What's Your Most Useless Modeling Purchase?

anthony2779 wrote:

My Etch-Mate PE bender,just hasn't been as useful as I thought it would be,glad I picked up cheaper on Ebay rather then full price.

I bought one a couple weeks ago, and was as impressed as my mother inlaw comming over for a long visit! Wish I'd spent a little more money and bought the one from Small Shop

gary

falschimjager wrote:

as a high school modeler with a meager alowance i am veryu conserative with my money and rarely buy all this useless stuff, my painful confession is that i don't even own an airbrush, but hey my freehand's getting better.

Way to go guy! I never had an airbrush until about 15 years ago and I've been building models for 38 years. Some of my freehand jobs have been mistaken for airbrush work too. 

Way to go on those 1/72 scale Marines. I always build in 1/72 scale aircraft, armor and figures.

I bought several items over the years that are still collecting dust.

-1  Several containers of Scenic Productions grass, dirt, gravel, etc. 4 years ago I thought I was going to build some dios with it. I have yet to build a dio...

-2  My Dremel Motor Tool and it's hardcase full of 100 attachments. 5 years later it is still in tbe box. I have never used any of the 100 attachments...

-3  An expensive Verlinden flack bunker dio set. See #1 above.

-4  A Touch N Flow applicator. After reading the rave reviews of the thing on these boards, I went out and bought one. Supposedly used for applying thin liquid cement. I never bought any thin liquid cement to use in it.

There are others, but those 4 pop out in my mind.

A very small suction device I got from MircoMark when I was first starting out. It was a bulb with a brass tube, and three small suction cup things, the idea being you could use it to life, place or hold small parts.

Unfortunately the smallest of the bulbs is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too big for my 1/700 ships. I'm not even sure where it is anymore - I'm kind of afraid to give the modeling supply shelves a thorough cleaning.

1/72?! Hey- shoot me a PM or check out my MARPAT thread (feel free to post pictures right into their) if you have anyway of uploading shots- I'd love to see it!

1/72 is way smaller than anything I've ever tryed to pull off. My guys were in 1/16 and I had a hard time.

Edit- here's the link to my thread, again feel free to post pictures directly to that thread.

/forums/4/1060332/ShowPost.aspx#1060332

Yeah I hear you! My free hands not bad at all! Comes in handy when doing these crazy WWII German camo uniforms and modern digital stuff. I do want to learn how to get the nice feathered edge stuff on German armor though... maybe one day...

(Painted a whole 1:35 scale LAV in three tone NATO freehand and after the clear coat you can't even see the brush strokes lol)

Edit- I'm a college student by the way, most of my model goodies are from xmas and bdays, now that it's starting to come out of my own pocket I'm with you on concervation

as a high school modeler with a meager alowance i am veryu conserative with my money and rarely buy all this useless stuff, my painful confession is that i don't even own an airbrush, but hey my freehand's getting better.

I LOVE my Dremel tool!! It's got a cord which is fine with me. Must have for all my resin figures and detail parts.'

Now get this- I have an airbrush that I've only used once! The Abrams I built. Worked great... just... so much prep time, so much paint mixing time, so much test time getting the spray right- and it was just one color! Just didn't do it for me. Hopefully one day I'll get the hang of it and start using it for some cool camo patterns and stuff... but in the mean time it's a waist of a tip and a compressor...

All those "How to" articles FSM puts out on airbrushing that everyone complains about fascinate me hahaha

Hans von Hammer wrote:

FSM Magazine..

Naughty Hammer. Just Naughty!

But frick'n hilarious.

mg.mikael wrote:

Hans von Hammer wrote: FSM Magazine..  Don't let Aaron, Matt or Kelly hear you say that.

I don't think they care as long as the check clears, lol...

mg.mikael wrote:

Hans von Hammer wrote: FSM Magazine..  Don't let Aaron, Matt or Kelly hear you say that.

Burna-burna-burn... for me, I use almost everything I have because my tools arn't great in numbers. I did buy a couple of cheap scribers though. They've been used once, and not to much success.

Hans von Hammer wrote:

FSM Magazine..

 Don't let Aaron, Matt or Kelly hear you say that.

FSM Magazine..

The numerous jars of paints I have bought over the years. During a recent house, or rather "cave" cleaning I had to throw out 50% of the paint I had acquired, as it was either dried up or was a sticky, gooy mess.

Jim

Ha! What a Title for a thread!

Dremel motor tool. I got one years and years ago before "cordless"... It got dropped the first day and vibrates quite a lot now unless you grip it like King Kong. I thought I'd be thinning plastic with it to make battle damage more scale. I tried it once... what a joke! by the time I put on all the safety gear, I could've scrapped it with modified #11 Xacto blade to perfection.

Jim Barton wrote:

The commercial products meant for filling seams such as Testor's Contour Putty. I hated that stuff and finally found a product that works to my satisfaction, although it might be tough for other people to find and probably won't be to everybody's taste: Doc Farwell's Seal n' Heal. It's a product meant for sealing pruning cuts after cutting off tree limbs, but a totally different formula from the black stuff you usually see. Doc Farwell's is a tan-colored product and it sands smooth and accepts paint beautifully. It shrinks when it dries, but I've learned to work with that trait and use it to my advantage.

You don't like Testor's Contour Putty, meanwhile I on the other hand love it. Yes, it takes time to get used to the ins and outs of this putty, but I find it to be a valuable modeling tool. So I guess the sayings true, "it's all in the eye of the beholder."

At the moment, it would appear to be all of them.  No interest whatsoever in attacking the stash, or in finishing the 5 or 6 models I've started over the past two years.

As Willie Wonka said, "The suspense is unbearable.  I hope it lasts."

Borg R3-MC0 wrote the following post at 03-02-2009 11:38 AM:

Anything to do with diorama building (like figures, EZ water, scale bricks, clay, static gras, etc)

By the time I finish a model I want to start a new one, not build a diorama with it.

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. Hey Rob, I'll send you my address, you'll never build those!!!I'll send you sum-m back!!!

Anything to do with diorama building (like figures, EZ water, scale bricks, clay, static gras, etc)

By the time I finish a model I want to start a new one, not build a diorama with it.

mg.mikael wrote:

UGH I just hate thinking about the money I wasted on these paints. The majority have never been opened, and the rest have only been used once or so to test the color. What a waste.

I have a jar of Tamiya gloss white enamel, which I bought when they first hit the market here, maybe some 20 years or so ago. I bought it to test and see if the coverage was any better than their gloss white acrylic. Well, I never did get to test it, and it now sits as a hard lump in the bottom of the jar on the shelf where I put it when I bought it.... Meanwhile, I have jars of Gloss white acrylic which are older than that and are still perfectly usable.

Some of my most useless modeling purchases have been paints. Yes paints, because for some reason I decided to buy colors I'm probably never gonna use. For example: MM Russian Topside Blue, MM Russian Topside Green, MM Insignia Red, MM Graphite Metallic, Testors Sea Blue, Testors Flat Yellow, and Testors Beret Green.

UGH I just hate thinking about the money I wasted on these paints. The majority have never been opened, and the rest have only been used once or so to test the color. What a waste.