What's your biggest foul up?

steelrudi wrote:

Starting this crazy hobby in the first place.  I would say the worst foul up was, when I spilled some CA, and went to clean it up, and answer the phone at the same time.  You can guess the rest.  Took 1/2 and hour for my wife to get the phone out of my hand in between the giggles, and out right laughing, and my cussing about it.  I don't answer the phone while building anymore.  I have a three year old for that when the nine year old doesn't want to.

Just out of curiosity, steelrudi, was it a telemarketer on the other end?

That would havetobe a toss up between dropping my almost finished 1/35 Blackhawk the night before the big  contest and busting the windshield in half, or trying to speed dry the escape tower for the Merucry Capsule with a hair dryer the prior year (again, nigiht before the contest, same contest venue!!) and warping it helplessly into a mass of twisted plastic.

 I dont go to that contest anymore.

 

 David

 

Mine is kinda an old crew chief habit. I was trying to do a little detailing with a brush, but as worked progressed, i found it more difficult to hold onto without smearing paint all over the place. Without thinking it fully through, i whipped out my gerber and used that to hold onto the landing gear strut i was painting. Only to discover the uniformed ripples in the plastic. It really didn't set me back that bad, but i should have known better........

OK, both my stories involve pets. When I was about 10 we had a toy poodle called penny - penny used to jump on tables to check out what there was to eat. One day when I was at school, I had left my Airfix Skyraider suspended by it's wings in the box whilst the undercarriage dried. Penny jumped on the table and knocked a full jar of thinners over the kit. When I got home, the Skyraider looked like a prop off Sesame Street where they say "can anyone see the letter U in this picture ? "

 This didn't happen to me, it happened to a Mate and he swears it's true. It involved their elderly cat called Candy. My mate was about 12 and building a prized kit - the Airfix "Eagle" from Space 1999. The kit was all laid out while he was working on it, Candy was stretched out nearby , and she had some sort of seizure or epileptic attack which caused her to pee into the air , and all over ............ the kit decals ! this was about 1980 and no such thing as after market decals, I don't know if he wrote off to eAirfix for replacements.....

 

My biggest screw up was when I was painting the large transparency at the rear of an Millenium Falcon kit - it wasn't mine I was doing it for the Mate who used to own Candy ( he likes Sci Fi kits as you can see ). The spray can was supposed to be electric blue, but I had accidentally picked up a tine of "Ocean gray" needless to say the effect was sort of spoiled.

This happened to me years ago when i first started out. I was never tought about the differences is spray paints, nor did i realize that there could be adverse affects between plastic and certain types of spray paint. I was working on a model car (I forget which one because this was as far i got with it before it was tossed) and sprayed it with some paint that my dad had around the garage. Needless to say my car turned into a warped mess that made it look like it just came out of the oven. Maybe one day i'll try to find the similar model and go for round 2.

I don't know what the worst thing I have done...but here what I have done.

Got the plane together and saw what looked like a bad seam where two parts came together. Well out came the filler and the sand paper and went to work, got that seam to disappear. Then I looked at the plans again and found that it wasn't a seam but an actual panel line. . Tried to rescribed the panel line but I ended up just making a miss of it. It looked okay but the mistake just ruined the project for me.

Joined the fuselage together and while looking over the directions noticed that I forgot one thing....no not the cockpit...but the tail wheel. The tail wheel was to be glued on one side before joining the fuselage. Tried to insert it anyway but seeing the locating hole turned out to be next to impossible. And of course the glue dried so well that pulling the fuselage apart would have destroyed the model. Didn't feel like cutting it open or making a wheels up model so back in the box it went for another try sometime in the future.

Before going to bed I test fitted the cockpit tub, and fuselage fit.. Every thing seemed to line up...went to bed with the cockpit where it was. Next morning glued the fuselage together, let glue dry and came back to move on to the next step. Picked up plane...hear something drop and rattle inside the closed fuselage. Looked at cockpit tub...its gone!! I forgot to glue the cockpit tub into the side wall, now the cockpit sat at the bottom of the fuselage and back from the cockpit opening. While trying to pull the cockpit tub forward and up the joystick snapped off, then the dashboard, so all that was left was the seat and the tub and of course the tub would not move into position, ended up giving up and putting model back in box.

Lastly working on a Me 410, something wasn't going right with something...I don't remember now what it was...got angry and threw the completed cockpit against the wall. Cockpit ends up in several pieces that I never did all of.

All of these happened years ago so I might be better now, but there actually might be more that are more recent but theses all that I seem to remember for now.