A frequent problem when doing extreme close-up work is that you can get in your own light, making it hard too see the very thing you're working on. Shesto Ltd. have a potentially very handy little 3-in-1 tool for just such occasions - a pair of tweezers with a built-in lamp and magnifier.

The tweezers are stainless steel ad well finished with sharp tips that are ideal for gripping tiny items such photo-etched levers etc. The lamp is an LED "bulb" powered by 3 x LH927 watch-type batteries. It's pretty bright - certainly good enough for modelling work - and should have a long battery life if you remember to turn it off. Finally, there's the magnifier, which according to the specs offers 1.75 x magnification, but to me seems more like 3 x at a useful working distance.

The tool unfolds to allow you to use each element individually or in combination so, for instance, you can flip the magnifier back out of the way and work will just the lamp and tweezers. Very handy, as using the magnifier can be a bit disorientating at first. Because it's necessarily quite small, so the area in focus is correspondingly limited, but I can foresee occasions when it will be a life-saver for really fiddly jobs - it just takes a bit of getting used to.

Conclusion

Shesto's LED Magnifier Tweezers are a simple but novel idea. I do wonder if they were originally designed for first aid tasks such as removing splinters, but they will certainly be a neat addition to any modelling toolkit.

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