Modellers Little Helpers - Vertigo Jigs

[DocRob]

Hola Plastic Cement addicted Community,

Since some weeks I tried to figure out which kind of jig would be the best and most flexible to assemble, paint and rig single and double winged planes of different sizes and shape (hope to avoid a triplane ). I tried to contact a member of LSM because I liked his construction of a metal moveable arm with an attached metal jig, but the attempt to made a contact failed (https://forum.largescalemodeller.com/topic/3175-bos-model-claw-by-johan-bos-aka-pfuf/) and so I did some research about jigs and ordered one made by Vertigo.

I recently recieved the package from Slovak company Vertigo-miniatures which included two separate sets of jigs.
"EVO 3224 (VMP007)" is the basic jig for monoplanes and "Upgrade set Basic+EVO for 3224 (VMP011)" enables you to enhance the jig for biplanes.  
http://www.vertigo-miniatures.com/vertigo/eshop/15-1-VERTIGO-JIGS)

 

The Package includes the very cleanly contured transparent acrylic parts, some of them with engraved scales on, lots of screws, some rubber feet and some foam material for protecting the models. The acrylic parts are one sided secured with an adhesive foil, which has to be removed before assembly (If the parts are engraved the protection foil is always on the other side). You have to glue all the angled parts and the traverse triangles. The manual suggests to use CA glue (which I did) or Epoxy glue. Since I didn't use Future before glueing  with the CA, I got a little fogging on the transperencies, but hey, it is a tool, so no harm done.
All in all the assembly took me about an hour and there were no difficulties to master after reading the A4 printed manual sheets. Everything fitted perfectly and no parts were missing. As an ex engineer I would have liked a better quality for the screws, but the included ones do the job.

That's the parts count of the two packages without the screws.

The monoplane setup

Biplane setup

With Hasegawa 1/32 Raiden for size comparison (three point fixation).

The jig is labeled for 1/24, 1/32 and 1/48 scale, but my tiny 1/72 Mig-17 finds a save place too (four point fixation).

Some more details

Scales are engraved preciesely and you can adjust all the angles.

My final thougts are, that the jig is a very flexible tool which will act as the often mentioned third hand in many cases of assembling, painting and decaling and yes, rigging, without ruining your bird by permanetly touching it and break loose tiny parts (own experience). It is robust and widely adjustable and will adopt to nearly every kit. The T-shape of the parts supporting the kit give you the possibility to secure your kit with a rubber band. 
You would have guessed, that I higly recommend these Vertigo jigs,

although I will construct a one armed one myself in some future time, especially made for maximum flexibility while airbrushing kits.

Cheers Rob