"What are your favorite scratchbuilding/conversion bits?" Topic

I am not really thinking about purpose made items like GW-bitz or spare parts from multipose figures or other purpose-made miniature/wargaming items.

I *am* talking about household items or items you can easily find at the hardware store and the utility of which my not be obvious.

Here are the ones I can think of offhand:

Zip Ties: link
The lock portions make great details for industrial buildings, vehicles, and such. And for 25/28mm figures they can even serve as backpacks. The tie portions can be used for all kinds of industrial tracks, rails, ect.

Three hole punch+plastic card: quick and easy round shields for 20mm – 1/72 scale warriors.
Design-punches (stars, suns, ect) that you can find at Michael's can allow you to make great raised devices for shields.

Plastic flip-caps on soy milk or vegetable stock cartons: picture
The top portion makes for a GREAT closed door for 28mm-20mm buildings. The bottom portion can be used for an open-door archway.

Plastic cutlery. The handles can be used for spacecraft hulls. The tines of plastic forks can be use for swords and other edged/piercing weapons for 28mm figures.

Two-pronged plastic party food picks: these are the cheap dollar store kind. If they have barbs at the end of each prong, the prongs can be easily used for 28mm gun barrels-with a sight built in! I couldn't find a picture, but these are pretty easy to find in the states.

Okay, those are some of my most oft-used ones. You get the idea. Anyone else?

Visit the craft jewelry aisles in a store like Michael's or AC Moore.
Beads, springs, cones, clips, etc. I assembled my Phlogiston Extraction Engines from these.

Cable staples came in handy when I wanted to affix the telescoping brass tubing sections for my VSF ATAT Uhlan Spar Torpedo Lancers.

Oh, and brass rod and tubing of course.

The toothpick is my most used material and tool outside of the xacto blade and paint brush.

ZOIDS models. Each one a whole galaxy of reusable parts…

Plastic or resin knitting needles! See the Blog for all the uses I have for them, perfect for turrets, rings and even coffee pots!

Tony
dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com

Plastic salsa bowls.

picture

Turn upside down and makes a pretty strange dome style sci fi looking structure. The platic is easy to shape to make doors and windows.

LLC aka Ron

I love salsa bowls!
picture

Where are you finding those salsa bowls? Those are great.

Chuck

I have found them at Dollar Tree and Walmart, Chuck.

Cotton batting (smoke, clouds)

Steel wool (smoke)

burlap -- all kinds of stuff

mjc

the little 'lock tags' used to hold price-tags on some articles of clothing or seperate pieces to each other?

now SOME are just the 't and tab'…but there are others that have a little 'cone' with slits (one-way device). and a pointed, short piece that goes thru…followed by 'beads' on the rest of the plastic…

0-0-0-0-0--->

like that…only the 'cone' is at the other end from the arrow on the little stick…

the 'bottom line' is that with a bit of greenstuff you can make the cone-arrow part, (once inserted and rest trimmed off)…into some KILLER looking sci-fi blaster pistols, rifles and even ray cannon tips!

And if you go to the clothing section/dressing rooms of a clothing store…(like wallyworld)…if you ask the clerk about the tabs…(which like temp 'cuffs' have to be cut/broken' to seperate items or price tags…there's usually a pile of them..(USED!)…cluttering up their desks or tables…

There are multiple varieties of the same 'concept' as the temp 'cuffs'/one-way tag things…depending on the clothing or even other items…but if you just LOOK around…you'd be surprised what you can find and while they may give you some 'strange looks'…(been there, done that)…the result is you end up finding all sorts of 'cast-offs' of similar nature that NORMALLY end up in the rubbish bin…that can be used for lotsa 'stuff'…

Slishfully,

Sgt DWW-btod…(and yes, you'll see some examples of 'modified' lock-tabs VERY shortly!!!! bwah-hah-ha!)

at Home Depot or Menards…the separators for the floruscent light bulbs. there a a few shapes but they make great sci-fi cooridor walls or (some shapes) heavy doors.

Using some for my Aliens set up.

They are either in paper mache kind of material or a vacu formed styro.

Either way, I have tons.

Always good for something.

(actually used a few for some 6mm platoon landing ships (kind of an equivilant to a starlifter carrying up to 6 tanks or 9 apcs).

Lock-tabs, light-bulb seperators, knitting needles-this is getting very interesting. And I will have to pay a visit to the bead aisle at Michael's, methinks.

I like snap fasteners you get on clothes. They make great hatch/vent/valve wheels.

Sand is the other which I get from a local beach. Great for texuring walls, old wrecks and basing.

Sheet styrene,wooden coffee stirers, balsa scraps and virtually any incomprehensable 'found' object.

Medical waste is a great source of little plastic bits; I was hospitalized for a while, and noted that every syringe has a little round knurled plastic cap that gets discarded right away; there are countless other separators pieces and packing pieces that make great bits.

Plastic bottle caps are a favorite of mine; they make decent turrets, exhaust ports, and other parts. They could be used as wheels on a 28mm scale APC. Some of these caps have a flip-top as well, which make great turret cupolas. Toothpaste caps?

I'll second others on the toothpick, coffee stirrer, and popsicle stick front.

Jim