Your Most Careless Mistake? Let's confess...

Well - in early '70, when we had a chance to buy some "western" models in Poland, I became a happy owner of 1/72 Grumman Hellcat (Matchbox). I was extremaly happy - because I read a lot about Pacific war and about this plane and I do wanted to have one Hellcat in my collection. As it was long time ago (the era "without internet"), I had no reference materials about painting it, so I've followed boxart and box' backside picture - it was a very nice (and as we call it "jolly") green colour, so I've painted it in green ! After few years I discoverd my mistake, but I hadn't power enough to change it - now my Hellcat is standing in the darkness corner of my bench, wainting maybe for better times ! Regards ! Aleksander

Well, Well..............
All of you guys have pretty much mirrored many of my mistakes over the past 35 years spent making plastic models..........and Dennis Sasse has the only two pieces of advice you'll ever really need to succeed.
The first and foremost : Patience!!
The second: Concentration!! Never build when tired or preoccupied or angry.
Mayhem occurs when rules 1 or 2 are not adhered to.
Cheers
LeeTree

I am 52 years old and have been building models since age ten !
I have made too many mistakes to mention but I have formed 2 important rules:
1. NEVER get in a hurry.
2. NEVER work on a model when you are not in the mood to do so.
Dennis Sasse Iowa Boy

While building the MPM XF5F-1 Skyrocket, I was going to paint it NMF with yellow wings, as the Navy had done before WWII. Before I painted the NMF Floquil Platinum Mist, I noticed that some static had caused some dust to settle on the plane's surface. I used some of my wife's Downy fabric softener on the surface to eliminate the "static cling." Not removing it properly, I found that when I started to mask for the yellow wings, that the silver paint was pulling up! The plane now is in a blue overall color. Sigh.

Not one careless mistake, but shall we say a habit that, in the process of moving out and cleaning, I'm paying for!!

See, the condo I've rented for the past four years had a small "bonus" room, about half the size of a bedroom, with linoleum floors. Perfect for model building, says I, no more carpet to eat small parts.

Well, the linoleum floor was too much of a temptation for lazy old me, who detests cleaning more than anything. After the first itty bitty paint spill, it was a slippery slope till the linoleum was covered with blothces of this and patches of that.

Did I mention I'm renting and am now trying to get a security deposit back? :O
Yes, yes, spare the preaching - an ounce of prevention IS worth a pound of cure as I'm learning (and oh by the way, there was a cliche about cleanliness is next to something... but I forget....)

On the bright side, I'm learning that there isn't a spill known to man that can't be brought up sooner or later with Ace Hardware Extra Strength laquer thinner :D
Of course, I'm learning this lesson 10 minutes at a time as that's as long as I'll allow myself to work with the stuff before taking an "air break!"

So, young grasshoppers - a drop cloth near the painting area is worth its weight in gold!!! :D

Yeah,tiny pieces disappearing into the carpet are just the smallest of my many youthful blunders. Probably my worst wasn't really a blunder but more an act of sacrilege! Having diligently saved all the excess bombs,missiles,guns etc. from my first few kits I promptly glued them all to my 1/48 Harrier to make it look nails...only they were mainly 1/72 WW2 munitions,plus I'd seen a picture of a Sepecat Jaguar with the overwing Sidewinder mounts that day so thought it'd look really cool to stick a pair of 1/72 'winders straight onto the top surfaces of my Harrier. Hey come on,I was only 8...well,maybe 10! At least it burnt well....!

There I was, finnishing a 1/72 Hasegawa P-40 the night before a model contest here on Long Island. Just finished vacuumforming and trimming the canopy. I put the kit supplied canopy back into box and took a five minute break and put the vacuform machine away.

I went back to paint and install the canopy and couldn't find it. After removing every thing from my model table and looking on the floor under and around the table, no joy, *&$%#?! After going over the same ground two more times amid several loud outbursts, I started to panic. More @#$%&*!!!

My wife appreared and asked what the problem was and asked if I couldn't keep the obsenities to a minimum. I explained what the problem was and she offered to help find the canopy.

So there we were, my wife, my teen-aged daughter and me, crawling around the floor on our hands and knees looking for that @#$%&^*! canopy. After a half hour of this, my wife asked me to look in the model box just one more time. After assuring her it was not there, I looked just once more. When I picked up the kit canopy, lo and behold, the new one popped off. I had done such a good job in the trimming, the new one was totally invisible over the top of the original.

I never did that again! I always put the newly vacuuformed canopies immediately into a baby food jar before getting up from the table. I also think my daughter learned a few new curse words in the process. I got lucky, the next day this model won a gold in its category.

Pete

This one has to be the stupidest one ever. I was building 2 Red Arrows Hawks at the same time . The first one went like a dream, the second one..... well I had joined the fusalage halves but the wings on, just about to put the canopy on when I suddenly realiased I hadn't put the cockpit in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do'hhhhhhhhhhh

Ah yes, that first attempt at using CA instead of the old stand by tube glue! The first few parts went together well, until the wings. While holding the wing, seam side up, I frogot to take in the fact that CA is ALOT thinner than tube glue. I didn't see the rivulette until I attempted to remove pressure from the wing(finger pressure) and notice two fingers were not only stuck to the wing, but stuck together! I knew by then that acetone would eat plactic so I painfully peeled ny fingers off and left 2 finger pads worth of skin attached. Needles to say that model got chucked!

Never Airbrush a model with oil based paint before all the little water drops that collect in the corners ( from washing the model) are gone. Oil and water don't mix!!

OK, I'll bite.
I don't usually make careless mistakes, because I stopped rushing models about thirty years ago! Stupid mistakes are something else entirely. Mostly, braking one part off, while trying to attach another part, ie "Didn't that F-16 have a Pitot tube, yesterday?"

My 1/72 Revell F/A-18E, (nice kit by the way) does have a nose gear floor glued in backwords, because, well I really don't know why it's in backwords, I know I put it in correctly when I glued the body halves together, d'oh!!! Anyway drilling a new hole for the gear, solved the problem, right???? Well, it did, if you don't look to closely.

Archer out.

My most careless? Hmmmm? How about something on every one! I allways manage a good dumb blunder of some sort.

Last week I was putting the last touches an Has 1\48 type52 zero and noticed a pair of gun barrels on the sprue. WHAT THE H#$# ARE THOSE!!!! Sure enough they had to be installed prior to the addition of the cowl and engine. AWE S*#@!

Oh well. lets see what I can screw up on fugimi's 1\48 Bf 109 G-6. I'm sure it won't be long.

I spent weeks carefully superdetailing the cockpit of the Bandai Moonbase Interceptor. I then replaced the 'bubble' canopy with a piece of 5 thou plasticard. then sprayed the whole model with Enamel thinners to degrease it. the beautifully clear canopy promptly disintegrated.
Today, I was cutting out the bottom vacformed saucer shell for the SHED Models UFO (long since discontinued). I managed to seperate the shell from the sheet. then, rather than laboriously snad it down, I decided to put it in a motor tool and apply a razor blade...
the darned thing shattered!

I was about ten and I had read that you could place a freshly painted model in a "drying oven" to speed up the cure time. I figured the gas oven pilot light would work, so I placed my beautiful, detailed, expensive Tamiya Sherman Tank in the oven on an old pie plate. Forgot to tell my mom. She turned up the heat to cook dinner without looking, and my Sherman tank looked like Atlanta after Sherman left!

Cobrahistorian's story reminds me of the greatest lessons I've got from model building. I now almost have a 6th sense of when any further effort is going to make a mess. Yep, I've finally learned the art of when to call it a day and walk away before I make it worse! No one is more suprised than me....

Well, there was the time the xacto knife rolled off the workbench and fell, point down into my thigh... with a brand new blade.....

My most frustrating was building the 1/48 Hasegawa F-86F. I wanted this kit so badly. I saved every last penny because I was going to build it right... wheel sets, flaps sets, cockpit, great decals, etc.... So, I get the cockpit built flawlessly, the fuselage goes together without a hitch. Wings on nicely... then came painting....

I sprayed it Testors aluminum metalizer, which, in itself was not a problem. But for some reason I had to touch it to see if it was dry instead of LEAVING IT ALONE. SQUISH.... nice thumbprint right on the spine. So, do I leave it and wait to deal with it another day? NO. I get out the thinner and wipe the offending spot down immediately. Dumb move #2. Thinner got everywhere. So, I ended up having to strip all of it. Ok, no biggie, I'll just spray it again tomorrow. The next paint job went pretty well.... until I sprayed it with metalizer sealant. For some reason it reacted with the paint (probably because I was impatient and it hadn't fully dried yet!) Needless to say, this particular F-86 was a high-speed testbed airframe to study impacts on vertical surfaces... MAN was I pissed....

I've since built several of them quite successfully. Just couldn't get that first one right!

Just been reminded (By the missus)I had just finished reading an article on safety whilst model making in SMI, then started kit bashing paring away at some plastic i remembered the bit about cutting AWAY from your body. changed the way i was holding the part.....OUCH....still have the 3/4 inch scar on my finger. Back to red spots on the latest creation.painfull experiences whilst kitbashing would make a good (and funny)thread dont you think?...Gregers

Well not my mistake but one that was told to me at the recent Tamiyacon here in New Zealand. A well known Kiwi modeler was working on a kit when he accidently tipped a bottle of MEK into the box containing all the parts, so quick as a flash he jumped up to remove the sprues out of the box, only to knock it all onto the carpet. I was told it was impossible to remove all the carpet fluff off the sticky plastic.

My worst one involved using tamiya enamel OD to paint an M3 halftrack (brush painting, hadn't got an airbrush then), after leaving the paint for what I thought would be long enough - about 3 days, I applied the good old oil paint and turps wash, only to have all the paint disolve...

Build a Hasegawa P-12E once and put just a wee bit too much tension on the rigging-I was using nylon fishing line- and a few days later noticed that I had a nearly perfect "V" on the lower wing assembly. That was a pin in the you know what to correct! - Ed

Mine was that whilst spraying a model of the Red Barron Starfighter (esci 1/72) I didnt take into consideration the close proximity of the jaws 2 A10 that i had recently finished....nice red spots dont make good camo. my mate Andy (who wont admit to this) had just completed a matchbox lysander when i called at his house. He told me he had loads of trouble getting the wings to fit i had a look and told him that i was not suprised as he had got them left to right and back to front. nice one Andy easy mistake to make HA HA HA cheers Gregers

I was building a P-61 totally black with invasion stripes, the paint job was superb, a nice black and shiny color, when I started to airbrush the invasion stripes I had forgoten to put the plug on the other side of the airbrush.... I felt this warm fuzzy feeling running across my fingers when I looked there was white paint all over the plane.... even in the inside!!!!!

A long time ago in a galaxy far away.........
I was working the 3rd shift at a print shop while in college. At the time I was working on an A-10 and was not happy with the paint job on the flaps. I had access to acetone at work so I decided to help myself to a sprite bottle full. Needless to say styrene plastic does not fair to well with acetone. Not only did the paint come off but the flaps curled up like those fries you get at Arbys. That mistake made become very familiar with the chemicals you can use with plastic.

Dumb A** !!!!!

From the rest of the posts I'm glad to see I'm not the only person out there who acts before they think.

OUCH!

Well, the one that sticks in my memory regards my 1/72 CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft (built from Hasegawa's 1/72 P-3C Orion).

I knew from the begining this thing was going to need a significant amount of nose weight to keep her on her nose gear. I ran back and forth through the house looking for something that would weigh it down well enough.

After three days of experimenting with various weighty objects with various degrees of a lack of success, I cast my eyes over to a broken stereo speaker that was going in the garbage. I pried the magnet of the back of the speaker cone and glued it to the back of the cockpit bulkhead and stuck the fuselage together.

After a few months on the shelf, I noticed the distance between the wheels, both nose and main were widening at the bottoms and narrowing at the tops.

Still have that model and the magnet's still in it. One day I'll pull it all down and redo it.

Screwing up is like any other job, if you're going to do it, do it right!

Reading that one with the Sentry and radar dish full of break fluid reminded me of something my dad told me once. When he was still flying private jets (HS-125's with the old venom(?) engines) he flew out of Luton airport near London. At the end of the runway is the Vauxhall car factory with its car park. On one day this old 707 freighter took off, raised its gear, burst the hydraulic system and sprayed a few hundred freshly painted, brand new, still ownerless cars with one of the most aggressive substances short of acid: aviation hydraulic fluid. Every single car in the lot had to be resprayed..

I don´t remember what model I was made, but I glued the halves of fuselage before glued the cub of propeller...the propeler never twirl

I had already built 2 Revell 1/48 A-10's, not realizing how much the tail section weighed. Well I went and got another one, spent about 6 mos. building, detailing, smoothing, painting, and arming it to the teeth!. Before I knew it thpthptptph!!!!! Nose in the air!! I had to cut just behind the front nose gear and attach lead weight in and patch up the bottom. Not the most professional thing to do to a model!

I don't know which is my MOST careless one. So of them caused by ignorance or even stupidity. May be you folks can choose one for me:

1) I once built the Revell 1/32 Spritfire Mk I. I glued the left flap to the right wing and right flap to the left wing.

2) Similar to Case 1, I once glued the left propeller to the right engine in my Airfix P-38 and vice versa.

3) Trying to make my old Airfix 1/72 TBF Avenger looked remarkable, I once painted 12 tiny Japanese flags on it as kill marks.

4) After seeing the USAF insigna in the 70's, I thought the decal in my Monogram 1/48 P-47 Thunderbolt was wrong. So I add a red stripe on the white area on the insigna and painted the word 'USAF' on the wing.

5) While painting a F-4 Phantom with brush, the phone rang. I rushed to the phone but left the brush on the wing!! When I returned, the paint dried. I pulled the brush hard, leaving hair on the brush got sticken on the wing.

Well, when you were 14 years old, you did a lot of crazy things.

I was painting a Boeing Sentry which I didn't liked so I stripped the paint off the plane and radardish. So far so good after cleaning everything I repainted the plane it looked realy nice. I wanted to see who the radardish looked on the plane.
Left it there for a day or so. Came back and saw that the paint had gone from the rear part of the plane. Reason the radardish was filled with braking fluid, the fluid leaked onto the plane and stripped the paint right off the body. It took me several hours to clean the plane and radardish.

ROFL!!! i always seem to screw up when it comes to putting it on the shelf