My recommendation for finding missing parts is to completely finish, oaint, weather, and base the model without the missing part. It is guaranteed that you will find the missing part within one month later. It will work even more reliably if you scratch-build the missing part…
Damon.
Eureka!! Snatched from the carpet monster jaws! Thanks for all of the great replies!
Yeah, but if you let a piece go, the piece will tumble into the grass down below!
This works for me with tools: if I can’t find a tool, I buy a new one. The original tool then appears within 24 hours or less.
It’s a little-known fact that you can force the carpet monster to cough up swallowed parts that are above a certain minimum size; all you have to do is wake up in the middle of the night and, without thinking, walk barefoot over the area where the part disappeared. This is related to the proven method of discovering that your child left one or more Lego blocks out when they put away their toys.
I second that!
Ken
If I can’t find a tool, before I buy a new one, 9 times out of 10 it magically reappears in my son’s toolbox.
Your carpet every time you start a new build…
I had a panel scriber, I lost years ago. So I bought another. Of course right when I was moving, I found the missing tool…in a kit box (for the record it was the Heller S-35, purchased long before Tamiya had their kit).
Damon.
I’ve been patiently waiting for someone else to mention this but no dice so, imported from a different thread here’s my old chestnut:
Regulars may remember I’ve told this one before – mildly frustrated while adding a bunch of PE brackets to an SU122, I was using a scalpel blade to press each one into its shallow recess containing a smudge of cyano glue. One in particular refused to surrender & I blinked at the exact moment I heard the fatal “ping”. No bracket.
I spent half an hour or more communing with the carpet monster, then put some gauze over the vacuum cleaner nozzle & scanned the entire room to no avail. Annoying because it was the only bracket of its kind & not so easy to scratch a replacement.
That night, brushing my teeth I noticed in the mirror something glinting on the top of my ear…
The point being the missing part, if launched by snapping tweezers or similar, may have ended up about your person – clothes, hair etc. even if no glue was involved. So give yourself a good shakedown first before getting down & dirty with the carpet monster.
The type of carpet also pays into your chances of success. A nice long shag and you are done…
Except for the carpet burns 
I have posted this before (maybe on this thread!)
Take a small, bright flashlight and lay it flat on the floor so it casts it’s beam obliquely across the suspected area of the carpet and move it around. The contrast between the now lighted carpet and the plastic part will often jump right out at you. Also the part may cast a shadow which will let you find it even more easily.
Of course this advice works best on low pile carpet and flat tile/wood floors.
Still can’t find it? Expand you flashlight search.
First you look where YOU THINK it might be, and then you search where you are SURE it could not possibly have gotten too.
Good Hunting!
Luckily, I build at my desk, so my plastic computer chair mat somewhat protects from the carpet monster. The real monster is the carpet behind my desk…
The one sure fact is your missing part will be found in the very last place you look. The trick is looking in that last place first!
This is not exactly model related, but the carpet monster also enjoys detents and springs when you are working on your AR platform rifles. I almost lost a safety selector switch detent to him, but my dog scared him off and I was able to recover it.
