The Immutable Law of Dropped Parts

I have a magnet on an extended wand.  Sometimes it helps.

Tell me about it..on the loco I just kitbashed, original screws, two of them, hit the

floor and quickly scrurried away into hiding.  After several days I was able to find

metric screws to replace them and finish the job.  They always bounce an illogical

direction and then get under something so you are on your nose with a flashlight

trying to peer under a heavy cabinet you don't want to have to move.

I think you have shone a light on another corollary of Murphy's Law.

Years ago I dropped a 1/43 1957 Chevy headlight lens on my (small) dining room floor.  To this day the car sits on my layout with one lens gone, in spite of my search on my knees with a light.  Where does this stuff go??

One thing that has helped me to alleviate this problem is that I started putting a white hand size bath towel on my work bench.  I put my cutting board etc. on top of the towel.  This has stopped a lot of stuff that I drop from bouncing from the bench to the floor.  The towel almost always catches it.  I can also see small black screws and other parts against the white towel.

If something goes directly to the floor it is lost - just like before.

Joe

Clever idea! Thanks for the tip, Matt.

Tomlinson Run RR

I always felt that dropped parts grew legs on the way down and quickly scurried to some unimaginable hiding place.

I have dropped 3/4" nuts when working in a shop and wasted untold minutes trying to find it on a relatively barren floor. The small pieces for trains are real good at hiding.

Try spending 20 mins making a brass part...cutting...filing...finishing...

Then drop it, never to be seen again.

Now that'll instantly turn the air blue!

Yes, I also feel that the Earth literally swallows up lost parts. But sometimes I get surprised when I discover that magnetraction axles of an engine I've been working on had swallowed the part and it took hours to realize that. How much time working on a project is spent looking for "lost/dropped" parts?  Topic for another thread....

Roger

I use the magnet on a telescoping tube and scan the floor with it.  Most times I find the little rascal that tried to get away.

I call it the one in a hundred bounce.   That small part will end up in some tiny cavity that if you were trying to hit it, you'd need 100 or more trys to hit that spot.   How does it happen by chance, the first time you drop it.  Gremlins?

I think some parts defy the general laws of normal physics. For example, a very tiny screw with the mass of some fraction of a gram should not be able to generate enough kinetic energy falling from table height to a concrete floor to travel 5 or 6 feet from its initial point of floor contact, but sometimes they do.

Or maybe unbeknownst to me I pick up the offending screw on my shoe and shuffle it

to ridiculous lengths from the table.

I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one to be plaqued by this immutable law.

All true, all true.

For a while I thought that these parts somehow entered an alternate universe in their fall, like the place that socks go when they disappear in the clothes dryer.....

However, the best advice I came across was to sweep the floor under and around the workbench squeaky clean before the work. Then make sure you have a flashlight handy. When said part falls and bounces, the flashlight beam shone along the floor will often show it up with a nice long shadow. I've rescued a few miniscule bits this way.

Ron,

I'm sure glad that I'm not alone to suffer in silence.

I have dropped parts, either from a train or a when I'm in the garage working on my car. Look high and low, and usually end up getting another part, only to miraculously discover the original part sitting in plain site. Happens with dropped tools as well. This firmly makes me believe someone up there is having fun at my expense.

I find that sweeping the floor with a flashlight beam more or less parallel to the floor with usually help to locate a missing part.
A few months ago I spring went flying from one of my tools. Still looking for that. Until its found, the tool is kaput.

How about a contact lens?  Or, a needed minute pill, talk about rolling away, yeeks  .

It happens all too often.  I figure it is how the gods play with and torture me for their entertainment.  

Yikes!  I didn't know this disease was epidemic.    I thought many on here were much

neater modelers than I.

Corollary to the 'Immutable Law of Dropped Of Dropped Parts":

Regardless of where dropped, the missing part will find your bare foot at 2am while walking to the bathroom in the dark.

Trevor, be absolutely sure you paint a 100 foot radius around the bench.  You may have a chance then of finding the missing screw.  I have read where they only have the ability to travel 96 feet before running out of rolling/bouncing ability.  

When small springs hit the floor, they can bounce clear into the stratosphere, right through walls and everything.  

I put large thick rubber mats, from Lowes, on both sides of my workbench, so metal items don't bounce so much.

I wonder if the dropped parts go to the same place as the missing sock(s).

Well, they are seen again.... Right after you've made the 2nd part, and have it installed, is when you will locate the original by stepping on it and drawing blood. 

Magnets are nice but when parts are non-ferrous...........

Actually, they've been reappearing on Ceres.  The larger bright spot are metal parts, the smaller are plastic and wood parts:

Or so say ancient model railroad theorists...

Rusty

I have an apron that is worn around my waist and the bottom is attached to the underside of the workbench providing a hammock to catch dropped parts.  It works well. However you do have to take the time to wear the apron!  Now where is that darn thing? 

That is exactly correct.  And the inhabitants of that parallel world are a treacherous lot, who refuse to return the small parts until they are no longer needed.

I tried one of these, works great until you get a phone call or yell from the Mrs and forget you have it tied into the workbench.

=Chuckle= I can imagine -- especially if you have dropped parts sitting in it when you get up to take that call. :-}

Magnets are great until the part is not ferrous, natch.

And, to prove it's Mastery over Man, the Universe had me drop an important screw the other day. I'm upgrading an MTH Dreyfuss to ERR Cruise Commander, and, of course, the screw was...Nylon...for the insulated tender shell...it was white (I have black ones)...the vinyl floor is essentially...white.

I didn't even look. (OK, a quick flashlight search; nada.)

The screw is now where all such parts (plus innumerable non-matching socks) and Lost Innocence go.