fret or stuck down on a rubbery sheet) or Grandt Line/Verlinden cast plastic rivets, etc. (always difficult to remove from their little posts on the casting block) or the onerous task of making your own round head rivets from epoxy or white glue or whatever (*extremely* difficult to get consistent sizes). The NUTTER© will produce hundreds of whatever you need in minutes—literally! And they’ll be perfectly identical once you get the hang of using the Probe Handle and Tips. I see several advantages to this NUTTER© tool:

1) Identical results, no waste (except for the ones that fall down into the hands of the carpet gnomes.

2) Economical, once you get over the cost of the whole system. No ‘leftovers’ as with photoetched frets and sheets. One should be able to get many thousands of shapes from a single foil sheet.

3) Speedy results; no cutting, sanding, peeling of the finished bits.

4) No hammer needed: just a gentle press of the Probe with your fingers produces the shape.

5) Since the shapes are slightly domed, they’ll fit over existing bumps on the model part—no need to completely remove misshapen nuts or rivets and then try to line up the replacements correctly.

6) It’s easy!

On the other side of the coin, to make 3-dimensional bolts with a nut end sticking out, your best bet is still the several varieties of photoetched products. And if you only need a few little thingies, the available items mentioned above will probably fill the bill.

And then there’s the price: US$95 for the set described above. But modelers quaked at the original price of the Hold & Fold too—until they used it. The Small Shop guys will be at the Kansas City IPMS Nationals; watch a ten-minute demo (or check it out at https://www.thesmallshopeu.com/Main/Main.html) and decide if it’s the tool you’ve been waiting for. Your reviewer saw the demo at the AMPS National Show and paid the full price, so if this review sounds like a press release, it’s only because I think The NUTTER© does what it says and will get lots of use.

Oh, those 'dished hemispheres' on the clamp? They're to make inside reflectors for headlights and such.