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I recently used my scratchbuilding skills to fix a couple things around my house.

First, one of those retractable dog leashes had broken and wouldnt retract. I opened it up and found a few pieces of broken plastic and built new stronger pieces from scratch. The leash works like a charm now.

The other thing was a clip to hold my sisters car door inner handle on. After two weeks of trying to order this very small plastic piece for less than 30$ I just broke down and built one using the original as a guide. Also seems to be working well.

Have any of you ever managed to use the skills you developed with this hobby for anything unrelated and useful?

My modeling tools are constantly finding use for things that my regular tools cannot do.

My daughter has had some Disney toys, single mold plastic pieces, that she broke accidentally. She was devastated.
After she went to bed, Daddy got ahold of them, pinned them, and matched the paint colors to touch them up.

She woke up a happy girl.

E

I've been remodeling the house, skills transfer over all the time. I did have to get use to being less picky, you have more detail some something small. In the beginning I was complaining because the 2x4's in the walls were 1/16" off. Everybody looked at me like I was a loon! Most recently I've been mudding the drywall, getting it flat and good looking has been reminding me of gap filling on a Rhino.

jabba... that's funny.

I'm in the completion stages of refinishing my basement to have a huge gaming cave in it... and I had the same exact issues.

"Can't use that 2x4. It has bark on it."
"But, Eric... It'll be BEHIND the drywall!"
"Yeah, but *I* will know it's there."

LOL

Shoot, and here I thought the OP meant runway modelling skillz cuz I do a mean BlueSteel

Kidding aside, I have on occasion busted out a pin vice and super glue and paperclips to repair things around the office. People looked at me like I was crazy, but then I took an extra 20 minute break.. the amount of time it would have taken me to go to the store, buy a new one, and then come back. Who's crazy now?

about the only thing ive done recently is fix the DVD player
the disc holder is on runners (like all are) and some of the teeth snapped off it, a simple plasticard and pin job and its working fine now