Just wondering what kind od disposable suppies you folks go through the most. For me, it is toothpicks. I got through lots per week. Fortunately they are cheap, and even a small box has hundreds of them, so they don’t take much storage space. I keep a dispensor on my benchtop.
Next is Q-tips. I use them a lot, and they take up a lot more space. I don’t liike the dispensers they come in.
Next is stirring sticks. My son often gives me prepared fruit packages that have the fruit on the ends of plastic rods stuck into a styrform block. Those rods make great stirring sticks
These days I am going through them faster than my supply. I am going to have to pick up coffee stirring rods again.
I go through those small drills at a more moderate rate, but they are not inexpensive. I have come to accept them as disposabe supplys, replacable after not many uses.
Post-It Notes. I use those for setting my airbrush pattern, mixing epoxy, and little drops of super glue. They’re great for all of those things and leftover epoxy and super glue can be removed from the work area and disposed of before I have a chance to get my fingers or hands into them on accident.
I use many of the things you have mentioned, Plus! The packages of Rags you can get at Harbor Freight. I use them for model scrubbing and Brush cleaning rags. Unlike many folks, I use a three step process for cleaning brushes, being as how I use Regular Enamels not Acylic enamels. There are some friends that keep me supplied with McDonalds coffee stirrers and such things.
Disposable options are at the same time more polluting. You should think about using reusable modeling tools and other reusable accessories, this way together, little by little, we will help not to destroy our planet.
Toothpicks and wood coffee stirring sticks I don’t worry about- very biodegradable. Same with the cotton. I am assuming the shafts of q-tips are rolled paper-is that true?
I just stopped using some allmust unusable toilet paper- way to thin. There were three remaining rolls. Found on utube lots of videos on uses of toilet paper for crafts, including making water for dioramas.
Cotton swabs, toothpicks and my left-over business cards used to mix 5 minute epoxy on. Use 1 section of a card and cut it off and dispose of it. Had a box and a half (150) left over when I retired in '98 and still have about 30 to 40 left.
Hmmmm…we use toxic chemicals to assemble and finish plastics. I’m not sure scale model building is exactly enviro-friendly Whether using disposable or reusable mixing tools.
Cotton swabs and pipe cleaners for airbrush cleaning, lint-less paper towels because all cloth rags get repurposed until they start to disintegrate, wet/dry sandpaper, sanding sticks, toothpicks to apply CA. For mixing resins and epoxies, I use wooden coffee stirers up to tongue depressors. Aluminum foil to line mixing containers for the same materials. Microbrushes for various tasks, the sticks often repurposed as mixing sticks.
For small mixing or containing tasks, I use sewing thimbles. Epoxy a large washer to the tip to keep them from tipping. Easy to clean with cotton swabs.
Ages ago I made a permanent steel stiring stick by flattening one end of a welding rod, filing and sanding the surface smooth. It also serves as a transfer tool. I also made one out of an old brush’s nylon handle that I use to mix paint in the airbrush cup. It won’t scratch the cup or damage the needle, and it’s easy to wipe clean.
I save the plastic and rubber end caps from anything that comes with them to use as mixing containers. Often easy to clean, sometimes even of hardened epoxy or resin.
I don’t so much recycle, as repurpose. When it can’t be repurposed, it gets recycled if possible.
I have used the cheapest available(with no embossed “Softness” quilting on it).For-Tarps, Canopies(Ship Bridges and such).It’s actually not hard to work with.The nain thing is this. Make some up but , on a piece of Glass, that way when dry, you can take a straight edge razor and peel it of the glass with no damage.