How many of you look around and say , what will I use for this part or that part , when you are doing a major rebuild/scratch of a specific vehicle , plane or piece of armor ?
Honestly? Very few, these days... Gizmology and Imagineering are dying arts... I'd bet real money that there ain't but about 1% of modelers that do their own detail work anymore... Shep Paine was my "mentor" and I took the lessons he wrote about back in the 70s about scrounging for detail part materials "everywhere but a hobby shop" to heart...
When my wife sees me in the grocery store, hardware store, whatever-store, staring intently at something totally unrelated to why we're there, she says, "You're looking for model parts, aren't ya?"...