Hello modelers.

Most of us know the ol' E guitar string trick for antennas on our models. I recently discovered an awesome solution for "something more".

Spring handled acupuncture needles! You can get a box that will last you, and all of your modeling pals a lifetime for about $15. They come in many different gauges and lengths, and you can clip off the spring portion to suit your needs (the needle is a separate piece inside of the coil).

I still use the E string for the long whip antennae, but I love using these for the ancillary stubby ones often seen on armor.

Hope you found this useful!

Interesting idea. Are they any easier to cut than guitar strings? Those things wreck my diagonal cutters, but I love them since they don't break or bend the way stretched sprue does.

They're really springy and cut easily with wire cutters. I've never used sprue nippers on wire... (I bought a pair of cuticle cutters from the Dollar Store for snipping wire). I hear you on the guitar strings, they are hard AF.

Would it work to heat, anneal, the part where the cut should be ?
/ Robin

I've tried that with mixed results. When I clip them when they are hard, I get a nice, crisp clean cut. When annealed they bend a bit at the point of the cut.

Correct. Annealing, to the degree it works on stainless steel, tends to undo all the properties that make guitar strings so useful for this purpose. Uneven heating causes warping, and once softened the string is more susceptible to bending.

Best option with guitar strings is just to use a more or less disposable set of cutters that are used only for that purpose and just replace them when the jaws no longer get the job done.