what did you absolutely need, that you didn't?

[sidcharles]

i'm not touching the 900 kits stash or the unobtainium Pocher Rolls Royce landau with the box signed x the Queen Mother,

but stuff you 'had to have' because it was going to revolutionize your model building experience.

i'll go first :

jump rings

watch parts

 a dozen different sizes of magnets

two dozen of beads/

weathering pencils

weathering powders

 

you?

Edited Sunday at 09:00 PM by sidcharles
offensive word

[johnyrotten]

I bought a bunch of materials for casting, made some parts with varying success, then discovered 3d printed parts. I've purchased probably 5-6 different kits just for parts and various bits to cast.

[NOBLNG]

Evergreen. I have a fairly good stock of sizes and shapes. Yesterday I picked up four more packs just because I don’t have them. I’m sure I’ll find a use for them eventually.😬

[slusher]

Those five girl figures my wife asked about.  I told her they make your models look better.  She says they look trashy. 

[oldcarfan]

Pretty much everything mentioned above helped. For me the one thing that I didn't know I needed was the jewelry section at Hobby Lobby. One thing I got on impulse really surprised me. It's called a rhinestone gripper. Basically a pen with a little dab of wax or something on the tip. It makes setting small pieces so much easier to put in place.

Edit: Another thing I didn't know I needed is a pair of cheap dollar store reading glasses. It's amazing how much they help. 

Edited yesterday at 12:55 AM by oldcarfan

[sidcharles]

32 minutes ago, slusher said:

Those five girl figures my wife asked about.  I told her they make your models look better.  She says they look trashy. 

models or figures?

[Ace-Garageguy]

35 minutes ago, oldcarfan said:

Pretty much everything mentioned above helped. For me the one thing that I didn't know I needed was the jewelry section at Hobby Lobby. One thing I got on impulse really surprised me. It's called a rhinestone gripper. Basically a pen with a little dab of wax or something on the tip. It makes setting small pieces so much easier to put in place.

Edit: Another thing I didn't know I needed is a pair of cheap dollar store reading glasses. It's amazing how much they help. 

Interesting you mentioned those. I found a pair of glasses while hiking that looked like they'd been there so long nobody would be coming back for them if I put them somewhere easy to see...

So, I cleaned the lenses with some canteen water and looked through them. Useless far away, but SHAZAM!!! Up close I could practically see the individual bacteria on my skin.

Brought 'em home, completely cleaned them up, hung them over the bench, and use them frequently when doing small detail work (when I actually build, which isn't very often these days).  

[meechum68]

The Testor's kit that has 10 or so bottles of enamel, before I discovered Tamiya, and other brands. But I do like the Orange spinner been handy for other bits and bobs.

 

[Bugatti Fan]

We all but those little items that we think that we will use one day.

I have bought items on impulse that have sat in the tool box drawers sometimes for years on end unused. Just when you start to think 'I'll never use that!' It becomes the perfect tool to fall back on to do a particular job.

[Straightliner59]

8 hours ago, NOBLNG said:

Evergreen. I have a fairly good stock of sizes and shapes. Yesterday I picked up four more packs just because I don’t have them. I’m sure I’ll find a use for them eventually.😬

I agree! One simply cannot have too many scratchbuilding supplies. If I'm in a hobby shop, and there isn't a kit I "have" to own, I'll dig through the Evergreen, Plastruct and K&S racks. Recently, I'm seeing a lot more smaller sizes of aluminum and brass tubing, beyond what Special Shapes has. 

[Mark]

Having extra plastic strip/rod/tube/sheet on hand makes a lot of sense.  Saves trips to the hobby shop when you're in the middle of something and don't want to break your stride, and might not be open anyway.

[stitchdup]

I like to go to where theres been a car crash and gather the coloured light clear parts. They are great for making lights and file to shape easily.

 

 

[NOBLNG]

Probably half the kits in my stash.

[Beans]

A 3D printer.  Don't get me wrong.  In the right hands this thing would be great.  I however, ended up with a resin tub that leaked and dumped liquid resin straight down into the machine.  While cleaning it out I broke the screen.  While installing the new screen I cracked that one.  Eventually got the thing back up to where it kind of functioned and never got another decent print out of it again.  It is sitting in a cabinet in all of it's sticky resin residue glory.

[MeatMan]

Vacuform machine. I maybe need it for two possible builds. I did buy it after getting a windfall $ so I don't feel bad. Wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

[Pierre Rivard]

Kits that just are not in my "build lane"

Fortunately happened only a few times. Trip to the hobby store feeling like I'm gonna strike gold. Walk around their stash, can't find anything I really like but so antsy to buy that I pick a kit that I'll never build. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

At this point I don't regret having bought anything either in tools or materials or stock.

Even if I only use a tool once, it was worth whatever I paid to be able to do the job, and it'll be there if I ever need it again.

I've cut way back on buying kits, as I have just about anything I could ever want, but occasionally I'll still add something that's new, that I missed the on last issue, or that's just too good a deal to pass up. 

[Dave G.]

I don't really regret anything I bought for modeling either. I'm not crazy about the Dremel with model cars, I prefer hand tools for the most part. But I have it, it was gifted to me by a very special person in my life, now passed on. So it stays. I used it more back in the model railroad days when my boys were young. Funny ( different topic but short) the older of the two ended up being an engineer for CSX Railroad, and has a conductors license as well. And his Son is a conductor now too.

Edited 21 hours ago by Dave G.

[stavanzer]

12 hours ago, Pierre Rivard said:

Kits that just are not in my "build lane"

Fortunately happened only a few times. Trip to the hobby store feeling like I'm gonna strike gold. Walk around their stash, can't find anything I really like but so antsy to buy that I pick a kit that I'll never build. 

Been There, Got the Remains in my Stash!

[johnyrotten]

22 hours ago, stitchdup said:

I like to go to where theres been a car crash and gather the coloured light clear parts. They are great for making lights and file to shape easily.

 

 

Now that's a great idea. 👍