Turning "Arrgh!" into "Ahhh!"

Here's an AARGH!!.

I'm just about finished a 57 Bel Air and today I went to install the door handles and door mirror. They are missing. I don't know where they went....

I don't have an AHHHH!!! yet....

M.

A friend of mine was building a F-4U for an IPMS contest. A day before the show he was putting the finishing touches on his model when he discovered a wheel and tire was missing. He was unable to find it but he did find a hydraulic jack in his spare parts box. He put the jack under the strut, scattered some tools and a tool box around it and entered it into the show. He won second place.

Berny

I was building a Tamiya sport bike, I dont even remeber what bike. But I was all finished with it and just had to assemble the right body pannel. Well for Tamiya bikes all of the body pannels are held on with extremely small screws. I realized that my screws were gone. And I had no idea where they went. I had seen bikes displayed with the main side pannel off so that you can see the detail on the engine. So I decaled up the bike, put the clear coat on, and made a nice stand for the pannel to stand up on next to the bike.

Mkish, ever thought about making the belair into an old junker. Take a wheel off, make a cynder block or two to put it up on. Shater a window, add some rust. Seems like no one ever thinks about making a model look like a junker. But i have seen a couple and have been more impressed with the skills to complete it!

QUOTE: Originally posted by mkish Here's an AARGH!!. I'm just about finished a 57 Bel Air and today I went to install the door handles and door mirror. They are missing. I don't know where they went.... I don't have an AHHHH!!! yet.... M.

Well have you thought about building it as 'shaved' handles and putting on just a drivers side mirror..

For an extra little touch you could french in an antenna, I would guess a hot dental pick would make that plausible...although I would test it on some plastics that I wasn't using of course....

This probably wouldn't work for you if you were going 100% original...but those nice little finishing touches on a retro rod or street rod could make it gorgeous...

Thanks for the suggestions, but I've found someone who has the extra pieces and is sending them to me!!

I considered 'changing' the subject similar to what was mentioned, but the whole thing is SO close to being done and it would break my heart to start over. Given that I don't put too many models on the 'complete' shelf, I'm choosing to finish it as intended (thanks to my guardian angel who is going to supply the missing items).

M.

I think the 'worst' that ever happened to me was crackling paint job on a DC-10 I was finishing in FedEx livery. I had the perfect shade of purple and had done a lovely job with the white on the fuselage, had added the decals and already had a stunning model, but a coat of varnish ruined everything, with the later reacting with the underlaying purple paint... The white paint nicely showed trhough all thise cracks... Arrgh! So much Arrgh that I put the model back in its box, later to revamp it, stretched fuselage and all, into a Thai MD-11 that was really Ahhh! (that was a month or so before Hasegawa released the MD-11 of course!).

My worst was when I was building a 1/35 Jeep to go with a half track. I was almost done when I found the windshield was cracked from the top driver side corner down twords the center bottom, almost completely through! I drilled a very small hole about in the center of the crack, used my X-acto to scribe some spider-webbing, added some more holes to the fender & hood and a flat tire. Modified the figures to have a couple helping the wounded driver into the half track. Ahhh! From scouting to rescuing.

It's notjust a hobby, it's an adventure!

Thanks for the fast feedback!

Some of those experiences just gotta hurt.

In another thread I mentioned a 1/72 CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft I built when I was about 17 and ended up puting too much nose weight in, a few years after completion, the landing gear started to show the stress. Sometimes it takes a while for the "Arrgh!" to rear its ugly head.

I'm still between "Ahhhs" on this one. Do I get after market decals (that will require several sets of generic Canadian markings to do these days as the aftermarket set I got when I built it is no longer in production)and tear the whole thing down and rebuild, or do I just buy some steel rod and use it as axles and keep the rebuilding to a minimum? Well, I'll be tossing that one back and forth in my brain for a bit longer yet.

Good news. The 1/32 scale MiG-21 has been rereleased by Revell-Germany.

QUOTE: Originally posted by upnorth Any of you ever come to a point in a model where everything has been going generally well, then something happens, something small but significant enough that you can't let it go without fixing? Two days ago, I was working on my Revell 1/32 MiG-21 (which I've been working on for four years) and the light caught the canopy just right to show a huge area of little stress fractures on one side of it. Knowing that these would only grow and haze over, something had to be done. The kits been out of production long enough that spare parts from the manufacturer were out of the question. As I was drifting through my references for the MiG-21, I found a couple of pictures that showed the protective tarp that can be fitted over the canopy, how it folds and bunches in various places... Remembering how I simulated tarps on a 1/72 tank with .005 sheet styrene and liquid cement a year or so ago, I'm well on my way to having a plausible, acceptable, if unintentional compromise to what had the potential to be a real ugly situation. I'd love to hear other stories you folks might have about such compromising.

That is good news Bernndye.

I'll have to remember its out there again, I'll have a couple of full aircrafts worth of decals left on my Tally Ho! decal sheet when I'm done my 21, so I may get myself another of the Revell ones.

Despite its shortcomings, it doesn't make my wallet scream for mercy the way the Trumpeter kits do.

Ill give you an ARRGH!! Ever have someone clean around your models and they knock it off a shelf? It looks about the same as when you drop kick a model across the room. Another lesson I have learned, is to not sweep the floor around your work area, i have lost many little pieces that way.

I have an older story similar to yours xcmbike, but it involves my cat. I had just completed a formula 1 car and came home one day to the cat playing around in the living room with a mysterious object. I didn't pay real close attention, but later realized it was a 'tire'. Closer inspection revealed it was from the one and only formula 1 car in my collection. You can imagine how quickly I bolted to the other room where I saw the newly built kit smashed on the floor (it was on a higher shelf and the floor was hardwood...) So far that's the only time my cat has interfered with my model stuff...

M.

i recently bought two ww1 fighter kits,a pfazl dxii and a siemens schuckert diii only to find no lozenge decals,AARRGH!!! ive always shied away from loz a/cs because they look like a nightmare to paint. i was doomed. until i realised that the decal info on the back of the box was almost the same size as the models wings and had a repeat pattern like wallpaper,so i made 3 stencils.one airbrush , 8hours work,2 beers, hey presto! a passable loz pattern (upper sides only i,m not that insane!) and both a/c look good on the mantlepiece. AHHH!

WWI lozenge patterns are like modern splinter camoflage patterns. I've got nothing but respect for anyone who can pull them off convincingly.

Thanks for the story.

errrrrrm..... it wasnt THAT convincing,but it did impress family and freinds(the ones who don,t know about ww1 a/c anyway!)regarding modern splinter i,ve always thought saab a/c look brilliant,so maybe one day........

errrrrrm..... it wasnt THAT convincing,but it did impress family and freinds(the ones who don,t know about ww1 a/c anyway!)regarding modern splinter i,ve always thought saab a/c look brilliant,so maybe one day........

Here's an unusual version of turning "Arrgh!" into "Ahhh!": The "Arrgh!" in this case was the calendar! My girlfriend's mother, Ida, is a UFO fanatic and one year for Christmas I decided to build Testor's Area 51 UFO kit and give it to her for Christmas. Over the summer, I built the model, but when I was done, I decided it looked a little too "toylike," so I began thinking about something to snap it up a bit. About then, I found a March, 1993 issue of FSM with the aircraft-carrier hangar deck diorama and decided to adapt it to an Area 51 diorama. By then, it was late September and I had to plan the diorama, draw it on graph paper, buy the base, cut some acrylic sheet for the walls, scratchbuild new parts and get the thing ready by Christmas! Of course, there was waiting for paint and glue to dry on top of that, so it was really a race with the calendar! Using that hangar-deck diorama as a guide, I scratchbuilt a catwalk, some air-conditioning ducts and a host of other items. By December, I was spending every available spare minute with that diorama as the clock and calendar continued their relentless marches! I finally had to leave out a few things, such as the seated alien figure (he's still rattling around in my spares box somewhere). Christmas Eve [:0] came around and I STILL had a long ways to go! I stayed up until about midnight (hope Santa wasn't watching!) and about 7:00 Christmas morning, it was back to the glue and hobby knife. FINALLY I got the last part glued in place 10:00 Christmas morning. Then I still had to wrap the dang thing! I decided it needed to be put in two boxes. The UFO itself went in a smaller box and the Area 51 diorama went into a great big box; I carefully wrapped them and drove them the fifty miles to my girlfriend's house. The funny part is when I brought in the big box first, Ida took one look and said, "What's in there, a UFO?" (Close but no cigar, Ida--the UFO was in the small box!) That was a crazy few months there!

yeah I have one for you. I was building an IDF 113 And got it all put together . I started painting it with a can of model master spray paint . Well it did not come out looking like I wanted it to. I think that the paint was at one point frozen. Well my model which I had spent about 150 -200 hrs building Is ruined .I have put that one on the back burnerAnd may use it later when I find a use for it .