new MasqMini Tubetools

[Heroka Vendile]

Masq-Mini have released a significantly cheaper (but still not cheap) plastic version of their ribbed tube rolling blocks.

available here
On the webstore page there's a demo video for the different ways you can use the blocks to make tubes and rope.

[Stormgrad]

i saw these a few days ago and was very interested when i first saw the original a few months ago (or sometime like that) however there are plenty of household objects you can use to achieve a simmilar effect (Rubber hosing on your Hoover, God help me when i do actually try this and my partner finds out).

[MarcoSkoll]

Having just received some of these:



...I figured I'd add some thoughts.

They're still not cheap, at a minimum of 30 Euros (~£26 given the strong euro - hard to believe it was once more or less the equal of the US dollar) packed and posted to the UK, but time will tell whether they're worth that. I bought them with the acrylic plate bundle, which seems good, but I'll explain why further down.

Working area is about 40mm square, so no super long tubes unless you're insane enough to be able to join them together, but enough for many purposes.

Sharpness of the edges seems quite good, certainly not bad for injection plastic

The first thing I've learnt is that blu-tack is very useful, because it's not easy to hold the bottom plate still while rolling tubes. The back of the plates are slightly recessed, so it's quite easy to stick them down flat on a surface.

It's also been useful as a stand-in for putty, allowing me to test some things before I start using up GS. I'll do some proper stuff with putty later on, but here's some rolled blu-tack.

Straight from the size 2 plates
And after being rolled off

Blu-tac didn't particularly like being rolled sideways across the plates (have to try again with putty) , but one plate sideways gives a slightly "Maize" like look and both plates sideways, as their video suggests, could certainly be used for rope.

Interestingly, it's possible to mix sizes. Combining size 1 and size 2 gave this which rolled down to this.

It also works with #0 and #1 together, but you can't very successfully mix #0 and #2 this way - the jump from #0 to #1 and then #1 to #2 is a neat 50% increase in "peaks", but the combined 125% difference doesn't work very well. Also, the #0 ridges are too shallow to be of much note against the deeper #2 plate.

It should also be possible to mix plate numbers when they're off axis of each other to provide different "sweetcorn" patterns, or possibly both used sideways to look like a bundle of mixed sized wiring.

It's also possible to get a "guitar wire spiral" if you use one slightly twisted plate over a smooth surface, but it's a little tricky to get the angle right - and not entirely necessary, given how easy it is to get free guitar wire.

To get back to the advantages of the acrylic - it's basically completely optically clear. Which is very useful because it makes rolling out tubes or rolling off the edges on a "ribbed" tube much less guesswork - you can see exactly what you're doing without lifting it up. It is an extra 7€ though, so not again, not entirely cheap. And definitely not for cutting putty on, unless you want to ruin it.

I'm afraid this is only first thoughts, because I've not done anything serious with them yet, but I'm expecting to be using them on the Battle Sister in the next day or two, and the Stormtrooper is also going to need a lot of work from them, so I should be able to witter on some more about them in the near future.

[Heroka Vendile]

nice little review Marco, cheers

[Dolnikan]

A useful review. They're a bit too expensive to my tastes, but they seem to work quite well.

[DapperAnarchist]

Good if you're going to go all out and start selling stuff that you cast, but for my purposes, I think I'll stick with guitar wires...

[viper_eX]

Good if you're going to go all out and start selling stuff that you cast, but for my purposes, I think I'll stick with guitar wires...

Well, guitar wire is great, but once I used this tool myself i was caught.
But well, maybe i'm more in need of them as i mostly work on (Dark) Adeptus (mechanicus)

[Vermis]

Well, guitar wire is great, but once I used this tool myself i was caught.

Have to say it's easier to bend a half-cured length of putty, too.

[MarcoSkoll]

They are certainly costly, but as my hobby is very heavily focused around scratch building, I spend relatively little on materials...

A typical sculpt is about £2 worth of materials (Putty, brass wire, the base and odd bitz) unless I've bought anything special for it. Even the (still neglected) Rhino is no more than about £10 worth of materials, and that's including the LEDs and such.

... so there's usually the spare pennies to buy some tools to make said process quicker/easier/more enjoyable. And these have certainly already done all three.

If you're a casual modeller who needs a couple of inches of guitar wire a year, then you probably don't need these. If you'll spend weeks making a model from scratch so it's just as you want it, rather than simply converting a "close enough" model in an afternoon, then they're definitely recommended.
I don't know where the worth it/not worth it boundary is, but I doubt you'd be totally disappointed whatever.

[DapperAnarchist]

Also, apparently, if you want to make rosary beads, its the only way...

[MarcoSkoll]

Well, I don't know any other way to make them that neatly at that size...

[DapperAnarchist]

Having hands like the cyber-secretaries from Ghost in the Shell? Still unlikely to buy them, but I debated for ages about buying some clay shapers... Hell, it took me ages to buy new ProC.

[MarcoSkoll]

Well, clay shapers are definitely worth it.

I started buying a set of Size 0 for the sake of experimentation, and now.... I have a set of Size 2, as well as a couple of Size 6s. All very useful, although to varying degrees.