Daft Question Time - Scalpel Blades

[NARSES2]

OK as the title suggests for many this may well be a daft or obvious question, but as a self taught modeller who has never been a member of a club simply because there are none within reach relatively easily by public transport I've never had people to ask the basics and when you get older it becomes more difficult to ask.

So I basically have 3 types of Swann Morton blade in the tool collection - No's 10, 11 and 15T. I was just wondering what types of jobs others use the 10 and 11 for in particular.

I won't even begin to ask what some of the types in the Xacto sets are for, I doubt if Xacto know ?

[Hobbes]

Straight blades are useful for scraping along a surface (e.g. to remove raised panel lines or an excess of glue/putty). Curved blades are useful for cutting sheet styrene: you can use the curved part of the blade to cut, while with a straight blade you can only use the pointy end which gets blunt quickly.

[Captain Canada]

I just used number 11s forever, and only recently have tried some curves and the straight, flat ones. As Hobbes said, they are great for scraping etc.

[Joe C-P]

There are also chisel-like blades, where the front edge is curved or in a V-shape. Useful for shaping.

JoeP

[Weaver]

I use No.11s for almost all cutting since I got a big box of them cheap a few years ago. If I was buying from scratch I'd get a mixture of 10s and 11s since the points of the 11s are quite fragile.

I sometimes use No.1 small curved blades for scraping since the edge of the scraped area is more naturally 'feathered' with them. The other blades I use and break frequently are chisel blades (Exacto-clones, since SM don't make them) for cutting, scraping and chiselling into right angles.

I tend to use sprue cutters for taking parts off the sprues nowadays, which makes knife blades last much longer.

[zenrat]

There are blades other than #11?

[NARSES2]

Cheers lads. Never thought of using chiesle blades on right angles

[Mossie]

There are blades other than #11?

Yeah baby.  I use them professionally, there's all sort sorts of weird and wonderful ones since they're designed for surgery (including a particularly vicious one looking like a velociraptor claw).  We mostly use the same ones as are generally available for modelling, although we use a no.4 handle as well which has a slightly larger head and can therefore take larger blades.

There are some angled chisel heads available, but I'd probably go for Xacto for that use as Swann-Morton blades will snap easily if under pressure.