Spares box or bin?

[Pete in Lincs]

I don't get into the armour section very often as I usually scratchbuild Science fiction subjects.

I usually use bits of other models to do this, notably bits of tanks that I source as boxes of bits from ebay.

They don't show up very often though, which made me wonder.

How many armour builders, when they replace kit bits with resin or brass, will keep the original parts, and how many will just bin those original parts. 

I think it's about 50/50 with Aircraft builders. Are spares boxes common practice with armour modellers?

 

[FG2Si]

I've got a few boxes of leftover kit parts. In fact,  when I recently finished my most recent Tamiya Spitfire (my 9th) I took a pic of all the leftover sprues from them as they were piling up. :

 

 

They've certainly come in handy over the years so I'm glad I have them. 

 

Carl

 

 

 

[spruecutter96]

This reminds me of a tip I read (too many) years ago in "The Verlinden Way Volume 1: On Plastic Wings":

 

Never throw anything away!

 

Chris. 

[Murdo]

I never throw any parts away (much to SWMBO's irritation) cos I never know when I'll need a nicely detailed part for summat else. I scratchbuild a lot of stuff y'see.

 

I've been known to raid the rubbish bin looking for something I saw the family throw in it that I thought "might come in useful" (much to SWMBO's irritation).

 

Long ago she reached the stage of asking "will this be useful to you" before throwing something in the bin.         

[Pete in Lincs]

7 hours ago, Murdo said:

"will this be useful to you"

It happens to me too.

[Tim R-T-C]

I like spare parts from any ground vehicle builds as they often make good debris for diorama scenes.

[s.e.charles]

it can become overwhelming

[Yorkshire man]

I usually keep spares if it is of a good quality, other wise it goes in the bin. The usual problem is then finding the bit you kept  !

[Stef N.]

I've got three boxes full of spares, the vast majority of it from two Miniart kits.😀

[Pete in Lincs]

3 hours ago, Stef N. said:

the vast majority of it from two Miniart kits

Are they that bad?

Thanks for the replies so far, guys. It's always interesting to hear how other people do stuff.

[Stef N.]

16 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Are they that bad?

Thanks for the replies so far, guys. It's always interesting to hear how other people do stuff.

They are good kits, if somewhat fussy, but they cram their kits with so many sprues that by the end you still have loads of bits left. There's a lot that won't get used but spare wheels, bits of track, weapons etc. are always quite handy.

[Kiwidave4]

Basically I always save. However as I specialise in Post War British vehicles I only save stuff that I will be able to use. So, for instance when I built a Churchill 6.5 inch AVRE I sold the unused Crocodile bits. When I had a go at a Russian vehicle, a MAZ fire/crash tender, there was much of the donor Scud launcher left over so it got sold too.

 

My last build was the Gas Turbine Conqueror, so again a lot of kit was unused. So far I have kept it while working on my Mk1 and Mk2 builds as a possible source of bits, but eventually I will strip the sprues of 'generic' parts like smoke generators and field telephone box and sell the remains along with all the AA and Cromwell Models resin Conqueror parts that I will have left.

 

It has to be mentioned that I only average one build a year, so the amount of 'left overs' is pretty small, although on the other hand my preference for scratch conversions means that the

left over pile from one model can be quite big.

[s.e.charles]

13 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Are they that bad? ….

MiniArt kits are fantastic in their subject matter & execution.

6 hours ago, Kiwidave4 said:

…..  I only average one build a year.... 

refreshing to hear a realistic time frame for completing a good model!

 

what I have found in building a few miniart kits:

 

often there are parts which will be unused because their assignment is for a variant. 

 

a service to their own production & modelers' sanity would be to replace multi-gated straight castings with a variety of brass wire sizes.

[Bullbasket]

13 hours ago, Stef N. said:

They are good kits, if somewhat fussy, but they cram their kits with so many sprues that by the end you still have loads of bits left. There's a lot that won't get used but spare wheels, bits of track, weapons etc. are always quite handy.

If I ever get around to building Miniart's Tiran 4, there will be tons left over, as I don't bother very much with the interior. But I don't throw anything away. My mantra is, you never know when that piece will come in useful. Hence the following;

 

That's just some of the Sherman stuff. There are a "few" more boxes, plus some with parts for other tanks.

 

John.

[Stef N.]

Amen to that John. Will I ever need a side wall for the interior of a T-55 or the turret shell of a King Tiger? Probably not, but they are vehicles that I will revisit in the future so "you never know". Some chrome parts from old Tamiya motorbikes have gone but they were poor quality anyway so will not be missed.

[Pete in Lincs]

5 hours ago, Stef N. said:

the turret shell of a King Tiger?

This is how I'm using a couple of those turrets on my latest Sci Fi WIP.

 

[Stef N.]

That's a brilliant use for spares. Just you, your imagination and boxes of plastic. Excellent. I'll keep an eye on that.👍

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday all, an interesting thread here. I know you're talking armour here, whereas I build ships. But I guess a battleship is simply a floating tank, albeit a very big one! I also keep just about everything, including the runners/sprues. I like to modify and scratch build ship's fittings and it is surprising what can be used for alternative parts. Regards, Jeff.

[AltcarBoB]

I raided my bits box last night. I am building a 1/72 Arsenal VG33 fighter aircraft and I needed a radiator core. I rooted in the box looking for a piece of grill I could cut to fit the radiator housing when I spotted a Hawker Hurricane radiator core. A few strokes with the emery board and it dropped into place.

[Mike]

On 23/04/2020 at 23:42, spruecutter96 said:

Never throw anything away!

That's a dangerous path to follow too closely.  I'd throw out the sprues and maybe keep the parts to keep things a little more compact.

 

Specific exceptions to that rule should be: Feces, urine, out of date food, packaging, toilet paper.  That's not an exclusive list, but if you can't get in the kitchen or the house starts to reek and fill with flies, you might be keeping too much

 

 

[Retired Bob]

Sticking with armour, Dragon kits usually leave you with a box half full of optional bits, sometimes whole sprues are provided for just one or two small parts, I have more Sherman suspension units  and wheels than you could shake a stick at!  Do I keep them, of course, from past experience I have kept bits for years and just after I threw them away I found I had a need for them. 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Retired Bob

[Bullbasket]

Sherman suspension units never, ever get thrown away. They come in useful if I'm building a Revell/Italeri Sherman with those horrible split down the middle units. And turrets, transmission housings, rear hull plates, engine decks et al. I've managed to build a complete model from what's left over.

 

John.

[spruecutter96]

3 hours ago, Mike said:

That's a dangerous path to follow too closely.  I'd throw out the sprues and maybe keep the parts to keep things a little more compact.

 

Specific exceptions to that rule should be: Feces, urine, out of date food, packaging, toilet paper.  That's not an exclusive list, but if you can't get in the kitchen or the house starts to reek and fill with flies, you might be keeping too much

 

 

Mike, do you mean that the second paragraph is not the normal state-of-affairs? I have to say, I'm deeply shocked! I find that the correct time to clean my house is when there is a faint, annoying tinge of green hanging in the air... and then the cleaning is done under protest! 

 

Once saw a docco on TV in which a council cleaning team had to go into some old fella's flat after the occupant had slipped off this mortal-coil. Let's just say that cleaning wasn't a huge priority for this gent. Stuff and decay piled everywhere. Although he had a fully functional, flushing toilet, he elected to store "No.1's" in old cider-bottles and the solids in carefully-folded newspaper, which he piled up in a corner of one room. The cleaning-team foreman looked around his flat and declared "I have a real feeling his Dyson might be on-the-blink."

 

I had to laugh at that one-liner!

 

Chris. 

[JohnT]

On 23/04/2020 at 23:00, FG2Si said:

I've got a few boxes of leftover kit parts. In fact,  when I recently finished my most recent Tamiya Spitfire (my 9th) I took a pic of all the leftover sprues from them as they were piling up. :

 

 

 

Crikey Carl. Last time I heard of that many Spitfire parts they were in boxes under a runway in Myanmar 

 

It would be interesting to see what you could make of them

[Gorby]

31 minutes ago, spruecutter96 said:

some old fella's flat after the occupant had slipped off this mortal-coil. Let's just say that cleaning wasn't a huge priority for this gent.

Many years ago I foolishly offered to help clear a house of some old bloke in Newcastle. He lived in is his parents house and when they died, at least thirty previously, he hadn't done any cleaning from that day on. It looked like he had a two tone bath - grey at the top and black bottom half; the light shades looked like they had fur coats on as the dust was about an inch thick and the kitchen sink made me want to vomit – which probably wouldn't have been a bad idea as it would have made the place more fragrant . The oddest thing was that we found four large biscuit tins that were carefully taped shut. When I opened them, they were filled with pencil stubs no longer than an inch or so.

 

People are weird.