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I am forever cutting small irreplaceable bits off the sprue and then dropping them on the carpet. This morning (when I was supposed to be tidying the front bedroom), I discovered that I was missing a pair of boar ears from the orc boar boyz set. In their wisdom GW modelled these on the sprue separate from the head and then only provided five pairs. My biggest worry was that I had only just noticed that they were missing. They could be anywhere!

Having scoured my workspace to no avail, I got down on my hands and knees and began an inch by inch search of the floor. After an unfruitful hour of searching, I was carefully lifting up a rug when I heard the tell tale sound of a tiny piece of plastic hitting wood. I dived towards the sound and found the ears disappearing down through a crack in the floor boards. I managed to fish them out with a modelling knife, but "Gah!" that was close. A £15.00 set almost rendered useless by the disappearance of the tiniest part of the model.

Which of your modelling projects have gone almost/completely wrong thanks to a seemingly innocuous mishap?

Sneezing all over my desk and sending Meltaguns scattering all over the floor certainly should count.

Or better yet, forgetting that priming when the weather is cold isn't the best idea. Or sealing models, either. I ruined three days of work on a Trygon by trying to seal it in a cold, humid day...

I work on a desk that sits on a heavily patterned persian rug. Dropping any piece of plastic on that bastard results in a ten minute search, every time.

Whilst not completely wrong it did drive me up the wall (and still does when I look at the kit). I'd bought the FW Stormblade with the DKOK bits (which I can't seem to find anymore on the site) and at some point, between cleaning the parts and setting them aside for assembly, one of the air filters decides to go missing. I searched high and low for the part, under the bed, behind boxes/drawers, in the kitchen where I'd done the cleaning/drying, but to no avail.

I even attempted to scratch build the part but decided my effort was awful and have set it aside. So I guess my Stormblade crew will have to suffocate...

The carpet under my hobby desk is a medium grey so close to the color of most companies' plastic you couldn't have planned a better match. Every time I drop something - even something fairly major like a torso - I have to get the flashlight to find it.

I lost a tiny tracklink from a rhino once, and never found it, even after moving out. I ended up doing a greenstuff cast of the other link and using that.

I took a 7 year break from the hobby and lost a lot of hard to replace parts from my partially built models.

I had a lot of Necron Warriors assembled/unpainted. Since the green rod connects to a topper on the end of their guns, I was waiting to attach the toppers until after they were painted. Well, 1/3 of the toppers went missing and now I'm left with 12 incomplete Warriors. I lost a similar piece from 3 Immortals, but hopefully I can glean replacements from the new boxes coming out.

More tragically, I lost a bunch of bits from a mostly-assembled Monolith. I lost the Whip crystal, the portal door, and the large arch that runs over the top of the model. As far as I know, there is no way to find these bits by themselves (and I have looked around quite a bit) so I'm basically out a Monolith, all because I had the foresight to not finish assembly before painting hard-to-reach places.

Losing bits is terrible, but I tend to misplace them more between different boxes than in the carpet.

This might help the rest of you.

That seems like a great way to have to sort through the dust filter and associate lint for the small bits that go through.

The only thing that really gets me is that how does the bit you drop (no matter the size) always bounce in the opposite direction to what you thought they went, invariably out if sight behind the chair leg requiring getting on all fours before you realise it was right there all along.

Just about rendered an objective marker usless.... So decide that its time to atempt to make a marker, so I get the supplys and get to work. Then after all the modeling and such was done, I was walking down my basement steps, (holding the marker with a pair of pliers ) I droped the marker..... Down the setps it went into a buch of pieces, step by step until each piece hit the rock floor, and I repeat...Rock floor. Thankfully, I found all the pieces, just havent glued them back together yet.

About three years ago my g/f broke the back piece off my Wave Serpent hull (making it a Falcon hull) and I put it away with the intent of gluing it back on. FF three years, -1 g/f, +1 new house and I'm finally getting around to my eldar again. I knew I would never throw that piece away so I went looking for it in my unpacked moving boxes (been in the new house 2 years). After about 30 minutes of looking on my 3rd box I found it. One less wave serpent to buy!

I remember that evening in Sweden, where me and my family were staying in the house next to our best friends, and i just got introduced into the hobby. We (my brother, one of my best friends and I) were sitting in this tiny workshop room wich was filled with small pieces of clothes (my friends sister likes to make dresses and stuff) So with half the floor covered in a several-inch-deep layer of all-comsuming fabric, i lost a killa kan foot. We heard it bounce like 3 times, then silence.... SH*T!! I searched for it for like 5h, until Aron finally took a look at the bin and handed my kan foot to me. PHEW! It had bounced into there, and we had spent all this time going through these clothes...
I actually had given up the search and modelled a new foot when it was found. I luckilly hadnt glued it on yet.

Isnt it always the way, you drop a piece and.......(5hr later)....... "There it is!" the place you least expect it!

Ummm....my dog eating a Reaver Jetbike. Found several parts to it: arms, head, wings, gun. But that's it.

I have a 1 and 2 year old that love to get their grubby little hands on my pieces. What's worse is the 1 year old gets into my bins and brings things to me thinking she's helping. The 2 year old simply waits for something to fall or does a snatch and grab then run through the house with some random piece!

I once lost a set of Necromunda Orlocks, and they were missing for so long I started to doubt if I'd ever bought them in the first place.

Haha some familiar sounding stories here!

I definitely think there are some quantum-physics at play when you drop components, if you don't see the bit hit the ground and where it goes, it is almost inevitably in a place where you would have thought it could not possibly have reached (that's if you find it at all, otherwise I'm sure the component will have slipped into some kind of quasi-dimension sitting parallel to our own)

I do this all the time, and that's why I have no problem with making oyumaru molds and recasting. Seriously, I have lost some absurdly small bits (necron lord staff of light tip) and found them, but I lost an entire hellblade four months ago or so and never found it. I think they just fall into the warp and will reappear when a new portal opens. Along with my socks.

"Please tell me my box of tanks is on the back seat."

"Yeah, they're there, did you think you left them at the store?"

"No, I thought I left them sitting on the roof of the car."

I work in a cold concrete-floor lonely basement whose only furniture is my table, a rocking chair for me to sit in, and a stand with a TV on it so I can entertain myself while stuff is drying. I've dropped things a bajillion times but have been fortunate enough to easily find them as a result.

The dreaded moment when you go to clip a part off that you need and you do not put your finger on it. It flies up into the air and hits some unknown area on the other wall and you know you have no idea where it went.

While I was converting my Canoness a while ago I dropped the 2nd ed plasma pistol I had spent ages finding (and traded a decent amount of bits for) and it bounced off in some random direction. I found it about a week later when I dropped a base.

The latest for me was the barrel of the Semovente 75/18 for FoW. Heroic scale stuff is hard enough, 15mm parts are a thing of their own.

My Necron Flayed Ones were in the box in my house one minute, the next they had disappeared. It's been about a month, and no sign of them. I'm wondering if I've sold them or something.

My carpet is exactly the same colour as unpainted plastic. I have lost so many bitz to it.

I drop a bit(z), all painting/modelling is posponed whilst I relentlessly scan the floor until I find the blighter.
No man gets left behind.

I was mounting Leman Russ plasma cannon sponsons . Upon completition I realized that I mounted one cannon upside down . Bad part of the story I didn't notice till I was base coating the model and it was too late to fix other bad part the other cannon is mounted properly . In hindsight I wish I either hadn't screwed up or had screwed up consistently.

For me, the secret for finding a lost bit is to look for something else. Like Murphy's law, I find everything except what I need at the moment.

I was building a 1/48 scale spitfire, and during painting i managed to loose part of the wheel assembly...still havent found it a month on and the spitfire is still sat unfinished.

I have also had bad experiences with many unglued parts and sneezing XD

I do all my modelling work in the garage, and used to do it on this tiny table thing. For the time being it served my purposes well... unless I dropped a piece. The problem is, the floor is covered in dust bunnies, and pieces would sometimes hide behind or (god forbid) INSIDE the dust bunnies, so it would be a hell of a time trying to find them and clean them off.
This was the case with my necron pieces. I decided I wanted to model the warriors so they didn't all do the GW squat stance. Luckily, I was able to recover any piece that I dropped with little incident.
Actually, I did once drop the top bit for my Lord's staff, and couldn't find it. Then I had the idea to put a skull there instead. Ended up looking pretty sweet.
And then I found the missing piece one day.