I’ve been using the Hasegawa Tritool hobby saws for years. They’re very thin, sharp teethed, and slice through plastic very fast and cleanly. However, they are quite delicate in that they’re very thin and I’ve bent my fair share of these blades. They are simple to use, just hold the small blade in your fingers and slice away at the plastic.

Nothing against these blades as I’m still using them, but yesterday, I finally cracked open one of the three sets of Tamiya hobby saws I had picked up two years ago. I picked up the sets for about 7 bucks a set on a trip to Hong Kong; but I’ve seen them locally and on various online sources. The project I’m working on now needed a little cutting for some of the parts. Opening the package, I cut one of the saws out and immediately started using them like I did the Hasegawa tritool set; holding them in my fingers and cutting away. I found no difference than using the Hasegawa saws. After getting my parts cut, I looked at the instruction sheet that came with the Tamiya saws. Apparently, there are two folds in the blade that once folded, the blade can then be slipped into your standard hobby knife holder. Duh. So I snapped some pictures, took a quick little video, and put it all together here:

For scratch building and cutting plastic, these saws beat the piss out of the x-acto hobby saws when it comes to precision cutting and focus on small parts. But like all the other tools, it’s how you employ them in your builds and what works best for you.

Here’s a 2.5 hour long video showing the build progress for a resin SD Glaug kit cut into 5 half hour long segments.