Using non traditional material in a non traditional hobby

During a recent visit, my parents brought me my bitz box from 15 years ago. It was a pretty pathetic excuse for a bitz box, containing mostly rogue trader bitz and the plastic arms that went on the sides of the metal Orks, although there were a few gems in there, including:

2 plastic conversion beamers

3 genestealer familiars

6 genestealer hybrids

a metal ork lascannon

squigs squigs squigs

But one of the strangest things that slipped my mind was the non-GW bitz floating around in there. Apparently I had bastardized my GI JOE gun collection and pretty much sacrificed my entire toy collection to improve my bitz box. There was everything from model train bitz, to match box cars to random pieces of metal and scrap. I hadn't remember my bitz box looking like this at all, perhaps because my current bitz boxes have so much GW stuff in them.

A recent trip around Boston lead me to a local jewelry shop, Marcou Jewlers.

After discussions and a quick chat with the owner, I asked if he had any cheap mechanical watches for sale. I explained that I wanted them to use the gears and bits inside. Props to him as he gave me 2 broken watches that I just had a blast taking apart. All of the gears and little parts have since come in wonderfully handy, including in this base of Lady Justice that I did up after a friend "mistakenly" left the model in my case.

These parts are small and rather soft, easy to cut and to shape into a form that works well. Don't be afraid to look around in non-conventional places for both inspiration as well as physical parts for your hobby. The great owner of this place was more than happy to GIVE me the parts I was looking for, all it really required was being nice to him and talking and explaining what I was looking for and what I wanted. 

I really like the way this model came out and much of it is due to the bitz used in the base. I think a lot of the Games Workshop models are great, especially when they include lots of extra bitz and parts to be used for the models, but have we become a little spoiled by the extra bitz? It almost seems too easy to just throw a GW part on here or there to make the model look that much better. The bad thing about that is that everyone has already seen these bitz before and often times the mind will just recognize that servo skull that you added as the one from the devastator kit, or the ork skull on the base as the one from the scout kit.

I myself know the GW plastic line so well that when I am looking at parts, they just get filed into my brain as items and I don't tend to look at the whole. The same thing goes for conversions with me. When I see an interesting and unique conversion using non-GW parts I am always pulled farther into the model, or when I see sculpting on a model, like my Eldrad  that really changes the identity of the model to me. There is nothing wrong with GW bitz, and I am very happy that their kits are now including more and more of them, but maybe spend some time after this article going around your house and looking for something strange to poke into your bitz box that will make your friends do a double take as they try to figure out where you got that part from that perfectly fits into the design of your army.

Happy modeling.