In some phone discussion today with another of our stalwart members, we touched on the issue of small parts in our tweezers being lauched into outer space. I am posting a picture of my "working" tweezers that I fashioned out of an old beat up but good steel #5 Tweezer. (the scale is in inches)

When working with tweezers to pick up things and truck them about your bench for assembly, you must depend on "feeling" with your tweezer finger tips the actual pressure on the part you are holding. This means the tweezer points must be short, otherwise you only "feel" the spring of the tweezer tips rather than how hard they are "touching" the part.

Too much "spring" and the part "departs' for another dimension. When I use these tweezers I know exactly how tenderly I am holding something so that it will drop out when I want instead of "flying away" when I don't want!

Note, I sand the inside faces of the tips with emery cloth so they are perfectly parallel and have a slight "grip" on things.

Hi Dave,

If you don’t mind will add what works for me,

Keep them full length, the problem is often badly shaped tweezers, once I have shaped and dressed the external surfaces I than take a large file 12’x ½ and hold the tweezers tips firmly over the end of the file then keeping perfectly flat draw in and out dressing the last 1” this will texture the holding faces with a inline grain and most importantly give two perfectly flat faces, using emory paper, stones or facing left to right will result in rounded faces even if emory is used on a hard back surface it still flexes and rounds, round surfaces are very hard to pick and hold anything
My hairspring tweezers I buff the outer surfaces to allow the needle tips to slide between the coils.
95% of the time I use a large pair of brass tweezers for all handling and placing of parts and disassembly even on the smallest ladies watches don’t be put off with the large size of the brass tweezers to the watch its all about practice..
Steel tweezers will mark. Steel tweezers are harder then the watch parts and will mark.
Steel on steel slip easier
Brass on steel holds much better and does not mark. think softjaws
A gentle practiced touch with tweezers means that I do not damage the faces or blunt them and now need only to dress them after a couple of months continuous use keep checking the tips that they close well with no daylight and adjust often.