Zvezda's T-60 light tank. Nasty kit

The only model that I have given up on was Academy 1/48 CH-46 Sea Knight. It was a beautiful kit and no fault to the kit.  It was my first helicopter and just a lot of my errors built up into a giant mess.  The straw that broke my back was a very poor priming job that resulted in an awful paint job.  That and the the fact that I didn't install the "canopy" quite right just forced me to call it a day.  

One day, I am going to make a second attempt at her as it really was a nice looking kit.

John

Oh , You Bet :

   There was an unfortunate 49 Mercury in my stash and the ideas were whirling in my head . Note , find a way to apply brakes to that behavior  .Result , a custom body job so Ugly that even EDSEL wouldn't have loved it .Body went to the round file , the rest in my parts stash !

I'd have to sand the existing surface to eliminate the bumps, then polish the areas to get the transparency back.  There are a LOT Of transparency areas on that plane!  I have decided to keep the kit, and sometime in the future carve those areas in wood, or indeed sand off the framing, make new areas with my Vac-u-form and add the framing with styrene or bmf.  But that will be well in the future after doing some easier kits first to relax from the trauma.

Don why not go an alternate route for framing the canopy? Make your frame from painted thin strips of tape or foil cut to the appropriate sizes and apply them after the rest of the build has been painted.

don don't trash it  i don't know if your into dioramas at all but... maybe it could be one with a crashed a/c the glass areas are always shattered any way  may be fun

joe

Last night I added another to my "trashed" kits.  Was building the Special Hobbies B-18 Bolo.  It has a lot of transparencies, with some like around the cockpit and the nose, having many small transparent panels.  The problem was that the metal structure between the windows was not well defined so it was hellacious to mask.  I even tried baremetal, instead of painting, but the frames are too fine and the bond not good enough.  The frames are molded as sort of a half round that gradually melds into the transparency area. I just could NOT get a decent appearance to that framing, so am trashing the kit :-(

I boxed a 90s era ERTL Corvette ZR1. It wouldn`t sit on all four wheels. Super frustrating!! The chasis was quite out of whack...anyway, it found it`s way into the bin, but, really, have not had any issues since (couple of odd old Airfix planes, but, fought through it).

In the past 30+ years I have tossed exactly one kit. Not because it defeated me, but because it was a major conversion project that became un necessary when a kit of the actual subject was released (typical of my conversion projects) and 1) it was too far gone to go back, and 2) it was not that good of a kit to begin with. Now that is not to say that I do not have many sidelined builds. I currently have between two to three dozen of those in various stages of assembly and completion. But I fully intend to complete them all one day. Not all will be contest entrants or contenders. But each will be completed eventually... God willing and the river don't rise ;-)

Not sure if I have quit on this one yet but started it about 15 years ago and then put it away until I had a better area to work on it. Then started for a few days but put it away again and did some cars. Will I ever finish it? Good Question. The kit is not up to scratch on quality so will need a fair bit of work and the kit is also quite complicated with all the hoses. It is a Modelli Despositati E Brevettati - Yamaha 4

Before this the worst kits I built were a Testors kits OV-10 Bronco and  Williiams Bros 1/72 Boeing 247D. The Italer 1/48 C-130 was challenging, as was their 1/72 C-119 - both tested my building skills for various reasons but neither defeated me. So far this A-10 has been the only one where I've had to admit defeat. I've nearly got it ready for paint, just a few more parts to attach and seams to deal with as best I can, then it's off to the garage for a Euro 1 camo scheme. Hopefully that will camouflage (heh) the worst of the flaws.

Don Stauffer

Sprue-ce Goose

Some Lindberg and AURORA kits............

Add Glencoe kits to that list!

Sprue-ce Goose

Some Lindberg and AURORA kits............

Add Glencoe kits to that list!

Yeah JF, do one in London.

I tend to just put them away. I find that as my skills slowly improve, I often can go back and solve problems that seemed impossible before.

Some Lindberg and AURORA kits............

This happens to me quite often I might add. I'm tempted to quit because sometimes it's a futile exercise in frustration and my skills are still not that great.

I was "trying" to build the Italeri He-111 bomber in 1/72 scale, and I invoked the F-word in more ways than I can describe.

While hearing my generous comments about the aircraft my girlfriend came to me to tell me :

Is this supposed to be your hobby ? To have fun ? If you don't have fun while building your kits, why don't you stop and do something else ?

And she's right. Like everyone else, I love a good challenge. But a challenge is not a chore, and if you can't have fun, then there is no point trying to continue.

So I had a great idea for the He-111 :  I'm now building a dio of a crashed bomber somewhere in Europe ...  

Yeah there have been a few I put down and backed away like they were a bomb...

I've only actually trashed a few - most get stuck back in a box and mothballed to finish on a better day. Will they ever get finished, darned if I know...

The only ones that I actually quit on altogether were a few early ones that ended up as target practice. I have some in boxes from long, long ago that were problem builds. Stored them away to work on as I improved my skills. Maybe I'll get back to them some day. Think I'll take them with me to the Great Workbench In The Sky.

Jim

I haven't quit a kit yet.( except one Italeri car kit that came without the tires).  But some I just finish them to get them out of the way.  They were not worth doing up right.  On occasion  it was the modellers fault and not the kits.

Been there and done that a few times. I'm sure a lot of us has felt defeat on a certain model kit at one time or another.

I have two levels of quitting. I have three shelves directly above my bench, the shelves of doom.  I put models (with their boxes and remaining parts) that I have run into issues with. I intend to get back to them some day, but want to move on to something more fun for awhile.

The second level is the kit that is just not worth saving- so bad I don't want to take the effort to modify.  Most recent kit at that level was a Maquette model of the Boeing 307. It was junk.  The fuselage halves had a terrible finish, and the sides did not mate very well. Only solution was to do a scratch fuselage and the kit just was not worth the effort.

I do find kits up on the shelves of doom that have been there for several years. I suspect I will never complete those, and need to go through and throw some out.  The shelves are full- no more room for another kit in that category :-(

I have definitly tossed a few in the trash over  the years,one even twice.I tried to build a Hasegawa 1/48 F-14 twice,and couldn't get it done for some reason or another.It proved to be a very frustrating kit for me.

I'm with Fly-n-hi up there with not backing down much anymore. In your defense I will  say that the usually Tamiya is ALOT more forgiving in nature. You could press ahead with the build just for the added experience though. If I start it I am usually bound and determined to finish it.  You could post pics and let us all see what youre going through. These gents on here are full of  great and kind help.

Last Warthog I did prior to this was the Tamiya, way back in the 80s. May have to invest in another one to get the taste of this one out of my mouth!

I have a dead worthog as well ,been two years since ive seen it.POS

I've quit before but not very often.  I just finished an Italeri F-16 that was a total POS.  I've gotten to the point where my skills and my patience have increased quite a bit so I don't back down very often now.  I'm not saying that I'm some sort of pro or anything but I'm better now than I used to be.

i have quit several over the yrs  i also quit models period for months on end  as well as quiting the forum for months as well