During the week at work, a colleague brought in some sliced smoked salmon for a treat. When she commented on the "pieces of paper" between the slices, I took a look - only to find they were sheets of white 5 thou plastic card. Needless to say, I nabbed them... and some salmon (thanks Patty)!

Has anyone else found "free" sources of other modelling essentials?

All the best

Rowan

The clinic where I work has a physiotherapy dept. They make insoles which are packaged by the pair, and come with a sheet of styrene between them. I get about a dozen sheets of 6x12 inches every week.

just got a new supply myself..i work for a tax service and was changeing the wall signs..come to find out..they're styrene about .20 or.30.. thous...and 4' x 4'..theyre printed one side..but damn..i'm gonna paint anyway.....so.i have a life time supply now
Ray

Some fast food places Signs are a 30 - 40 thou. plastic. I got 4 huge sheets while working there a few yrs ago.

My best free supply comes the morning after bonfire night. When I'm plodding the streets delivering mail and later when walking the dogs there are loads of spent rockets around. I break off the balsa wood and give them a wash when I get home. Last year I got enough to build loads of stuff for dios, ruined buildings etc. The only other freebie from work is elastic bands, hundreds of them. If anybody wants any send me a note lol.

I work in the utility industry and find discarded wire all the time. Look around telephone junction boxes...the large ones, about 4ft wide X 4ft tall....often the techs leave scraps of thin terminal wire lying around....a handfull will last quite a while.

dont forget those anyoning aol trial cds and junk like that can come in useful for mixing paints just wipe oils ect off,use them for turn tables for painting or a novel way of displaying your aircraft under carrage in a show as they have a nice mirror surface.

I work in telecoms and jumper wire is good for handles, pipe lines ect loads of other stuff no doubt just never got round to looking

Working in a Hospital I can usually get me hands on tweezers, forceps, (of all shapes), scalpels, allgator clips, long wooden q-tips, needles syringes.. The list goes on and on. Anybody need something shhot me a note and we'll see what we can do. I also barter too just ask Dave(SS-74) #:-)
Paul

My sister works at a hospital, and I scored a free surgical mask for when I sand my planes, I don't inhale all that dust. I guess it works. I think it is better than going bareback.

~CHip :-)

:-) Nice one Rowan, for free plastic card I use the lids off margarine tubs, and the like.

I did have a friend who was a medic, he got me a load of surgical blades, still using them. He also got me a bunch of handles and heamostats. I also ended up with 2 big bags of plastic syringes still have a few of them left.

Not everyone knows a medic, but everyone knows a dentist. They throw their tools away when they have finished with them. I asked a couple If they had any tools they didn't want. I got some great ones. some I turned into scribers, some I haven't found a use for, yet. The best one is like a mini double ended spatula, I use it to apply filler. Don't know what I would do without it :-)
Mal

Hey all,
I might as well add to the growing list of "freebies". Check that empty box of aluminum foil or kitchen wrap. The metal tear off strip makes a heck of zimmerit pattern tool. The bonus being that you can cut it to whatever length you need, or bend it to get to those hard to reach spots.
Oh and MODLRMIKE, if you can grab the packages the Spenco insoles come in, it makes great windows for buildings.

I asked my dentist for the lead strips used to make oral x-rays. Be sure to soak them in a mild solution of water and bleach to sterilize them! I then cut the strips to make gun slings, door hinges, and other small pieces.

I also use the plastic lids from food trays and my kids toy packages to create plaster bases... there is actually an entire Digital Diamond article on that in fact... #5 I think.

I also use small cardboard boxes lined with my wife's aluminum foil to creat coffer dams for the many molds I pour.

I've become quite the "recycle" nut due to this hobby!

Dentists-
When I last had some work done, the dentist opened a sealed package of tools and went to work. For some reason I was under the impression that he returned them to a repackager who would sterilize the tools and repackage them.
Do dentists actually do this, or do they just throw away the tools?

Thanks,
Peter

The package he opened was a bag that he sealed the tools in when he put them in the autoclave, Which I might point out is what my dentist does with the lead foil he gives to me so I don't have to wash it.

Rob

I also get my tools for a dentist...sorta...my grandfather works for a Dental Implant service and he bbrings me home all kinds of nice neat little dremel bits they use..really small ones that i can use for cleaning, drilling or even scribing if the mood is right...lol

Also got a tone of fine and super fine micr sanding drums from them..they work great foranything you can imagine.

So igf ya know someone with dentures, talk to them and see where they were made...you may get your hands on some free stuff:)

I work in the building maint. field and found out that the screens that are in water faucett aerators,make pretty good screens for covering round air intakes in 1/35th scale armor.
Not as thin as photo etch, but I think they do pretty good,and there free :-)

I used the lids of peanut butter jars, upside down, painted, and filled to be round bases for
Hasegawa's 1/72 scale Minibox armor series years ago.
Plastic coke bottle caps are excellent for mixing your paints and washes in...

firemann816

havin a friend that works in the telephone company , he brings me a lot of copper and brass wiring of all kinds and sizes thats very usefull for wiring and handles and other superdetailing stuff. Also from dentist lab i ve got some useful tools, that i tend to say that " a dentist is a modeller's best supplier" keep up the searching and informing each other

Another nice "freebie": spanish wine bottles. My father drinks quite a lot of wine, and a lot of spinsh wines have a net made of 0.30 mm messingwire around them. Un-twist this net and you'll have 4 strands of messing wire, sip a casing of this wine and you'll be drunk
and have a nice supply of wire

Here's another "freebie" from Sealhead. I own a company that cuts gaskets and have Teflon centers that I use for glueing and working with various products like gloss gels and mediumd to make waterfalls, etc. so they don't stick when they set up.
Most gasket companies throw out centers (some call them drops) below a certain size and may be glad to offer a "mooch" a larger piece.
Also, plastic distibutors often have styrene in their scrap for sale area at very low prices.
Also, marble distributors have tons of marble dust that can be used for snow (if white marble), or in place of microbaloons for texture.
Sign makers toss out odds and ends of styrene daily. There's a whole world out there for us.

Corporal Sealhead
Chief Scrounger

I work in a restaurant kitchen as a chef.... Anyone needs a potatoe?
#:-) #:-) #:-) #:-) #:-) #:-)
ah well, at least my shopkeeper smiles at me everytime I come in and buy another evergreen sheet....

My office was throwing out some old/well used three ring binders. I thought, what the heck i'll get some for info files for kit building. While going through the pile, i noticed that some of the binders had thick styrene sheet as dividers. Full 8 1/2 x 11 sheets! Solid black with a slight random texture. Needless to say, anyone going through the pile after me wasn't gonna get any dividers with their notebooks.

Next stop...Office depot...see how much their dividers are.

kglack

For sale signs, the little orange and black ones. They get thicker the bigger the sign.

some of the free stuff i salvage is
cereal boxes ( card comes in handy)
polystyrene from packaging/boxes etc - good for bulking out scenery groundwork etc
drinking straws - get them from packs of drinks or filch them from Kentucky Fried Chicken restaraunts or Mcdonalds - good for pipes/drains etc
im an artist/illustrator by trade so when i finish a pad theres some good thick card at the back that comes in handy

thats all i could think of !

alpha

Go to your local sign making shop. They throw away tons of plastic and mirrors that are too small for them to use, but for a modeler it is great. Cut one of the good size chunks to size and it makes a great working surface. The mirror works great as part of a display base.

Second one is your local computer shop. I run one myself, so I know what all I throw out. Dead power supplies have a bunch of different size wire in it for cables. If you are into scratch building sci-fi, there are a ton of little pieces on anything for a computer. The other thing I have found is clear plastic containers that network cards come in.

Hope this helps.

Don Busack