How many of you look around and say , what will I use for this part or that part , when you are doing a major rebuild/scratch of a specific vehicle , plane or piece of armor ? Here,s some ideas for all scales . Look around the house , favorite fast food place and yes any restaurant you go to. The local hardware store and auto parts store will work too . There is all kinds of things out there to do the job . And I mean stuff . Starting simply with “sporks” you can use every part of it on a project etc. Pen barrels , toy trucks and cars . filter facings from aquariums et al . Keep an open mind and open eyes , its there , you just have to see it through whatever it is. I wood carve too . Someone once asked how I did a life sized hummingbird out of wood and I just told them what I read about what a famous sculpter said , “I just carve away anything that isn,t a bird " enquote” Tankerbuilder
I’m not afraid to fire up the lathe and milling machine if I think I can make a more realistic part or make up for a nonexistent part. I have used brass, steel and aluminum scraps to good advantage and have no trouble using anything else I can get my hands on to get the job done.
Although sometimes a build gets so frustrating that I wish I had a little C4…
All good ideas there tankerbuilder.
Pat.
Honestly? Very few, these days… Gizmology and Imagineering are dying arts… I’d bet real money that there ain’t but about 1% of modelers that do their own detail work anymore… Shep Paine was my “mentor” and I took the lessons he wrote about back in the 70s about scrounging for detail part materials “everywhere but a hobby shop” to heart…
When my wife sees me in the grocery store, hardware store, whatever-store, staring intently at something totally unrelated to why we’re there, she says, “You’re looking for model parts, aren’t ya?”…[;)]
I even keep baggies, an E-tool, and a wisk-broom/dustpan in the car, just in case I find some interesting shrubs/bushes to grab roots from (for diorama trees), and to collect different kinds/colors of “dirt & rubble” for my dioramas…