Woops wont do that again!

Mishaps? Pffffffffffftttttttt .Never had any happen to me. HA! Who am I kidding? Too many to list from my younger years

In architecture school, at the drafting/ model table lifted my arm off the surface a few times with the xacto hanging from my elbow. You quickly learn how to incorporate coffee rings, cigar ash burns and blood into architectural renderings. No photoshop in 1974.

My redundant mistake in modeling is taking the decal sheet out of the kit and away to the armchair, PC, bedroom etc. with a reference book to research. Never to be seen again. I'm particularly distressed about a great set on 1950's polar helicopters that I can't replace.

I always keep a bottle of CA de-bonder nearby in case I glue my fingers together, as I have done many times!

I have to tell on myself ;

   J.T does knives in the thigh  .Me , I do drills through the hand ! Oh , and a broken X-Acto blade in the thumb ! Drills . Was drilling out portholes on the Titanic model ( ya know , the big one ) and thought everything was fine . Felt an excruciating pain and realized I had drilled right through my hand !

      Years before on the Steamer " Natchez " I was so proud to be trusted with my first X-Acto , by myself too ! Well , it took a doctor visit to get that broken blade out of where it imbedded in my thumb bone .

While talking about CA mishaps, this is not model related but my buddy's daughter once applied CA to her eye lids! They were quite popular at the ER!

Under the category of Fun With CA Glue-- when I first started working with the stuff years ago, I had no idea that the fumes could travel and essentially congeal wherever they happened to land. It was a wonder glue to me and I used it on everything! Then I noticed that my contact lenses were irritating my eyes and causing them to water a lot. Removing a lens, I noted that there was a small dot, about the size of the tip of a pin, of something on the surface of the lens. Cleaning didn't remove it-- because it was CA glue, wafted through the air and attracted to the moisture of my eye. Ruined a pair of contacts, but I guess I was lucky it was that surface and not my eyeball. Lesson learned. I use CA sparingly now and only in a very well ventilated space!

Well lets see, many a year ago when I was a wee little lass, I was working on a 1/32 F-4 from Revell, and I couldn't get the wing joint to glue so I had to put down a crap ton of putty on there, and got to sanding well dang if I didn't put a hole right in the wing box.  Well I thought I know what to do the second time around and guess what....

While working on a C-17 at work, I taped off the engines and had them lieing on a workbench all taped up, someone asked me what they were, I told them they were my engines for my model.  The next day I go to look for said engines, and lo-and behold, they were thrown out by my co-worker, there goes another 40 bucks.  The moral of this one is don't let engines out of your sight.

Working on a B-52 in 1/144th scale and I started using the model master scribing tool.  While the tool worked perfectly, I took to much out of the panels and it looks like the panels are just wrong.

I'm liking this thread, not only is it showing my that even the pros are human it's also showing me what steps to take to avoid a serious SNAFU.

Yup, never try to catch a falling knife!  Also. don't put masking tape on top on decals, and be real careful about pitot tubes and antennas when mounting a model on a base.  it's the last few steps like that which always trip me up.

Hah! One of the guys at my IPMS chapter this past Friday  was telling me about his modeling on an ex drafting table that had the same sort of xacto knife mishap! You are not alone JT!

I've already posted about this, but it's worth warning people about. I spilled some CA adhesive on my workbench, and tried to wipe it up with the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be a baby wipe. (I keep a box of those things handy to wash my hands.)

CA, as I understand it, works by polymerizing when it comes into contact with moisture. When one of those wipes hit it, it started to smoke. The wipe got so hot I almost burned my fingertips on it. I had to make a mad dash for the bathroom to run cold water on my fingers before I could get the wipe loose. I was about one step away from heading for the emergency room.

Don't do that.

Then there was the time, quite a few years ago....I used to work at an old drafting table for a workbench. It was tall enough that I had to sit on a bar stool, which made getting up and down a little bit of a nuisance. I felt something roll off the front of the table, and snapped my legs together in order to catch whatever it was in my lap. A portion of my left leg immediately went numb. I looked down and discovered that I'd imbedded the blade of an Xacto knife in my thigh.

Don't do that.

About 26 years or so ago, I was building the old Revell 1/32 Tornado IDS. It was a rather tail heavy model so I needed to add weight in the radome. I had plenty of lead birdshot and loose pennies to affix in there but no super glue on hand to glue the stuff in place. So I decided to use Squadron Green Putty. Not a wise move. Where enough of it contacted one area on the inner surface created a corresponding size soft sink area on the outer surface until the putty eventually dried out. I suppose that had something to do with the toluene ingredient... So once that did dry I had to fill the resulting external area with putty and sand it smooth. Lesson learned: Squadron putty in large amounts in a concentrated area may cause more work than you intend to correct.

I've done that myself. Never even thought it would be a problem.....