"Destroyed in Seconds"

Many years ago I had just finished spraying the final coat of clear flat on a Karo As 1/72 FW-187 Falke that I had lavished tons of scratchbuilt details on. As I leaned back on my stool to enjoy a job well done, out of nowhere my wife's long haired cat jumped up onto the bench and rubbed against the box I had the kit elevated on. The model stuck to Barney's fur and my screams of anguish scared the animal into bolting away with my plane firmly stuck to his side. Barney squeezed under the entertainment center further damaging the battered model and freeing it from the cat. What happened next had never happened before or since but I was so full of rage, I threw the model against the wall. At the end of the ordeal I figured there was a lesson in this tragedy so I boxed up the remains and I still have them to this day. I think that someday I'll frame the parts and hang it near my bench.

GlueBomber:

You did the right thing lad.    

Long live the B-29!

Best regards,

Bockscar

I was about 14 and had just finished the Monogram B-29 in 1/48. I figured since it was so large the best place to display it would be hanging from the ceiling.  I used 3 lengths if fishing line and 3 screws. I got it attached and it stopped swaying, the right wing dipped as the first line broke and then it hit the floor with great force. I rebuilt it as best as I could and rehung it with about 30 lines to hold it up.

Not so destroyed in seconds...

When I was a kid (pre 10y/o) my fatherbuilt two models. The first being the classic blue devil destroyer, cant remember what happened to it, but its a classic I'll forever hold dear. Anyways the other was a "Dam Buster" lancaster, looked great in my childs mind. But there we were with a big interstate move in a few days, dad didn't really want to pack it cause he was sure it would get damaged, so he would just build a new one after the relocation, so this one was sent for crash testing. Dropped from the top of a 6+ foot ladder plus my fathers height all that happened was some broken props and landing gear, took quite a few more attempts to get any real damage, then it became a cricket ball and didnt last long after that

Andrew

Loved reading all these stories...kinda thankful my wife respects my "toys" more than most.

I can relate to how kids destroy models...only I was the kid.   I remember my dad and I would take time to make a voodoo jet model a few hours a week.  It was mainly HIS build with me watching and sometimes mixing the paint.

I decided one day I was going to finish it for him while he was at work...kinda like a surprise!  I thought I did a good job but he FLIPPED OUT when he came home.  He smashed it on the floor and went for a "drive".  Looking back I'm sure the excess glue and kid perfect paint job wasn't to his pleasing.

Later he cooled off and we started another project.

Hey Jimbot, your's was a natural reaction.

Way back in the days of the dinosaurs my father and his friend built a large gas powered balsa wood plane, this was before the age of RC. It took them weeks of work, some feuds, and all of their spare cash and time.

With much excitement and anticipation they got the motor running and launched their machine. It climbed, and climbed, it soared like an eagle --- then nose dived straight into the ground.

My dad always carried a Ronson, you know how it ended.

Best regards.

Bockscar

Destroyed in seconds, almost.

My 2y/o thought it would be a good idea to get her siblings to play indoor soccor with her. Well I find a 1" long piece missing out of the side mu 350 scale yamatos hull (had only just finished sanding it ready for painting so not far along really), On seeing this I flipped, grapped the hull launched it across the room. Grabbed it up again pounded it against the door frame a couple of times.

Come back later after cooling off, figure hey, I'm a modeler I can fix this, isnt this what modeling is? 6 Months later it is now in condition that I am now waiting for the eduard PE kit in the mail. On close inspection you can see a few issues but its almost as new. Not bad IMO for something that was 6 large and a 4 or 5 smaller chunks I dont think

Andrew

Seems the wife I had at the time had "issues". Until I took the kids and split I actually stopped building, or, hid a completed build for a bit.

That's why she's ex #2. 

 Ha ha I liked your post on 'Average modeler's age and life lessons'

EX #1 was in a bad way after I left. Unfortunatly I was in such a hurry I never properly put away my built models. Actually left them in the curio cabinate.. Doh! She asked on the phone ' Whats your least favorate model?' I said which one then in the back groung a smashing sound and crying. The worst was yet to come as she was away for the weekend and my dear EX mother-in-law got into the now boxed models the EX put away. I have been told they are broken a bit yet can be fixed by me.

Life lesson # 262 NEVER trust a angry EX with your models... 100's of hours can be destroyed in seconds!

When I return to sort everything out I guess I will see the extent of the damages. Last laugh may be mine as it has motivated me to build the few kits I brought and like most recent builds they are my best to date

yep, done the same thing with CA myself, except i tied the plane to a wire from a tree limb and let it swing over the bonfire till it flew itself in!: :}

I'm glad that I am not the only one who has had a bit of a problem with their tempers. I didn't mention the F-15 I was working on. A jar got dislodged from the shelf above my desk which fell directly on the plane, which shattered the canopy,  broke one of the intakes and broke the cockpit loose inside the fuselage. That was quickly followed by my doubled up right fist to finish the demolition. (I won't even talk about the sharp bit of plastic that jabbed into the side of my hand that bled nicely for about 20 minutes.)

My B-17 diorama...  It was two feet wide, two feet long,  sitting on a 16-inch wide shelf.   My cat decided that that was the day that he could finally make the leap from the floor to the top shelf. 

Although he was sucessful, he chose my dio's overhang as the target.. Needless to say, he made a perfect lever to the shelf's fulcrum and, outweighing the B-17 by some 4 or 5 pounds,  launched it and the Tamiya duece & a half a third of the way across the room... The Fort faired far better in the crash-landing I depicted on the diorama than the real-world one from 5 feet up...

Now I gotta get another cat... I need to make another fur slipper..

I don't think I ever "test flew" a model airplane by throwing it into the wall, but back in the 1970's, we had cats that liked to knock down my models. I remember one of those models was Revell's Mayflower that was on the fireplace mantel, and the cat knocked it down one day.

a long time ago i had a dragon scud missle launcher,coolest looking thing on the market at the time,spent forty hard earned dollars on it,(if around today it would be in the hundreds of dollars),put the sub-assemblies together and started to mount it all to the frame,things went horribly wrong,weak suspention fell off,the cab and launch compartment didn't fit,launch rail somehow warped and would not fully raise or lower, balled up both fists and repeatedly smashed the thing to bits to this day i still say it was the best forty dollars i ever spent. taught me patience and the value of money.  side note i was 25yrs old and in the navy at the time. good to see ya back manny,you actually made a mistake once? LOL

I am sorta embarrassed to tell it but here goes:  many years ago I was deep in the process of building Monogram's B-26 kit in quarter scale...I didn't want a tail-sitter so I measured out the correct amount of BB's I would need as weights and decided to place them in the two engine cowlings/nacelles on the wings...for some reason I thought plastic tube cement would be a good way to keep them in place...after a few hours the glue softened the cowlings and nacelles enough so that the BB's were "melting" through the plastic...why didn't I just use white glue???

I lost one due to glue as well. Some how a bottle of plastic glue...can't remember the brand....tipped over and spilled over the wing and tail of a B-26 I was working on melting the plastic where ever the glue touched. The wings were ruined, the tail had melted plastic spots on it. I might have been able to fix the mess...but didn't feel like it. I doubt I would have been able finish that kit anyway as there were alot of problems with that kit. I think it was the bad apple in the batch or something.

Another time I was working on a Hasewaga P-38F. As is common on that kit one of the booms was warped. While trying to get everything lined up and together it decided to fight back. I lost my temper and threw the thing again the wall and just hambered at it until it was just a heap of plastic. It wasn't my finest hour.

Last but not least when I was a kid I was watching tv when I heard a crash. Running to my room I found that one of my shelves had collasped and dumped my OV-10 to the floor destorying the landing gear and propellers, dislodging the canoply, and creaking a boom. Remembering all the trouble I had had putting that kit together and upset with the shelf I took the the plane and gave it its one and only real flight, right into the oppsite wall. The explosion of plastic was pretty cool to see actually.

Those are my sudden deaths of models.

    About 15 years ago, I had an old 8 foot long R/C sailboat that had outlived it's racing days but was a great boat to take to the lake, sit back in a folding chair with a drink and have fun sailing for a few hours. One day it sprung a leak in the hull. It was all hardwood planked and the leak was between two of the planks. Took it home, dried it out, repaired the leak, and repainted. Next time out, she sprung a leak in another place. Went through the repair sequence. To make a long story short, this happened 4 more times in 4 different places. On my way home from the lake the last time, I guess my temper started to boil and when I got home I took all the R/C gear out of the boat, removed all the fittings, took it out to the burn pile in the back and set it ablaze. It was still smoking the next morning when I got up.

Jim

Mine would have to be Revell's 1/1200 Queen Mary 2 Ocean Liner. I was attempting to get back into ship models with this small build that I thought would be a nice, easy build.......how wrong I was.

I startd painting the hull, and right off the bat I had paint problems. Then when I did the water lines the masking tape hadn't kept the paint from creeping under (I spent almost 6 hours on the masks alone.) Oh, and then if that wasn't enough the spray painting of black paint on the upper hull went wrong, I had mistakenly touched it before it dried and their was a perfect finger-print. That finally made me crack and I slammed the model against the driveway.

It suprisngly stayed in one piece, only the propellers shattered off. I still have it, to serve as a reminder of what not to do. Maybe I could attempt to rebuild it, but then again I'm not too sure on how to remove all the paints. So it's gonna be sitting in it's box pretty much indefinately.

1/48 Pro-Mod Helldiver.

 I came down into my basement/war room, and immediately noticed, from across the room, that my plane wasn't sitting quite right on it's stand. I notice every little change in my house.....OCD-ish! So, I go inspect it, CA and its fog all over it along with some Elmers and masking tape, but the masking tape was painted blue, as the plane was. All the parts were there, it could have easily been fixed.......that's what absolutely disgusted me. My daughter had a friend spend the night, the night before, and had been screwing around and knocked it down, then tried to fix it, thinking I wouldn't notice.........she oughtta know better than that!!!!

 I took it out the basement door and slammed it on the concrete and walked away for awhile. I later returned to salvage some details for the sparesbox and flung the rest off into the woods. I really miss that model, it was one of my top 5 favorites....like a son to me.....(sob.....sob...sob)!!!!