How many kits have you thrown away?

hkshooter wrote:

I have what may be my first.

I has taken all the composure I have not to Chunk the Trumpeter 1/32 F4U-4 kit out on the Highway to await the next Log Trucks that rumbles by... To be Honest if it was not for the Great Bunch of Guys in the Corsair GB this kit would of been History a long time ago.

hkshooter wrote:

Wow, Rob. That's like, $400 in plastic isn't it?

yep but that p-38 deservied it

I've not thrown any away.... I put away an Academy MiG because it just kinda bored me....

Two. Somebody's 1/72 Saab Tunnan and Testors 1/72 OA-10. Came close with the Testors (ex Hawk) 1/72 XF-92A, but just put it back on the shelf for later when I feel like carving styrene.

Actually, the OA-10 is a paint hulk. The Tunnan is, however, awaiting its final flight. 

If a kit gets so damaged that it is unsalvagable, then I'll get rid of it.

I've tossed a few

I have never thrown a kit away, every thing is fixable. I came very close to throwing a S-37 Berkut away after I had a mishap with a spray can of primer. When trying to remove the primer with a laquer thinner soaked cloth  the surface melted away..... but in the end I repaired it all and finished the kit.

I do have 3 or for kit that I started years ago but have not finished. My standard of building is better nowadays then when I started those kit, but still I can not get my self to throw them away.

I've had a few over the years, but mostly mine get put on the back burner semi-permanently.

The one I can remember is Lindberg's Captain Kidd pirate ship. It hit the wall hard. That kit is the reason I very rarely venture into the ships forums.

Guys...  I dont know how you air guys, and tank guys are when it comes to this... but the mecha guys we do certain things.  One, we never trash a kit.  We just disassemble, and put it in a tub full of spare parts.  I dont know ANY mecha builders who do not have a tub like this, some its just a small tin (like mine) some its a giant tupperware bin. 

Dead kits are a beautiful place for scratch building supplies.  Right now, I have only one kit that I utterly threw away, so to speak.  It was a 1/144 HG GM sniper.  That thing has been used as a testing pallet for everything from paint colors, to new techniques, to using a soldering iron to making fender dents for that mini im working on (Ill post pics later, it came out great the dents.)

Its been used for multiple seam filling methods, for diffrent painting styles, last thing it was used for was to test the hairspray paint chipping technique, worked pretty well, just need good acrylic paint.  (also found it works really well for leaving things like dirt and grime in cracks, since I couldnt get the rag in there to clean it out.)

So never trash a kit, just put aside and use it as a guiney pig.

(just as a footnote, I have had the GM sniper kit since middle school, that kit has survived over a decade.) 

just 1 - a hasegawa 1/48 F4U-4.  The thing had raised panel lines that got obliterated during Operation "Fill all the dang gaps".  I tried to scribe the panle lines and those turned out terribly.  I tried to fill them with putty to start over and thing just got worse.  I rescued some of the sub-assemblies (cockpit and landing gear), but the fuselage and wings hit the trash.

-Fred

So far the only kit I ever tossed was the old 1/48 Revell/Monogram P-38 Lightning.

That kit is a dog. Poor fit, no details, and the pilot is a sad lump of plastic!

It's first cousin, the Revellogram 1/48 Black Widow, is a dog with fleas.

Years ago I received the miserable Lightning from a former girlfiriend. It was nice that she took some interest in my hobby, but anything would have been a better choice.

Sadly, I learned the same lesson later on, regarding her!  

So far the only kit I ever tossed was the old 1/48 Revell/Monogram P-38 Lightning. That kit is a dog. Poor fit, no details, and the pilot is a sad lump of plastic! It's first cousin, the Revellogram 1/48 Black Widow, is a dog with fleas

Built both those kits several times... In fact, I got the Widow on the bench and two more waiting...  Both have their problems and are far from the shake 'n bakes everyone wants, but they build up nicely with a bit of putty and some knife-work...  The pilot figure in the Lightning is one of those generic Monogram figures that showed up in the P-40, Kingfisher, and a couple othe kits I can't remember right now but with a turn of the head and some painting, works ok.  The radar operator figure that comes with it is even better, IMHO, even though he has a different flightsuit and helmet than the pilot (ya think they'd know better).. They could be molded with separte arms, but it was the 60s when those figures were designed, so...

Anyway, in the last 35-40  years, I've thrown away hundreds of kits after stripping them of parts...

Hans,

You are tackling THREE Black Widows!?

Oh man, I hope you have a lot of patience. I have not tried one myself, but there are plenty of people here who have, and hated the experience!

I hope one day Tamiya, or someone else, makes a better version of the 1/48 Black Widow. It is badly needed.

smeagol the vile wrote:

Guys...  I dont know how you air guys, and tank guys are when it comes to this... but the mecha guys we do certain things.  One, we never trash a kit.  We just disassemble, and put it in a tub full of spare parts.  I dont know ANY mecha builders who do not have a tub like this, some its just a small tin (like mine) some its a giant tupperware bin.  Dead kits are a beautiful place for scratch building supplies.  Right now, I have only one kit that I utterly threw away, so to speak.  It was a 1/144 HG GM sniper.  That thing has been used as a testing pallet for everything from paint colors, to new techniques, to using a soldering iron to making fender dents for that mini im working on (Ill post pics later, it came out great the dents.)

Only one or two that I can remember--the Leopard 1A4 that I mistakenly painted Panzer Gray when I was a young, uneducated turd, and a few after that that "frosted" from too much Dullcoat after I finished them up all proud, and then ruined them!

Still one of the major reasons why I don't seal finishes much today!

Haven't tossed any out but I do have a Revell F-14a that is an absolute dog of a kit. Rather than chuck it out, I use it as a test platform for spraying different colors.

Jeff

i did the icm   p-51  loved it

the only kits i ever junked were old builds that sat in the musty basement for 15 or more yrs

but the ideas that some of you came up with (using the old junk for practice of new tecniques) is genious

MattSix wrote:

Hans, You are tackling THREE Black Widows!? Oh man, I hope you have a lot of patience. I have not tried one myself, but there are plenty of people here who have, and hated the experience! I hope one day Tamiya, or someone else, makes a better version of the 1/48 Black Widow. It is badly needed.

I really don't have the problems with the Black Widows that everyone else is complaining about in the GB thread... Like I said, it's definately no shake & bake, but anyone with a little patience and fair-to-middlin' skills can pull it off... Besides, if it ws easy to build, everyone would want one, lol..  You need to have some skills with scratch-building, minor ones, like for shimming the canopy or cutting off the left engine nacelle and adding open cowl-flaps to it, as well as opening the intakes and adding plastic sheet to them  (I know there's aftermarket sets for the Widow, but I don't believe in buying stuff I can make myself) ...

Overall, it's a 6 on my scale of 10... Not Monogram's best kit, but certainly not their worst.  It had some goofy swirls in the plastic that showed up under my paint, but that was the molding process being off that day, plus the fact I used Tamiya on it... From now on, enamel only on that kit...  Besides, if you want a REAL pig of a model P-61, the Aurora 1/48th was it...  NOTHING on that model was right, accurate, or detailed...  I've built the Widow at least three times prior to this current build, ya know...  If ya look in the GB forum under the "Twin Engined Fighters" thread, my Widow WIP has some photos...

Tamiya might make a better kit some day, but it'll run about 60-80 dollars as well, and I don't pay that kind of money for ANY kit...

There's nothin' wrong with those old Monogram kits.  I cut my modeling teeth on 'em, building dozens of them for years in the 60s and 70s (most of the single-engined stuff was a buck, so maybe I got more experience with 'em than guys who never did many Monogram kits... I dunno, they're like goin' home for me... And they're still cheap enough for me to not regret destroying one of 'em, lol... 

I've never really tossed a kit, broke them down for parts many times but never outright tossed them.

I've often found a perfect curvature here or there in a larger component and cut that section of the component away to use it elsewhere. So some of those trash kits can be used like stock styrene really.

Someone mentioned a Revellogram F-14 A. If that's the old 1/48 Monogram Tomcat from the mid 80s, it became part of my own boneyard  years ago and the inside of one of its wing halves made a nice paint pallete.

I am one of those that rarely ever throws away anything modeling related. I have a tough time discarding used up spue. I even use paint until the jar is empty or the paint is to the point only a jack hammer could dislodge it from the jar. The only time I do is when the wife gets on me to clean some stuff to make room for other stuff.

But a couple of years ago during a move I had to toss three old kits that couldn't come with us. Didn't have the room for them to make the two hour drive we were making. Two of them had been damaged during the move to the place we were moving from and the last one was one that had fallen and I had hoped to repair one day. I had to let all three go. It was a sad day. But I did have alittle fun crashing the Corsair into the floor until it was a pile of rubbal.

There was one time that I destoried a kit...the Hasawga P-38F when I could the booms straighened out during assembly. That was the only kit that I completely destoried due to problems with the build.

Hans,

Great work on the Widow. My hat's off to you. Looks great so far!

I have built plenty of those swirl filled Revellograms over the years without that nasty paint problem. Of course, I always clean the surface first, then prime. Regardless of what type of paint I used, the swirls never bled through.

That is really odd. I've never seen that before.