So what do you hoard/procure which assists you in the hobby ? I can’t resist big paper napkins at restaurants. I grab as many as I can and cut them up into squares for the workbench. You would also find my pockets full of toothpicks. I also like the big plastic containers that Subway put their party platters into. The clear sealable top makes it a great little spray booth. So what do you grab at any opportunity? And what do you use it for ?
I been re-using pill bottles for storage of finished parts waiting to be attached, loose leftover parts so they won’t get away.
I save the caps from plastic water bottles to mix and thin paint for brushing. I was keeping the foam trays from fresh meat for WIPs, but I have plenty now. Flat wood coffee stir sticks for stirring paint, spreading filler, etc. Guitar strings and bits of wire for various detail work. Probably more but that’s what occurs to me right now
Popsickle sticks. They are great source of good quality wood. Make great tool handles when making your own tools. Cut them up lengthwise and you get paint stirrers. Or you can sharpen those cut up pieces with a pencil sharpener and use those as holders to paint small details.
Then wire - there’s thin wire, and thick wire and almost all of them are too good to throw away.
Good luck with your builds and have a nice day
Paweł
The coasters from resturants, I put my beverage on them so I don’t get a wet spot on the bench when I’m working. Cuz you know any sheet of decals are by the laws of the universe are attracted to those spots!
John
Good ideas guys!
I use the plastic squeeze bottles for contact lens solution for airbrush thinners etc. Add the paint to the colour cup, just a squirt from the bottle, and then mix.
[dto:] To the point that I chcck the recycle bin at work. I go through a lot of these. I also transfer paint to the caps when brush painting or dry brushing. The one time I didn’t, and got paint straight from the bottle, I ended up knocking the bottle over. Aluminum acrylic does NOT come off the cutting mat easily.
D
Those plastic faux credit cards that come in the mail. They are basically just small squares of styrene. Clear ones can be used as windows.
I get occasional fruit assortments for my Birthday and sometimes Father’s day, from my son and daughter-in-law. These are sort of like flower assortments, but with fresh fruit, cleaned and ready to eat. The pieces of fruit are stuck on plastic sticks and the other end into a block of styrofoam. Each assortment contains like about two to three dozen of these sticks, about 10 inches long with one end like 1/8 inch diameter, the other about 3/16. They make great stirring sticks for mixing paint. Haven’t bought coffee stirring sticks since they began sending me those things.
I also occasionally save Pringles cans for various modeling uses, including storing those stirring sticks.
Well… I grabbed a few furniture pieces from my work place they were going to toss out. Desk, pull out keyboard drawer tray, hutch (2 - one in my hobby area, the other going in the garage), chair. More are being ready to be tossed so another table, chair, possibly a third hutch, maybe a shelving unit and a small rolling cabinet.
I look at it this way: Go big or go home. ROFL!!!
You nailed it right out of the gate. My “drug” of choice is toothpicks!!!
There are some really good ideas here from the bottle caps to taking napkins.
I mainly do the wire and pill bottle idea.
I had to stop collecting water bottle caps cuz I have too many now. I use them for mixing small amounts of paints for brushing, hold a dab of CA or any type of thick glue like Aleene’s etc, and toss them when done.
I also grab the soft lead foil on some wine bottles. They are great for making safety belts, straps and even panels for aircraft or even armor having a scale thickness. Again, i have a ton of these things!
I also have a ton of Gerber clear infant meal containers and their lids. They are great for storing small parts for my spares stock. I also use the lids as paint pallets to mix different colors.
Automatic transmission filters and green tea bags. Some transmission filters have very fine micro mesh screens and the tea bags I use are made of a very fine nylon resembling micro mesh. Both are great for 1/72 armor projects.
The plastic boxes that some lunch meats come in.
They have a lid that snaps tight. You can separate the build steps and put the pieces in their own box while you work on them and paint them. Then, when the step is finished, you can store the completed assembly in its own box until you need it.
And since the lid does snap tight, if you drop them on the floor, the pieces won’t fly all over.
And cats can’t open them. . .so far.
Long straight pieces of sprue also make good stirring sticks.
And I use pieces of plastic blister packaging as a pallete for mixing paint for figures. When it gets covered in paint, don’t clean it- just toss it.
I save the contact lens containers when we buy contact solution. I use the containers for different pastel chalks that I have purchased and then file down into powder.
I also have wood screwers that can be used for many different tasks, such as for stiring paint, or for elevating road wheels to be painted. The pointy ends are most useful for chasing my wife away from my stash when she starts to ask too many questions.
Where to begin?
When I get Chinese takeout, I salvage the containers. The old-style cardboard ones, which can be unfolded into a serving dish, by the way, yield a piece of good wire for use in pinning parts. The newer-style plastic dishes, oblong, with a clear lid, make good storage boxes on the bench. The soup containers, well, I use them to freeze soup, though I do use one as a dust-free chamber when I dip a canopy in Future and need to let it sit and cure.
I save the red plastic coffee stirrers from Dunkin’ Donuts. They are cruciform in cross-section (there’s a pun) and they are good stock for scratchbuilding. I save the stirring straws, too, also for scratchbuilding.
And I collected a bunch of wooden coffee stirrers at work. They make great planks in 1/72, 1/48 or 1/35. They are just about the right size for US carrier deck planking in 1/48. And when I mentioned to the guy who brings our coffee (affectionately known as “Mister Coffee”) that I use them for modeling, he gave me two boxes.
Also from coffee–we switched to a service that serves one-serving packets. The packets are packaged on plastic rails, for loading into a coffee machine. We detach the packets for single-shot use. I collect those rails. They resemble guard rails and work in 1/24 or 1/20. I’m using a bunch of them to depict pre-fabricated shelter material in a 1/20 Maschinen Krieger build. And the packets have a plastic neck that has a weird, cool shape. I save those, too.
I save the small styrofoam trays my grocery store uses to package fruit. They make convenient temporary trays for holding bits of things for whatever project I’m working on.
I save the cardboard pallets that bottles or cans of juice, or some brands of beer, use to package a case. They also make great trays for keeping everything from one project together.
I salvage wire from old electronic and digital equipment, that’s an old, old scratchbuilder’s tip. Radios, appliances–cut the cord off, if nothing else. Computer equipment? Crack the case and pull the little black doo-dads and bits off the boards, and save those for detailing avionics or other electrical equipment bays. An old mouse looks like a turret on a sci-fi fighting machine. And from printers and scanners, I get good pieces of plate glass.
Old matchsticks can be used for bits of milled wood in small scales.
Pieces of twine and rope yield fiber for making grass in a diorama.
Small rocks and fine gravel and dust from the gutter in front of my house, winds up in my diorama groundwork, as do bits of dried roots. I also have a large jar full of old tea leaves, which I fix to a piece of root with white glue, for small shrubs.
Speaking of jars–I eat a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich every day for lunch, have now for 30 years. I save the plastic peanut butter jars for storing things, on the modeling bench but also out in the garage–nails and screws, wire nuts, the fittings for my compresser. I use the glass jelly and jam jars for soaking pieces in Super Clean for stripping, or mineral spirits, or isopropyl.
I scrounge the little glass jelly jars like you find in gift boxes, or at restaurants, for small amounts of solvent on my work bench, for cleaning my brushes as I paint.
When I buy a new dress shirt (button-down Oxfords), they are usually packaged with a piece of clear plastic to keep the neck shaped, and a little vee-shaped piece to keep the collar shaped in the package. I save those for clear stock. I’ve made smash-molded windscreens from that plastic, as well as to have cut or punched pieces as needed.
Cable ties (zip ties) can be used to replicate ammo feed chutes. I have a small stash of those in various sizes.
Get orange juice in a carton? Does it have a plastic seal that you pull out via a ring? Nice little piece of round, domed plastic. Save it.
How about the threaded plastic cap? Save it.
Old ball-point pens? You get a nib, which looks like a projectile; a plastic tub; a spring, and the bits that make up the plunger. Soak the tube in isopropyl to clean it, and get a wash of ink, too.
Do you like Guinness in cans? Drink the beer, then cut the can open and salvage the plastic widget that held a shot of nitrogen to help make your foamy glass foamy. Wash it out, and you have a nice little sphere of plastic. I saw a guy make a targeting pod on a 1/35 helicopter out of one.
Dental floss containers can look like storage boxes or crates for sci-fi subjects. I saved a bunch of those, too.
There are probably some that I’ve forgotten. I’ll stumble across them when I least expect to.
Wow! I am not alone!! Lol
If I think I can use it, I save it. 
There was( or is) a frozen food product that comes as a two stage bowl, some sort of rice steamer, microwavable, the top is like a sieve and the bottom holds the rice. In my brain I saw a dip tank for Future Floor Polish,( ya know the commercial clear coat), have not tried it yet as it is buried under countless other doo dads I have laying around. But I know EXACTLY where it is.