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How to find parts dropped on carpet?


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Somewhere, in another dimension, there is an alien warehouse filled with tiny plastic and PE parts.   One day, when I’m brave enough, I’m going through the portal to reclaim what is rightfully mine.  
 

Send me a list of your missing parts and I’ll bring those back as well (for a nominal service fee).   

Edited by 11bee
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I remember watching Apollo15 astronaut Dave Scott walking on the moon in 1971, he performed an experiment in which he dropped a feather and a plastic model part in the vacuum of space on the moon. The feather and the plastic part fell towards the surface of the moon at the same rate but the feather stayed on the lunar surface and the plastic part disappeared into the regolith, never to be seen again
 

I swear that’s how I remember it. :popcorn:

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Easy....lint roller. My wife's idea after listening to me cuss up a storm! She handed me a line roller and I found the part in seconds. The roller sits by my desk now as a required tool. Haven't lost anything in years now.

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On 5/21/2020 at 10:39 AM, habu2 said:

 

No way am I risking a run in my best pair of pantyhose !!!!  lol

 

My house is all hardwood floors and I still lose parts.  I lost a PE part the other day and wasted over an hour looking for it.  I blame aliens....

 

I agree...my modeling area is ceramic tile, light beige (but 'mottled', not one solid color), and I have lost I don't know how many parts...

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I lost a part for a Tiger 1 tank some time ago.  I gave up hope of ever finding it.  Beyond all reason and likelihood. my wife found it on the entry carpet INSIDE THE GARAGE about a year later.  No kidding.  The part was about 1/8 inch long.  How it got there, and how she even noticed it, much less picked it up and brought it to me, are answers that can only be provided by whatever supreme being knows the answers to who REALLY killed Kennedy, and whether we REALLY ever went to the moon...

 

 

(Joke, joke, joke  🙄)

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It could have lodged itself into a groove in the sole of your shoes?   Small parts can bite into the rubber soles of shoes and flip-flops where we rarely look and they get released in some other area of the house.  But, yes, I still believe there's some outside force that's causing the disappearances of our model parts.

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The parts lost when dropped onto carpet is a tale of fiction. I dropped a landing gear strut 1/48 scale just 3 feet off and I could not find it after 2 hours of searching last night. I had to order another kit for replacement. Of course all tables, chairs were moved, vacuumed, lint roller, flash light... Nothing worked and I saw it dropped right in front of my eyes. A silver strut against a grey carpet. Dai 

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Funny you should mention this.  I lost a small part from the Academy 1/48 P-47N this morning.  The part was one of the two pieces that glue to the cockpit floor - the part that the seat frame fits into.  It is less than a quarter of an inch (6mm) long.  I found it in my gray carpet by vacuuming and then dumping out the vacuum canister.  Note that my vacuum is bag-less, and it was empty before I tried this.  It wasn't too difficult.  But I have tried the masking tape trick too.

 

Edited by zeus60
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  • 9 months later...
On 5/21/2020 at 3:36 PM, John Tapsell said:

The best way to find the missing part is to make a replacement - you can guarantee the missing part turns up immediately afterwards...

 

John

It's funny you should say this. I recently lost the hammer spring retention plate for my .38 revolver. (not model related, but still relevant to this thread haha)
I stupidly tried to press-fit the side plate, hammering with the back of a plastic screwdriver and decided I didn't need to remove the hammer spring first.

Wouldn't you know it, the retention plate walked it's way out as I hammered and the plate, spring, and pin all sprung out into the muddy grass...

Thanks to a big neodymium magnet and a lot of cursing, I found the hammer pin and spring, but I never did find the retention plate.

I literally spent 2 hours fabricating a replacement part from an old sheet-steel wrench that came with some furniture. (Here's a good reason to keep those lol)
(^pic attached so you know what I'm talking about)

But I still half expect to be mowing and after going over that area, it'll somehow fling out, bounce off a tree, and into my lap totally unharmed just to spite me for going through the trouble of making a replacement part...
 

162485838_768636750747291_853416176279202284_n.jpg

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Sacrifice the best kit in your stash to the carpet monster gods.  
 

I did one time drop a canopy while at my desk.  Absolutely baffled when I couldn’t find it after a drop less then a foot, every item on the desk removed and checked.  Had to get a replacement.  3 weeks later I discovered that I had bullseyes my brush cleaning jar!

Edited by Stan in YUL
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The surest way to find a lost part is to buy an entire new kit to replace the part.  As soon as you get the new kit home you will magically find the dropped part.

 

Kind of like when you finally finish a scratch-built model someone releases a kit of that same subject.

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On 5/23/2020 at 2:48 PM, Spruemeister said:

Take your socks off and walk around. You’ll find it. 

And when you find it, one of two things will happen. Either it will go crunch as you step on it or alternatively you will hurt your foot as you step on it. Difficult to replace items always go crunch.

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I lost a landing gear door for a couple of days. I was sure the model was ruined. I was absolutely loosing it. The all of a sudden, I looked on the top shelf of the bookcase. There in a spider web, was the gear door. Absolutely no idea how it got there. NO spider to be seen. Model was never on the bookcase. Hmmmm.

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Usually, when this happens (and it happens a lot lately) I will either take a flashlight or, my smartphone (whichever is more handy at that time) and light the area that I think it has dropped in order to create a shadow of the object. Most of the times it works, but, there are times that it is impossible to find a part because it has either "fly" away (under the sofa) or, it is on my clothes (freshly painted parts).

 

Just my two cents.

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