One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Primary Heat Exhaust Interchange Unit

Any miniature modeler will tell you that to be any good, you need to have a steady hand and excellent focus.  But I think the best ones (or at least the poorer ones,) will tell you it takes vision; the vision to look at something and see what it could be.

And that's why I have so much random garbage in my collection.

I don't mean 'garbage' as in things of little worth, I mean garbage, detritus that sane people throw away because it has no real purpose or value.  Many modelers (especially those who build terrain,) begin to collect and hoard weird looking bits for use in a project.

Sometimes you find something and say "wow! that's just what I need to complete my project."  But all too often, what we actually say is "wow!  that thing looks cool, I will hold on to it in the vain hope that one day I will undertake some project that might utilize that piece."

These are the end caps of giant spools of construction paper  that they use at my school.  Can you believe they were going to just throw these away?  I plan to turn these into some kind of industrial turbines with catwalks all around them, or starship thrust nozzles.  Someday...

And so it goes into your 'bitz box,' a term that comes from the fine folks at Games Workshop, about whom there enough opinions, and I can add nothing useful.  More likely, you may end up putting it into one of several bitz boxes, both because you subdivide them by topic (mini pieces from sprues, extra vehicle parts, or terrain elements,) and because you accumulate so much over time.

You might even have to start sorting out your bits into little drawers...

Of course, the first rule of modeling is to never throw anything away.  When you have a model kit, wheher it be a model of the U.S.S. Nimitz or a unit of Catachan Jungle Fighters, the box comes with more pieces than you are likely to use.  Aircraft models, for example, usually have options for building them with landing gear extended or retracted.  If you build it retracted, so that you can hang the model for display as if in flight, you have some very useful landing gear pieces leftover.  Miniature kits will inevitably leave you with extra heads, arms and accessories that can be used again in the future.

But then there are things that were never meant to be used in modeling.  Things all around you can be pur to a new use (think of it as recycling,) simply by looking at them in a new way.  That is the real trick; being able to look at a single object and run through multiple permutations of how it might look in a different context.

Is this just a cap from a tube of toothpaste?

Or is it merely waiting for a quick coat of silver paint and some scrap paper to become a trashcan?

Once you have developed 'model vision,' which can be viewed as either a gift or an illness, you start to see physical objects as disparate elements, and try to see how you could use it to represent something in 28mm scale.

Now to be sure, you needn't ever collect such things; the internet is vast, my children, and there are manufacturers out there that have cast nearly anything you can imagine in lead, pewter or resin.  And if you are able to pay their price (pretty much never cheap,) you can have all the sci-fi control panels and generators, modern era furnishings and soda machines, or stone altars and dungeon grates for fantasy games that your heart could ever desire.

But for those with vision, those with creativity, and for those with children and tight budgets, there is the fine art of making your own stuff.  But to do that, you need raw materials.

This means keeping your eyes open.  Hardware stores are a great source of bitz (other terms for pieces that are there to make a model look good are gubbins, greeblies and mulch.)  washers, odd nuts and flanges (heh heh, he said 'flanges,') can all be used to create just the look you are going for, especially of you are going for a sci-fi piece.  We always expect sci-fi or other high tech setting pieces to have lots of doodads all over it, so slapping a small round washer here and there, or a section of grating made of window screen can go a long way.

Likewise craft stores can be treasure troves of bits.  If you have not been to a craft store to check out what they have in the bead section these day, you really should.  I picked up a multipack of round wooden beads of various sizes, and have put them to use as everything from the globes on a street light to the eyes of a shoggoth.  My next plan is to use the larger ones to make eyebots and Mister Handy robots from Fallout.  Even decorative buttons from the fabric section can sometimes be a great addition to any project, either as wheels, shields, or even wall decorations.

Have a Ghost Rider mini but want it to be a normal biker?  You're gonna need wheels that aren't made of fire.  Enter $1.29 bag of round shiny beads and voila!  Just paint the beads as tires and you're ready to hit the road.

And don't forget the wooden crafts section.  Those little bags of wooden shapes have thousands of uses.  Glue them on to become access panels, hatches, signs, or what have you.  ANd they make 3d shapes that can be surprisingly useful.

Wooden flower pot shapes, painted terracotta.  Add the plume from an Empire knights set and paint green, and you have a lovely potted plant for your house.  If it's a haunted house, just use some green pipe cleaner and now it's a murderous, animated plant.  Thanks again, craft store!

And then there is the dollar store toy section.  The crappy, vaguely sad knock-offs they sell there sometimes conceal real gems.  off-market toy producers get their hands on molds from other (often larger) toy companies, and then package a bunch of stuff together, even if it's not the same scale.  So you can find a really crappy 3.5" action figure packaged in with dungeon dressing originally sold as part of the Mage Knight line.  You will find clunky pirate figurines with melted faces in the same package as some really neat little rowboats that work great in 28mm scale.  Take a peek next time you are there (don't be ashamed, we all do it,) and see what you can find, and what it could be with a little alteration.

Some craft store and dollar store bounty:  The columns are of course cake decorations, and the cage is the aforementioned knockoff Mage Knight toy from the dollar store.  The wood barrels in front are craft store barrels (super cheap,) and the larger barrels and crate stacks are from those "Christmas Village" sets, which are indestructible resin, come prepainted, and go on sale after the holidays!

But the best stuff is free.  People throw interesting things away all time (because they are garbage,) and some of those things belong in your bitz box.  Look at things and take away their color.  Take away transparency and context, and separate them into their constituent pieces.  The handle of that disposable razor- couldn't that be a buttress?  Or a light pole? Or a support pylon for a subspace signal transponder?  That plastic support they put in your pizza box to keep the lid from mashing the cheese- if you snipped those long legs down to an even height, wouldn't that make a great table for the tavern?

I made this awesome vault door/airlock door out of some old bases to a board game and a container of ...the type of medication some women take on a monthly basis.  But it looked cool!

Child or sibling has a broken toy?  Look again, are there any parts there worth scavenging?  You should never throw away a toy wheel to anything, ever.  And nearly any piece of electronics probably has a component or two that could look like something cool.

Pretty soon you are looking at things and just waiting for them to become garbage so that you can scavenge them for parts.

So do not feel ashamed or alone, brothers and sisters, just get yourself some sterilite plastic shoeboxes. and remember the modeler's mantra:

"It's not what it is, it's what it could be."