I am on my 4th build and am now starting to complie a bunch of spare stuff. Especially with the Dragon stuff that has many extra parts for different versions. How do you guys organize your spare stuff? Do you leave it on the sprues or take them all off? Put them in some sort of organizer? Right now I have been leaving them on the sprues and put all the extra sprues in a gallon zip lock then in a plastic tote but I think there is a other ways to keep organized. I often scracth build something and forget I had a spare of something that might have worked after the fact. Any tips?
Just to save space, I usually snip the spares from the sprue & throw them into a little craft-size ziploc bag. (I found some at a dollar store.) Then I take a Sharpie pen & label the outside with the original kit + manufacturer + scale.
I use old model boxes.
Weapons, bombs, missiles, etc in one box. Sprues clipped down to save space.
Fiddly bits that might come to use in a pit or gearbay go into another box.
Everything else gets clipped off the sprue and tossed into another box.
Also have another box for decals and another for left over PE.
Yupper… I use all kinds of stuff from Tupperware-type boxes to the parts organizers with the little drawers… All parts get cut form the sprues and the sprues tossed, with the exception of some sprues that are of a color I might need and isn’t common. For those I’ll cut some straight lengths and keep them too, like red, yellow, white, and clear…
I trimm the sprues right down, just leaving the bit around the parts, leaving the part number. I put mine into tupperware type boxes organised in catagories. Any long lengths of sprue i want for stretching i put ashide seperatly.
I do the zip lock bag thing, and mark on the bag with the manufacture and name. The instructions are kept filed in a file cabinet, and I can refer to those if I need to identify a part. Spare decals are also kept in zip bags with info in a plastic shoe box. I find many sizes of the bags available in the craft section of my local Walmart and Hobby Lobby stocks the as well.
I bought myself a cheap set of drawer organizers from Target-- the type you use to organize your desk drawers with tacks, paper clips, staples, etc. The various sized boxes and trays are prefect for the different scales I work with. I have a lot of cabinets in my shop so I can organize things into armor and aircraft and the like pretty easy…one drawer for PE, one for ordinance and drop tanks for planes, one for clear parts, etc…
I have A Plethora of Parts I show you how I store them.