Some of your more regrettable moments?

My most regrettable moments usually involve losing patience with a kit and tossing it out, only later realizing that the kit is out of production or was a rather pricey gift.

My two most famous examples:
1) Early teen years, I had recieved a 1/350 USS New Jersey as a gift, I was so excited by the huge kit and all the detail, and I started to diligently build it up and was determined to give it the best coat of paint possible. However, I didn't have an airbrush, I was hand-painting this monster. Well it must have gotten to me, because I eventually gave up on the painting, rushed the construction and then promptly blew it to bits with a BB rifle! What was I thinking?

2) More recently, I had acquired a 1/35 AH-6. I was going along nicely with it, and had painted it up as a "what if" USMC grey helo. Then it just sat, 3/4 completed, until one day, for unknown reasons, (seriously, I can't explain my actions here) I crushed it and tossed it out. Then, when I went looking for a replacement on the web, I found out it was out of production! It's taken me almost three years to get my hands on this kit again.

I'm still trying to figure out what got into me at those times.

My regrettable moments are. Droping my P-51D, Buying a Testors Cousiar, And trading off all of my unbuilt Formula 1 cars and all are hard to come by now.

I built a 1/72 FW-187 with scratchbuilt cockpit, radiators, and landing gear. I did the works on this one. I had just applied the top coat over what I considered a near perfect build when it happened. My wifes long haired cat jumped up next to it and rubbed his cheek on it. I hollared and scared the cat but the model was stuck to him. When he hit the floor it dislodged in several pieces. I picked it up and and whipped it at Barney's hinney as he bolted into the bedroom. I missed the fluffy demon but finished what he started.
Yes I still have the parts in a little baggy somewhere to remind me what a short fuse will earn you.

Being that I'm still rather green with scale modeling, I've only recently discovered that a few kits that I had started quite a few years back but kept for future completion had a few critical parts magically disappear, rendering the kits worthless. I tossed a 1/32 P-38J once I had discovered the parts missing, but recently discovered my old '89 X-Wing had its canopy, cockpit and S-Foil hinge pin missing. I kept the X-Wing for spare parts/greeblies. Too bad, these old 12" X-Wings are getting hard to come by!

The latest regrettable moment was not properly fiitting the t-66 tracks to the WWll easy 8 sherman from DML. I cut 1st, fit 2nd. Munched the whole think badly, only to find it very hard to find another.
Fit 1st Cut 2nd......
Fit 1st Cut 2nd.......
Live and learn.

QUOTE: Originally posted by LemonJello I'm still trying to figure out what got into me at those times.

Hmmmm.........missed your anger management classes?

Mine must have been my first airplane model, a 1/48 Fujimi Dauntless. Well it was a pretty nice kit and I paid a pretty penny for it too (just a kid with no allowance). Well I didn't really read the directions and was gluing left and right, including the prop. It was a mess after I was done. In my defence, I was about 8-9. Still, I blew a hefty sum for a piece of junk when I was finished demolishing it.

Trying to get the individual track links on Tristar's Panzer Mark II B to fit.
They DO NOT work as per the simple directions. Thin wire works but then the molded tiny plastic pin on the other side fails. What a mess! And NO vinyl for a back up!
I'm going back to aircraft!

Don

Thinking back to my childhood when many now vintage kits were sacrificed during the Great BB Gun and Firecracker Wars. I think every Aurora tank kit, dinosaur kit and a couple of sci-fi kits did not survive (except for one MBT70). When I see one go for massive bucks on eBay, I cringe.

Ok, my most regrettable moment...get your tissues out for this one fellas...

I spent about 48 hours straight completing a scratchbuilt 1/350 USS Bennington (Essex Class carrier), long before Trumpeter was even a company. The entire build took about 500 hours or so. It's the day of MosquitoCon 1995, and I'm driving to the show with the model on the back seat of the car. It's been snowing, and the roads are slick, so I'm real careful as I'm driving down my street. I come to the stop sign and street corner (I'm doing all of 2 mph), slide on a sheet of ice and bang the curb on the opposite side... Didn't hit it hard enough to even damage the car...but...

The rear seat is a fold down, and the impact was just enough to dislodge the rear seat, which folds down on top of my carrier (no, it wasn't cased). It crushed the island, the rigging, and drove the finials up through the keel.

Needless to say, I didn't go to the show...in fact, I think that's the only time in my life that I've actually cried over a model...

It was repaired, but it was never the same after that...in part, it's my own fault, it should have been boxed or cased before I brought it out.

Jeff

Or ya should have just made sure the seat back was secured... oops, shut your mouth Jon... I feel for ya Mr. Herne. This is why I try not to spend too much time on a model.

Maybe not taking pics of the contract builds I do.........there are a number of kits I've done that ended up looking great - and nothing but the memory remains.......like the Tamiya King Tiger - the great big R/C one, I turned a couple of those horrible big scale Poscher Ferarri's into real showpieces, the 1/12 Tamiya Yamaha YZR500 that I won Best Bike of Show at a Melbourne model contest many years ago......all gone.
Ah, well.....such is life.

The lastest was actually several months ago now. I was working on a Haswaga P-38F and I couldn't get the booms to line up at all. Finially gave up and destoried the whole thing.

Then there is the Pro-Modeler Me-410.. Was working on the cockpit and something just wasn't working right. I guess I was also having a bad day and was having a string of bad luck when it came to Pro-Modeler kits at the time. Anyway I ended up throwing the completed cockpit against the far war. Never did find all the pieces. I still have the rest of the kit and someday I plan on finishing it once I find an interior. I don't want to buy a new kit just for the cockpit and the only after market cockpit that I know of is the old Verlin set that is now OOP. So I don't know how I am going to ever finish that kit, oh well.

The biggest regret trough goes back to when I was eight. I had built this Huey gunship. I don't remember who had produced the kit. But anyway I was showing it to some kid. He asked if he could see it and so I gave it to him so he could get a closer look. He then threw it on the ground and said it crashed. I think I wasin too much in shock to beat the s## out of him then. Plus he had been older and bigger than me. But still wish I could have torn him apart. Putting him back together would have been harder than it was putting the Huey back together after I got done with him. Anyway I did got the Huey back together with only one piece missing and I kept it until it just fell apart. But it was still never the same after that..

had a 1/48 tamiya P-51D ready to go in the paint shop for the NMF. she was decked out with a nicely painted and detailed Aires resin and PE cockpit. tried the cheaper krylon gloss black as a primer instead of the reliable alclad gloss black base.........got orange peel big time...........tried to strip it with easy off oven cleaner...........put it in a plastic bag overnight...................i'm a rookie....................the canopy popped off in the bag somehow.................stripped ALL the paint off inside and out................wasn't a pretty site.........she's in the "salvage one day" pile............... not a very expensive mistake, but one that hurt. someday i'll figure out how to re-detail the cockpit............. already assembled inside the fuselage that is. later.

Our daughter and son in law came over with their three year old son. I was showing our son in law my just completed 1/48 Hasagawa F-4E, the one I was crew chief on at Eglin AFB. I had spent around nine months building the model. The wife asks us to load some plants she was giving our daughter in their car. I set the F-4 on the coffee table and Andy and I loaded the plants. When we came back in the model and grandmunster were missing. We found him on the back patio flying my F-4. Drop tanks, pylons, missiles, landing gear, stab, canopy, and other parts are scattered all over the concrete patio. He sends it up for its last flight and it lands wing first on the concrete. It shattered like glass.

The wife said it was all my fault as little boys will be little boys. Several months later when he destroyed one of her prized music boxes, she didn't think so.

I was only about 12 (I'm 79 now!) and I used to make Paul Guillow 10-cent flying models ( a lot of money for a kit in the late 1930s!) with the stringers, formers, rubber-band powered prop. I used to work with a flashlight under a blanket on school nights when my parents were sleeping...It was about 1 a.m. and I was tired and frustrated from the long hours under blanket with only a flashlight. I was just about to put in a small joystick in the finally-completed plane when I couldn't find the missing piece anywhere. As my temperature rose, I finally took the tissue-paper covered craft and crushed it vengefully into a pulp of tissue and balsa wood!. When that was finished, I then looked down at my desk. There, in plain sight, was the joystick, looking up and laughing at me! It doesn't pay to 11) have a temper while modeling and (2) work beyond your limit!

completing the almost a Fokker D-7

The first thing that's come to mind is dropping my fully rigged camel (1/72 about 40 wires) at my first nationals. I think I do not have to explain how that made me feel...

Secondly I would recal painting a I-153 (smer 1/72) I did a lot of work on correcting this kit, but it al went bad whilst painting. I experimented with enamel thinned with artist gloss coat. At first this looked fine, until I removed the masking. A lott of paint came along with the masking!

Between the ages of 14 and 16, I built about 20 1/72 scale aircraft. Everything from F-15's to the B-52. I hung them all from my bedroom ceiling with fishing line. Heck, my ceiling was even painted blue.

Well, here's the give away. There was a ceiling fan in my room. (I'm sobbing now...).

My mother thought it would be a good idea, while I was out, to open the windows and turn on the ceiling fan "to get some fresh air in".

When I came home and walked into my room, there on the floor lay about 15 destroyed, decimated, crushed aircraft.

It took another 17 years before I built another.

My regret was not telling my mom: "Don't turn on the ceiling fan"

I need a tissue,
Jesse

Well here's my entry on this subject. About three years ago I was moving and my friend was helping me move my stuff to the new house. About a week after I had moved I started going through my boxes that had contained my collection of models. I noticed that I was missing my big box that contained a 1/72nd KC-135A, a 1/72nd AC-130, a 1/48th B-17G and some other kits. I asked him what happened to that box and all he could do is bow is head and say that he was sorry cause he took it to the dump, cause he thought it was a trash box. I was just a little mad at him, but I can always get them again, hopefully.

Man oh man. I feel for ya tiger 33 and Jeff. That makes my recent disaster look like I accidentally put a decal on slightly crooked.

Mine would be leaving the only bit of armour I've ever tried to build on a seat. I was about 10 years old at the time. I'm not sure what it was, but it was some half-track truck with a big sort-of turrety dealy on the back (as you can see, I know my armour jargon). Well, I'd finished the turrety dealy and was very proud of it. Not because it was well painted, but because I'd managed to get all of those tiny bits glued on there (without sticking my fingers to it, I might add).

Now, this is where my brain went on strike for a few minutes. I left my prized turrety dealy on a seat. What happened next......well, you can sort of guess can't you? My brother decides to walk along and plonk his fat arse down on top of it.

The only consolation I got was that the sharp gun barrels did what sharp gun barrels do when sat on..... I think it ended up getting thrown at him too (along with whatever else I was holding at the time.)

And that was the last bit of armour I ever attempted. I learnt a valuable lesson though that day......If you ever leave a model on a seat, make sure the sharpest bit is pointing upwards (you'll atleast get to laugh at whoever sits on it.).

Not taking a picture of the B-52G a friend and I did for an Aerospace class project in 8th grade. We spent ALOT of time on that joker. As far as I know it is still hanging up in Mr. Sanders' classroom. Maybe I'll get back home sometime and see him.
Ryan

My moment was a loss of self control. I was working on a Roden Sopwith Strutter 1 1/2 and it had just given me lots of trouble. Parts breaking, stuff not lining up - sigh. I got to the point where the upper wing had just gone on and two of the strutts came out, and then the carbane strutts fell over. This was after very carefully using super glue. In a fit I tossed it across the desk and into the wall. The unfinished model now sits in my cabinet as a reminder to me of an unacceptable loss of self control. I will not allow another model to beat me!
Cheers,
Eric

i've had quite a few of them, one in particular sticks out in my mind. it was 89' or so and i was moving from germany to come back stateside <army brat>, and i had a box full of model aircraft carriers,planes etc. when i moved into my house and i opened the box there was nothing left but tiny pieces all over the bottom of the box, i couldn't tell which part went to which model to try and fix em. i learned the hard way that bubblewrap is your friend. The other only happened a couple years ago as i had built Blackbeards pirate ship which i was rather proud of, i went so far as to enter it in a contest, so i had everything set up and i went to go browse and see if there were any kits on sale and to look at the competition, and to this day i dont know how it happened but someone wrecked my pirate ship. i dont mean accidently knocked it off the shelf or anything, more like snapped off one of the main sails, needless to say i wasen't a very happy person about that either. but i did learn to stay close to what you build.

being to lazy to buy an airbrush for the first 3 years of modeling until i found FSM
i just hate to think of all those models and money i wasted using really thick testors paint that i didnt mix
so i would like to apologize to all the 1/72nd scale p51a/b/c/d's all of the fw-190s,
the bf 109s, and the b17s
im sorry
wow its good to get that off my chest thanks David

Not saving atleast 1 of my models from when I was a kid... I would really like to have 1or 2 of them. Mostly the ones when I first started before I had very many paints.