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So I’ve not owned a huge number of snips overs the last 15 years, a hand full of generic model/hardware store ones that are either worn out, blunted quickly or were just bad from the get go. So in this post I’d like to get a discussion going about side cutters and everyone’s experience so people can buy the right tool for them. Please if you could list your experiences as a brief review all the better but any input would be awesome!
I’ll go first.
I’ve had a pair of the older style citadel snips for 9+ years and I’m just about ready to retire them, they have done very well but have seen better days, imo these are great and with that in mind I bought some of the new gw snips and I gotta say I was very disappointed, they look like the build quality is good, even if they are quite pricey but in fact there are just several defects with them I’d like to mention.
-So first of they are micro shears not side cutters and I think they should be clearer about that on the box, as not every one with be happy with the off set jaws, i’ll come back to this in more detail shortly.
-Another issue with the box it shows fine points, they don’t have fine points, they have been altered at some point, I’m not a fan of misleading advertising how ever small.
-The first pair I bought had a defect on the blade faces so you could see light through them as they met up poorly at the base of the blades, I returned them and got a second set.
-I used this set to build a kit seemed ok to start but as shears they had a fault imo in there design, they have an internal spring which is not fitted very well leaving some ply between the heads/blades, instead of one clean cut you get a little step mark that needs a knife to smooth away.
-After more cuts this became worse until the tips where almost over lapped and at one point a tiny piece of waste gate got in between and needed to be fished out but could have easily got minced in the spring.
-The handles are all metal, potentially slippy and can pinch your hand, which her not painful or useless to have to readjust grip is annoying when making lot of cuts.
-Displeased I boxed them back up to be returned once more, when I open them a few days later to take back they had already startered to spot rust, it was tiny amounts but all over and they are meant to be stainless, that’s very poor for one use.
-if you get a set where the blades are seated correctly they are very sharp and the product would be good, but imo there are a number of other small faults and design issues meaning finding a pair that is put together 100% correctly and doesn’t ware out fast is unlikely.
So that’s my review of the new(ish) citadel cutter. 2/5 stars. Vs the old cutters that I’d give 4/5 starts mainly for durability over so many years and mistreatment.

I look forward to everyone’s feedback, I’d like to get some good new cutters and I’m sure others would to.
Thanks.

I have lots of diffrent ones ,i always clean my cuts up after a snip to make sure that its smooth , however my best pair of cutters i made out of a pair of needle noise pliers i just ground them down copying the profile of other clippers and they are brilliant for accessing the sprues

If you do a search you can find a thread that already discusses various clippers. I've not had any of those issues with the Citadel Cutters. It sounds like you're just nitpicking and looking for some magic cutters that do all the work for you. Every cut you ever make with any snipper you can find will likely require some clean up regardless of what cutter you get; the snipping itself is always going to leave some weirdness on the plastic, even with the flat back.

Buy a pair from walgreens/CVS/wherever for cutting ingrown toenails. They have a curvature to them that makes for a cleaner cut with less cleanup required, and they last for years and years.

These, no doubt in my mind:

https://www.amazon.com/God-Hand-Spn-120-Ultimate-Nipper/dp/B008S51O22

Xuron makes excellent hobby cutters. Around $19 if I recall.

Xuron for me too.
Amazon sell them too.

I have cheapo Hakko side cutters from Amazon. They work awesome for $12. I only use them for plastic so they stay sharp and use an old pair for wire, metal, etc.

I've got a pair of Xuron flush cutters I've had for years.

Also have a pair of electronics nippers with tungsten carbide blades that I use on metal wire (they cut guitar strings effortlessly).

That said, I don't do a lot of work on plastic, so I want my tools to be able to work on metals.

 troa wrote:
If you do a search you can find a thread that already discusses various clippers. I've not had any of those issues with the Citadel Cutters. It sounds like you're just nitpicking and looking for some magic cutters that do all the work for you. Every cut you ever make with any snipper you can find will likely require some clean up regardless of what cutter you get; the snipping itself is always going to leave some weirdness on the plastic, even with the flat back.

Just because you haven't had those issues doesn't mean they don't exist. I don't know what the quality control is like on the GW cutters but my pair have not been great, I've seen reviews of the GW cutters where they show close ups of the cuts and mine definitely don't cut that cleanly, they've also degraded quite quickly. They didn't cut too bad out of the box but after building in the realm of 2 or 3 kits they were noticeably worse.

I've been meaning to replace them with a set of Xuron's but most hobby stores don't stock them here or only stock them intermittently.

Thanks for the feed back, I find xuron comes up quite often, I was wondering weither to try the 410 or the professional sprue cutters. Also I have been looking at Tamiya sharp pointed side cutters (slim profile) has any one used these ones?

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:
Thanks for the feed back, I find xuron comes up quite often, I was wondering weither to try the 410 or the professional sprue cutters. Also I have been looking at Tamiya sharp pointed side cutters (slim profile) has any one used these ones?

Outside of the "God Hand" cutters previously mentioned, the Tamiya ones are probably the best you could buy.

I just use an inexpensive Beadalon flush cutters that I got at Michaels craft store for like 8 dollars. The same pair have served me very well for the last 5 years or so, with no notable loss of cutting edge.

I've used Xuron cutters over the years and am quite happy with them. Use 410s for small stuff and 2175s for heavier stuff. Have picked up a couple of pairs these flush cutters from Harbor Freight for non critical cutting and they work pretty well. https://www.harborfreight.com/micro-flush-cutter-90708.html

God hands. Exponentially better than my xurons

Can you even buy those anymore? Aside from being really expensive I can't see anywhere still selling them and a few sites say they're discontinued.

I will admit, I got over my clipper fetish because at the end of the day you always have to cut some distance away from the model and clean it up with a knife, so if the clipper cut is a bit rough it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference.

I can see where it matters to people who do gundam stuff, because they often don't paint the models so they need to do everything they can to avoid those pale stress marks that appear when you clip. But for me I always paint over it anyway so a bit of discolouration isn't an issue.

kb_lock wrote:God hands. Exponentially better than my xurons

I don't think most people realize how bad Xuron clippers are until they use an actual high quality clipper.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I will admit, I got over my clipper fetish because at the end of the day you always have to cut some distance away from the model and clean it up with a knife, so if the clipper cut is a bit rough it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference.

I can see where it matters to people who do gundam stuff, because they often don't paint the models so they need to do everything they can to avoid those pale stress marks that appear when you clip. But for me I always paint over it anyway so a bit of discolouration isn't an issue.

A clean cut means less work. My Tamiya cutters cut so cleanly that cleanup isn't always necessary and when it is, it's a couple of quick swipes with a sanding stick. The less sanding/scraping that has to be done, the less material that is removed and the more the part is able to keep it's proper shape (this is really important when working with round parts, like tank road wheels). The other benefit to a clean, tight cut is that it lessens the chance to damage the part while trying to remove it from the sprue. My old "nice" Xurons had a nasty habit of breaking tiny parts (grab handles, gun barrels, etc.) while my Tamiya cutters don't; cutting 15mm machine guns from the sprue is ridiculously easy and there's less cleanup involved (which again lessens the chance of breaking a part).

Here's a link to a pretty decent thread of this subject by member Talys:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/639547.page

I've never trusted clippers for delicate parts. For delicate stuff I use a chisel style knife with a small block of wood supporting the underside and just gently push it through.

So the Tamiya ones you rate much higher than the Xurons? One of the few reviews of the Tamiya ones I found compared them to the God Hands and they came off 2nd best, but the Tamiya ones are something I can actually buy from a local store easily enough.

I've flush cut with god hands to the point that I didn't need cleanup at all - I tend not to, as you can obviously overcut and cause work, but they're ridiculous

Xurons, which I believe I did a photo test here like 2 years with, don't even come close to flush cutting



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And looking at it, it is on page 2 of the link zaku212 posted