Soft touch finger

[mklotz]

My welder's Grasshopper (TM) third hand tool works well for silver soldering (I'm not a weldor)...



but is way too heavy for more delicate work, especially thin wood used in modelmaking. What I needed was a really lightweight finger that was adjustable in both attitude and pressure applied.

So I dug around in my scraps of brown stuff and came up with this monstrosity...



The body is a 2 x 4 cutoff and the "finger" is made of popsicle sticks with spacers cut from the length of 3/8 x 3/8" that forms the "forearm" and the "outrigger" that prevents tipovers. The body...



has a 1" blind hole that can be filled with washers to provide more finger pressure. The hole can also hold a small plastic bottle partially filled with bird shot (see second picture) for more precise pressure control than I'll ever need.

This photo...



shows the finger. Three adjustable height positions (more are easily obtainable with a 3 mm drill) and an axial hole through the "fingertip" that has a 4-40 bolt to allow various future attachments. (A spreader bar and a V-block for cylinders will probably be the first to be made.)


This build was a real vacation from more serious shop work. No plans were drawn, just a vision of what it should resemble in my head. No detailed dimensioning or measuring, sizes were determined by the stock found in the brown stuff bin. Design was changed during construction (guided by TLAR logic) and errors (like screw holes drilled in the wrong orientation) were allowed to remain without agonizing over it. While I don't recommend that you do all your work this way, an occasional excursion into slapstick construction can be fun and a great stress reliever; it can even produce a useful tool.