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Please share your Techniques for overcoming shaky hands or aids for limited dexterity in one hand


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An old sign lettering trick.. rest your hand on a large beanbag. It takes the shape of your hand against it and stabilizes your hand.

This was shown to me by a guy who was hand lettering a model car body… he was using the large bag of M&Ms as his bean bag.. if you can resist eating them!

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8 hours ago, 1972coronet said:

For me personally, I'll take a quarter milligramme of alprazolam if me hands start shaking like Mary Ann with the Shaky Hands

Everyone doesn’t have a Xanax prescription. I don’t mean that in a bad way sir.

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  • bobthehobbyguy changed the title to Please share your Techniques for overcoming shaky hands or aids for limited dexterity in one hand
19 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

An old sign lettering trick.. rest your hand on a large beanbag. It takes the shape of your hand against it and stabilizes your hand.

This was shown to me by a guy who was hand lettering a model car body… he was using the large bag of M&Ms as his bean bag.. if you can resist eating them!

This absolutely works , been doing this for several years ! Anything to support your hand will help . Another trick I do is while hold the part with my left hand and the paintbrush in my right hand I actually rest both arms flat on the bench , this keeps both hand from shaking !

As for fixtures I can't use anything that elevates the part more than about 4 inches above my bench so I limit myself to just a small 2" vise and all kinds of clamps .

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25 minutes ago, bobthehobbyguy said:

Some good ideas. The figure painting sites are a great idea.

Does anyone have any suggestions for fixtures to aid building with limited use of one hand.

you can get vices that have a lot of different movement available in them. the smaller ones of those can be useful for holding bodies or larger parts if you stick some foam to the teeth. i think they are called multi angle vice and i see a lot of rc folks using them

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Depends what you're doing. I'll say that for fine lines you can utilize your other hand to brace with, then upper body motion for moving forward with the line. This is what we do in airbrushing finer work or letters on fabrics or in art work. But this assumes your work piece is stationary. In gluing smaller pieces together anything to kelp support the hand helps as mentioned above. And here is a big one that takes some practice, be firm but don't tense up. At the moment of contacting one piece to another hold your breath for that short period but not for like 30 seconds, don't forget to breath lol.

Between everything you will find your way with practice. Don't give up.

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