Thanks Eric. I did play around with just Skin and was able to select the verts just by clicking on them, I look at the skin or die script and since it sounds very useful. Alex
Find the "Skin or die" script, should be a link in the plugins sticky. It has an option to hide sets of verts while in Skin. When you select the visible skin verts, the hidden verts may look like they're still being selected, but they aren't being weighted.