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Most recent loss would be a Burna head - the one with the goggles & bandana over his face. Can't remember what exactly happened and never did find it. Was annoying but thankfully not major tho as the Lootas/Burnas kit ends up giving you plenty of spares building decent sized units.

 Vulcan wrote:

ahzek wrote:
My old local gw had a carpet the exact same grey as the plastic, allegations this was gws way of reacquiring plastic cheaply we're never proved, but one of the staff members (when there were staff) built a model from bits he found on the floor when hoovering

They must have gotten that carpet from the same place my last landlord got his.

MAN that was a pain, trying to find bits on that carpet.

It's what got me started spraying sprues before assembling

GW should try make their paints so that they light up under UV (along with their plastic). I know nothing of how it might work or whatever, but if you ever loose a model or part you just shine your UV light around the area and it lights up.

Would have been useful last night, my friend lost his antenna last night, never to be found again.

Can't remember any good stories. The most recent was a warpath enforcer torso. You only get just enough and there was no way I could fudge a replacement. I think it has to be said that a "dirty basement" is potentially as bad or worse than carpet. I spent at least an hour or two looking with a lot of false-positive dust bunnies. We were moving within a week so I just waited until I was down to the final sweeping, and happened to find it.

Still missing the metal siding that goes to asdrubael vect's 3e ravager too. Not sure how you misplace something quite that large or heavy, but still.

 Lord Arturius wrote:

 snurl wrote:
While building my TK army i was clipping parts and sorting them into a plastic bead storage box with 32 compartments. The box had a hinged lid which was all the way open and resting on the table behind it. My cat, who was a kitten back then, jumped up on to the table and landed on the box lid. This cased a catapult-like effect and all of the bits went flying across the table and kitchen. I am not sure if i ever found them all.

For some reason this story strikes me as the most unfortunate. I want to be mad at your kitten, but it's so hard to be mad at a kitten.

My story is similar. My cat was lounging around one morning while I was clipping some bits off of sprue. One of the bits rocketed off of the sprue and the cat was after it like a rocket. It took me 10 minutes to get it from her. Now though, every time she sees me with my models out, she will stalk me and wait for me to make a mistake. She has claimed a few bits as her own never to be recovered and I suspect she will get more.

I am always amazed at the cats who steal miniatures/bits , my cats have shown zero interest in miniatures but a huge interest in paint water. It's kind of disconcerting when she has a full jug of fresh water on the table and heads straight for the paint water - my paint water is generally the colour of off broccoli soup. Maybe she gets high off it , it wouldn't be out of character as if i break a leaf of cat mint , she's straight into the plant and munching away.

Bullockist wrote:

 Lord Arturius wrote:

 snurl wrote:
While building my TK army i was clipping parts and sorting them into a plastic bead storage box with 32 compartments. The box had a hinged lid which was all the way open and resting on the table behind it. My cat, who was a kitten back then, jumped up on to the table and landed on the box lid. This cased a catapult-like effect and all of the bits went flying across the table and kitchen. I am not sure if i ever found them all.

For some reason this story strikes me as the most unfortunate. I want to be mad at your kitten, but it's so hard to be mad at a kitten.

My story is similar. My cat was lounging around one morning while I was clipping some bits off of sprue. One of the bits rocketed off of the sprue and the cat was after it like a rocket. It took me 10 minutes to get it from her. Now though, every time she sees me with my models out, she will stalk me and wait for me to make a mistake. She has claimed a few bits as her own never to be recovered and I suspect she will get more.

I am always amazed at the cats who steal miniatures/bits , my cats have shown zero interest in miniatures but a huge interest in paint water. It's kind of disconcerting when she has a full jug of fresh water on the table and heads straight for the paint water - my paint water is generally the colour of off broccoli soup. Maybe she gets high off it , it wouldn't be out of character as if i break a leaf of cat mint , she's straight into the plant and munching away.

Feel lucky. My 2 younger cats seem to love the taste of GW metallic paints..... To the extent of eating my models

The last thing to go 'ping!' off my model table was a grabrail for a JGSDF Light Armoured Vehicle. It was never found, but since I was making them from wire anyway I just made a few more.

Now I relax on a recliner seat, with a cat by my side; earlier tonight I retrieved a skull from her fur...

When I lived at home our cat used to eat spikes, so anything with a point got bitten

The apartment I used to live at had a really thick shag carpet that was a hideous shade of green with speckles of black that was right out of the 70's.

The shag was so crazy thick that full sized legos used to get lost in it, those that were found were usually found due to being stepped on while barefoot rather than actually seeing the part. any bits that it swallowed simply creased to exist, I'd lost quite a few heads and even full arms.

At the time I had a pet tree frog that was about half an inch long, I was transferring him to a box so I could clean out his aquarium and he jumped off my hand into the carpet, despite 4 hours of careful searching I never found him. :(


My current place has hardwood floors and I've had bits skitter away up to 8-9 ft which is pretty crazy being dropped only from a sitting height. Sometimes it takes a bit of searching and help of a high powered flashlight but unlike the carpet most of the parts eventually turn up somewhere on the hardwood. A few bits have managed to lodge themselves in the tiny crack under the molding, because I won't tear it off the wall I haven't been able to reclaim a few of those, but fortunately that's pretty rare and only had that happen twice so far.


While this looks incredibly silly it's a brilliant idea for those that are cursed with having a shag rug of devouring.

http://www.micromark.com/parts-catching-apron,8108.html





Or somebody can always try making themselves a pair of 'Tants but that brings it's own risks...

If you cry from the left I first it's joy, if you cry from the right eye first it's sorrow, if you cry from both eyes first it's lego

Or in this case models

Plastic is grey. My carpet is grey.
When I drop plastic, my face is red.

 Paradigm wrote:
I think the most ridiculous I've had is Solomon Lok's servo-skull. While gluing it (with superglue because it was resin) I dropped one of the 'arms', and couldn't find it at all. Two weeks later, I found the offending piece of resin, glued to the outside of my trousers. It had survived being washed several times and was still stuck on there!

You win all my internets today!

 AduroT wrote:
When they remodeled the floor of the game room at the flgs they put down one of those garage flooring coat things, where it's a liquid epoxy or resin or something, then you scatter colored chips on it for decoration, and seal the whole thing in a nice gloss. The final thing is a speckled pattern of white, light grey, dark grey, and black. Each speckle is roughly pencil eraser diameter. You drop bitz on that floor and good luck finding them. Hell, I've dropped a quarter and then couldn't see it. It's So Much worse than any carpet I've dropped bitz onto.

The floor in my kitchen is like that. Mottled white and brownish grey. You drop something, anything, it's gone, to be found days later when you step on it. Though I have found a good way to find things is get a decently powerful torch, lay down on the ground and shine the torch across the ground. Any bits on the ground will cast a huge shadow and reflect the light making them easier to see.

I'm regularly losing bits, luckily nothing overly important. One of my Saurus doesn't have a left arm and a few things like that, luckily I haven't lost anything off an expensive model.

 Nevelon wrote:
It’s a catch-22

If you have a carpet, it will eat your bits.

If you have concrete/wood/other hard floor every time you drop something it will shatter into a thousand pieces across the room.

The answer of course it to floor your hobby room with inch thick foam.

I lolled.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
this morning I lost cato sicarius' plasma pistol, I never liked the DV sergeant anyway.

I have had cork floors in all my hobby rooms for almost 10 years now, and from now on - that is the only floor for me.

It is soft enough that standing on it for hours at a time is not unpleasant. Parts, bottles and partially assembled models have a very good chance of surviving the fall from my workbench. The light brown color makes it easy to spot bits and pieces which scatter on the floor. Clean up of spilled materials is simple.

Without going to an industrial rubber floor, I cant think of anything better.

Not exactly a floor story, but just recently I dropped a Failcast Squigboss in a chair... from about 1.5 feet above it. BOOM! I swear is was like the thing was internally combusted. Luckily all the pieces landed on the chair and have since been re-glued and fixed.

The room where we play our games has a mid-brown shag carpet, so with my brightly painted Orks finding one on the floor isn't a problem. Now if we dropped something on the floor where we BUILD our models that could be bad. It's cement

Has anyone noticed that if you drop something, and see where it has gone it's always straightforward, but if you aren't watching then the bit will always have bounced somewhere that it couldn't possibly have got to?

Sean_OBrien wrote:I have had cork floors in all my hobby rooms for almost 10 years now, and from now on - that is the only floor for me.

It is soft enough that standing on it for hours at a time is not unpleasant. Parts, bottles and partially assembled models have a very good chance of surviving the fall from my workbench. The light brown color makes it easy to spot bits and pieces which scatter on the floor. Clean up of spilled materials is simple.

Without going to an industrial rubber floor, I cant think of anything better.

You sir, are a genius.

Pacific wrote:Has anyone noticed that if you drop something, and see where it has gone it's always straightforward, but if you aren't watching then the bit will always have bounced somewhere that it couldn't possibly have got to?

Yup.

Not a carpet related story, but, I was packing my Tau away after a game and I couldn't find one of its smart missile system pods, we looked around the whole store for about 20 minutes, didn't find anything so we decided to leave it.
I get home about an hour later and open my case to get some stuff out to paint, sitting inbetween the 2nd and 3rd layers of foam (which wasn't open at the time I dropped the bit) was the thing I was looking for, man was I annoyed.

My carpet is a blue/grey that blends together to be the same shade of grey as GW plastic. It absolutely sucks to find lost bitz on.

I use a paper plate to keep chopped up bits and to collect filing debris. While assembling Draigo I dropped his head into this:


I wish it had hit the floor.

I distinctly remember one afternoon when I was having a mass bitz sorting session due to my SM box no longer being of adequate size (a sure sign you have too many minis). Naturally the second I had divided every single piece into its appropriate compartment did my cat leap up on the desk, catapulting the entire contents onto a rug that looks incredibly similar to this.



To add insult to injury I, in my fury somehow knocked over a metal hive Tyrant onto the floor as well. The resulting explosion of gribbly bits has confined that poor guy to a box. I glued it together once, never again.

Then there was the time that I was searching for a specific SM head for well over three years (one from the venerable dread kit). Convinced that it was in a bitz box somewhere I kept looking for that thing for ever despite having moved house twice in the meantime. Imagine my rage when I discovered that actually I had already used the head on a model and it was boldly sat on the neck of a fully built and painted Marine that entire time. Hours were spent looking only for that one piece, hours...

 Pacific wrote:
Has anyone noticed that if you drop something, and see where it has gone it's always straightforward, but if you aren't watching then the bit will always have bounced somewhere that it couldn't possibly have got to?

Definetly. I have a converted IG guardsman with a Metlagun. I dropped him at one end of my room and he emerged under some boxes.... At the other end. But that is not the worse-I am still to find the hull of that old metal Epic Baneblade

You know, instead of getting that special catching apron, I'm going to just buy a heavy duty apron, and 2 table clamps to create my own catching system.

Especially useful when working with infinity models since they love making parts that are tiny slivers of metal.

They sure do. Although, have you had the pleasure to work with any minis where they thought brass etched bits are good for antennae/spikes etc? Those get pretty harsh too

I dropped a 8"-long 1mm brass rod onto the floor.
The carpet is smooth wood-effect lino, and I spent a few minutes crawling around the 3' x 3' area it could have fallen on.
In the end, it was 1' from where I was sat, and at a 30 degree angle to the 'grain' effect. So long to find, and it was within reach all the time.