It doesn’t matter if you are scratch building, converting, or just adding detail to a military vehicle model, you need scale nuts and bolts. Sometimes, you need a lot of them. I have tried just about every technique for making bolt heads with varying success. Salami slicing hex rods resulted in varying thickness and sloping bolt heads. Chiseling off Styrene bolt heads works; but it is difficult to keep them level. I’ve found it nearly impossible to properly position resin nuts and bolts regardless of the type of CA used. So, I was thrilled to get an RP Toolz Hexagonal Punch and Die Set. This tool allows you to punch bolt heads from Styrene strips resulting in perfectly uniform thickness.

This is a high-quality tool from RP Toolz in Hungary. It is made in the European Union from steel, aluminum and Plexiglas. It includes a die that allows you to clamp the Styrene strip, six punches, and a small hammer. It allows you to make bolt heads at 0.7mm, 0.85mm, 1mm, 1.25mm, 1.5mm and 2mm. The hammer feels a bit light to me and might not be up to punching hexes from thicker material.

As plastic modelers, we will be using Styrene strips of the appropriate thicknesses. Should the need arise, you can also use soft aluminum or copper sheet for the material. The thickness of material should not exceed the size of the punch. However, I find that material above .75mm in thickness looks out of scale. To ease placement, I use contrasting colors of Styrene stock – white Evergreen strips for kits molded in dark Styrene, and black Evergreen sheets for use on light Styrene.

To use the tool, slide a strip of Styrene under the appropriately sized hex opening in the die, lightly tighten the thumbscrews to hold it in place, carefully insert the punch and give it a wack with the hammer. Remove the punch and retrieve a perfectly shaped hex bolthead. To make it easier to align the punch and die for the three smaller sizes, the punch has a round rod for alignment. The silver, round rod goes into the hole in the center of the die. This provides proper alignment and prevents damage to the tool. This alignment pin also punches out a round piece in addition to the hex bolt. With my old eyes, I had to wear my Opti visor to separate the round and hex pieces.

Making bolt heads is quick – especially with the three larger sizes. The quality and realism of the three larger sizes was also excellent. The three smaller sizes take more time as you must separate the resulting round piece from the hex piece. The smaller sizes were also less distinct and therefore not quite as realistic at the 1:35^th scale. If you are working in 1:16^th, RP Toolz also makes a larger-sized hex punch and die set that goes from 1.5mm to 5mm.

In addition to simple bolt heads, you can also make nuts in the three larger sizes: 1.25mm to 2mm. Simply use the round piece left over from the alignment pin of the smaller size punch as the bolt shaft and glue it onto the bolt head. If you have a round punch, you can use it to add washers beneath the bolt heads.

Bottom-line, the RP Toolz Hexagonal Punch and Die set is a high-quality, well-made tool. It is a very easy way to make perfectly uniform thick bolt heads in quantity. It works for making nuts, but is a slower, multistep process. The Hexagonal Punch and Die set is available in the US from UMM-USA.

Thanks to UMM and the IPMS Reviewer Corps for providing the review sample.