Whats the the group think for best floor color under your work area to find invisable Nscale part when they"tink"out of your tweezers?
And go!
Doesnāt really matter. Those tiny parts, whether N, HO, or even G scale, evaporate as they bounce off the floor. You can almost never find them.
(But I think white would give you the best chance).
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Iām sorry but when that vital, very small yet detailed part āPingsā off the tweezers. Itās gone!!
I believe that in a parallel universe there is a very frustrated cleaner who is forever sweeping the floor, removing all the gubbins that mysteriously arrive from unknown realms!
For Mr. Pruitt, Iād suggest a plaid floor! 
On a more serious note, I have a polished polyurethane wooden floor under my work bench, at least itās better than the previous carpet.
Looking at those 3D printed N scale locomotive kits that you work with, Iām not sure what exact āNeutralā colour, Iād recommend. A very light gloss grey??
Cheers, the unhelpful Bear. 
.
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[quote=ā_JaBear, post:3, topic:414628ā]
For Mr. Pruitt, Iād suggest a plaid floor!
On a more serious note,
[/quote] I agree, a plaid floor makes sense . . . for Mr. Pruitt.
Wait, Bear, you werenāt serious?
On a more serious note, I would suggest gray as the color. White would not be good because it would show the dirt too easily.
Rich
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My work bench tops are pure white. Easy to spot tiny parts. The floor is random 2x2 carpet tiles. Not easy to find stuff, but cheap and easy on the feet.
I agree with the white floor.
Also get a magnet - wonāt work for everything, but does for some.
Also a small vacuum cleaner with a stocking.
Paul
Youāre the guy I can thank for cluing me in on those budget carpet tiles!
Carpet Tile by Edmund, on Flickr
At a buck a square foot theyāre ideal! Iām not new to carpet tile as Iāve installed better grades throughout the house going back to around 1995 or so. Theyāre great! Mess one up and I can swap it out or take it outside and hose it off and let it dry in the sun.
Carpet Tile 2016 by Edmund, on Flickr
In my primary model workroom I have the interlocking plank flooring. My best tool when I drop something I canāt immediately find is the āDustbusterā -type vacuum. I make several passes over the suspected areas and thereās a good chance Iāll pick it up. I can empty the bin into an old baking pan to sort through the goodies, sometimes even finding things I hadnāt realized Iād lost!
Vacuum_DC by Edmund, on Flickr
Cheers, Ed
Ed, see the advice above about the stocking filter. Easily rigged and infinitely better than plowing through a pile of detritus from other cleaning or perusing the nooks and crannies of a typical Dustbuster-type filterā¦
In my opinion, the right solution, as in War Games, is ānot to playā. Donāt give the parts free rein to āzing!ā in the first place. Simply using a large clear Baggie when hooking Kadee truck springs takes the loss rate down dramatically. I advise building the equivalent of a glovebox for working with smaller or excitable parts ā the interior in my opinion should be matte pale green, the same color and material as my drafting-table mat.
I have no suggestions, but itās funny this topic came up.
Yesterday, I saw something shiny in the middle of the living room floor. I picked up a part that went missing two months ago in the layout room. How it got from the layout room to the living room, and how it avoided multiple vacuum cleaner passes over the past two months is one of lifeās mysteries.
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Thanks for all the responses,light grey was my thought too. Maybe the green like the cutting mat? I do need something for sure! Lift rings in Nscale are invisible! On the model-great! On the floor-not so great!
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I only have a basement concrete floor under my workbench. My problem was a concrete saw line under the bench. I covered it with masking tape so no part could disappear. I find them eventually.
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Under a workbench? In my shop the answer would be āall of themā because all the colors of paint are likely to spill anyways. So if you start off with an avant garde modern art splash paint everywhere kind of paint scheme youāll never have to clean up future spills.
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I just gotta ba able to fond those invisable Nscale parts when they decide to leave the tweezers!
My train room was completely unfinished and we had the floor painted gray. Afterward, I added interlocking gym floor mats in gray also. Even with the gray, stuff will disappear inevitably. This happens with or without tweezers. I think white makes more sense, but expect to see PLENTY of dirt, paint spills, etc.
Personally I donāt think color matters as much as how smooth the floor is. I use a flashlight at an almost flat angle to try and cast a shadow of any small parts I drop. If you are on carpeting I feel that would not work well. Granted, my retrieval rate is probably only around 80%, but I think all things considered itās pretty good!
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Definitely will not be carpet. Prolly a laminate of dome sort.
I use that trick too with a light snd optivisor!
Iāve had reasonable results with short cut-pile commercial carpet with very small pocket-watch parts ā they donāt keep rebounding or sliding as they do on a hard surface, and they tend not to āsink intoā the pile so the springiness of the fibers holds them up for the oblique-lighting trick. I believe many of those ātilesā are made with this type of carpet.
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