How much difference do nippers make?

[HellCat Gundam]

Despite building models for nearly a decade, I have never owned a pair of model nippers. Early on I just kinda snapped pieces off and for the last few years I've used a decent pair of scissors to try and cut parts off as cleanly as possible. That works ok, but not often as I'd like.
Whilst browsing eBay I came across one of the SD Sangokuden tool sets, which includes a pair of nippers with handles detailed like the protagonist's swords. This got me wondering if maybe it was time to get serious and grab a pair. How well do they work? I'm specifically interested to know how clean they cut the parts off, since most videos I've seen imply with a decent set you should have a near perfect cut.

[Bazookafied]

I don't own any "official Bandai Model Nippers" or anything of the sort, but I recently bought a pair for plastic model kits from a hobby shop. I don't use them to cut the parts clean off the tree but rather to cut closely so then I can go in and clean it up with my exacto knife. They do work well though and there's less of a chance of damaging your parts by just tearing them off the tree.

[wavehawk]

The main reason you get nippers is because it separates the parts fast enough and neatly enough from the tree for you to start working on. I used to pull parts off (fast, but you might rip holes in the part) or cut them off with a cutter/X-Acto knife (neat, but time consuming and risky). The key thing is: Never cut close to the part.

There's two or three kinds of nippers out there, so make sure you know what you plan to do with them. I've got three--a mini-nipper (no brand), a Tamiya flat nipper, and a cheap nipper I got from Kmart that was for jewel and craft hobbyists. All three of them can cut stuff off trees, but there are other notes;

The BB Sangokuden ones are your basic side-cutting parts nippers; snip them off the trees, that's it. The Tamiya Nipper I have is pretty much the same thing as Bandai Nippers. Even so, they can be used to etch/scribe lines--I usually sand my kits after gluing them to remove the parting line, and the using on end of the Tamiya Nipper, I can actually rescribe details that I sanded off accidentally.

The mini-nipper I have was meant for Mini 4WD kits, it's actually a bit stronger than the Tamiya one because it's nipping 'bite' is thicker. That makes it harder to cut away parts from small gaps in the tree, but on the other hand I can reasonably cut the main runners themselves--this is the one I use most often, since it's easy to carry, the grip is more comfortable than the Tamiya one, and I use it to cut styrene strip, actual parts, etc. for customizing kits.

The cheap craft nipper has a slightly curved 'bite', and is similar to the mini-nipper, and was the first nipper I bought (also, the cheapest--3/4ths the price of the Tamiya and 1/2 the price of the Mini). As a general-purpose, cheap tree nipper it does fine, but you need to cut/sand the bits off afterwards. And since it's a craft nipper (thus not only for plastic) you can use it to cut small bits of wire if you use them on your customizations.

[GundamDX]

Is it so hard to find nippers that cut beautifully cleanly?

I'm not quite ready my little one to use a knife yet, so I bought a few different ones:

1. A quite professional looking pair from Hong Kong (will add brand later)
Excellent for cutting from sprues, but horrible for nipping the flash.


2. A pair of flash cutters from HLJ
It seems to pinch the flash instead of cutting it cleanly, a bit of a waste of money.


3. A wire cutter from a UK store
Best of the lot, it is actually meant for cutting wires for train track models, recommended to me by a non-gunpla making friend.


It depresses me that the best thing I have found is either the wire cutter or a good quality pair of nail clippers!

[wavehawk]

IMHO, for flash, you're better off using a knife or sanding the flash from the part. Since flash is usually overflow of plastic residue that seeps through when a kit is molded, or some other random defect, it usually doesn't turn up in a regular fashion around kits (not just Gunpla, but kits in general). Expecting a nipper to cut all of them is, frankly, asking a bit too much for a purpose-built tool.

Nippers are primarily for parts separation. There are some other model kit nippers for more specific uses, but I haven't used them.