Messed up Kits - - To Build or to trash ?

I can relate Tanker Builder, being on a fixed income .  

I never trash a model, as my skills improve I figure I can always repair the screwups later and I don't hafta shell out more bucks for another kit.   Case in point;   I recently re-did my 1st attempt at a NMF. It took about 3 weeks to remove the paint by soakng etc. but I finally got it down to bare plastic . Now that I have the NMF down pretty good , I re-shot the whole thing and it came out good.  So I spent some quality time modeling , restored a model to the "good shelf"  and learned how to restore a poor paint job for verly little cost.  VOILA.

I have trashed a few out of frustration,but I have also perservered and got some troubled ones done.

For me it depends,has to be fun.

Tanker, what a great story especially of your youth.  I remember when, as a young teenager, my only source of income was when my brother and I would mow some of our neighbors' yards.  The two of us would mow with a push mower and then we'd trim all along their fences and against their houses using hand shears.  When we were done, we'd ask for a handsome total of $5.  I found out later that a friend of mine used to only mow the lawns in his neighborhood WITHOUT the hand-trimming and he got $15 for it!

Currently my family (wife and two young daughters) subsist solely on my income.  As a result, if I botch up a model, it doesn't get thrown out.  I can't afford to do that.  I put it back in the box and set it aside.  It might be set aside for a few years until I get the nerve to give it another try.  Models that would have been initially trashed often ended up being some of my best ones that I've been most proud of.

Eric

i never trash any thig i save parts or better i use the crap model on dioramas

I may give up on a kit, but I never throw it away. Seems like I always end up scavenging it for parts, or kitbash it with something else or find a similar trashed kit that I can use to make one complete kit or to fix one of them.

I never toss anything either.  I have a box full of greebles that are basically leftover pieces from built kits or parts from broken models. When I was younger I built my own stuff out of these scraps.  My entire child hood revolved around sticking X-wing blasters and jet wings onto Corvettes and Lamborghinis.

I usually trash the bothersome pieces but hold on to the rest for spare parts.

The Scratchbuilder's Motto is "Never Throw ANYTHING Out!"

Don't take this statement the wrong way! This was from the mid-60's!

Selling "coke" bottles partially funded my comics-models addiction!

For me, I either make the messed up part or missing part from plastic or balsa, make a diorama with battle damage or leave it in the kit until I figure out what to do with it.

I have 2 kits with damage or missing parts. A Fokker DVII 1/48 scale is missing many parts. I'm thinking maybe a diorama with heavy battle damage and it is being used as a parts plane. And a 1/32 P-51B with a malformed fuselage half. The bottom of the engine section is umm, withered might be the best way to describe it, I have no clue what to do with this one.

Both kits were free easy enough to toss them and move on but I'm too stubborn.

Well, i got this /32 F6F Trumpeter kit, the whole dang fuselage is mis-formed!! i'm moderately decent at weathering, have only made two dioramas (1st i was around 10-11 years old, 2nd just two years ago..), but i've been convinced to make a battle damaged diorama!!! May as well try.....

Now a Ford Fairlaine that i ruined by my own doing.......  i was going to finish it and go back to the younger days of firecrackers, but was walked thru on how to put it out in a field all rusted out(haven't got that far with it yet).

So, no, don't 'discard' anything, i'm learning there are other options to do with it!!

I've boxed up a few half-finished projects for later and tossed a few that I became convinced I couldn't salvage from my own goofs.  I've also tossed some from the shelf after years of display and decay.

So far I haven't put huge amounts of money into one specific kit.  The most expensive kit I've purchased was about $50.00.  I have invested in a couple of projects where after market PE and resin parts increased the project's cost but I've still kept it below $100.00 per project.

Mostly I believe I've been able to do that by sticking with the smaller scales.  I build 1/700th scale ships and mostly 1/72nd scale a/c.  I've jumped into 1/48th for some WW II a/c and some spacecraft, but for display space purposes I don't do the "big" scales.

It isn't that I don't see the challenge of building the larger kits, I'd love to try something, but there's always the "What the Hell am I going to do with it when it is finished?!" factor that keeps me in check.

I keep a good stash of unused parts for spares and mods, but if I've tried and failed 3-4 times on the same project, I'll toss it without much regret.  Often, it comes down to interest or the challenge if I box one up for later, I just don't want to give it up.  The others?  Well they aren't that expensive, I'll buy another and retry it later.

This stuff is supposed to be fun.  If I believe I've given the project it's due and it has become a chore, it is gone.

This is subject based for me. If it is a "Justin" kit, and it gives me trouble, it gets stripped out and the big parts go in the styrene waste box, and the small parts go into the spare's drawers. A Justin kit is "Justinother Skyhawk" "Justinother Phantom" "Justinother Skyraider"

If it is something like a Pavla PQ-14 or Olimp Jenny, then I keep it and wade through any problems I might have. This is true for any Rare Models That I am only Going to Build One of.

Rex