What's your worst modeling disaster?

This is sad to be sure. Had  you been drinking a lot before you began your project yesterday? I have recently purchased to Panthers. One on of my favorite planes. I have not yet assembled them.

Peewee

Gee, and I thought I was having a bad day yesterday. 

I have been having all sorts of fit issues with the engine mount and cowling on a hase 1/48 jug (I guess the price to pay for scratchbuilding and modding).  So as I was trying to get the mount aligned (again) I snapped off the tail wheel (again) and one of the wheel flaps. 

Then as I was trying to build a spacer to keep the cowling from falling off, I slipped with my exacto knife and went straight through the front of my finger into the underside of the nail.  At which point I dropped the plane and snapped off the other wheel flap.

This build is getting to be more of a hassle than it's worth.

-Fred

As my sigfile at ARC says: Some days, the styrene wins…

My worst was when building the acrylic stand for my P-39. Used a mini circular saw to sever the tendon in the tip of my left index finger.

You think grease is hard to get off a model? Try removing dried blood!

OUCH!  Sorry to hear 'bout all of these disasters.  Makes mine pale by comparison.  I was putting on the finishing touches on a Tamiya 1/48 P-47 in NMF.  Future clear, decals, more Future, masked the OD panel on the nose and DISASTER!  Gently pulling up the tape removed parts of the Future, decals, paint, etc...

Hurled the model into the round file, then decided to pull it out and try to save at least some of it.  Trying to pull it apart, the now-sharpened styrene on the broke-in-half wing punctured my hand.  Three stitches later, I managed to save the office, prop, and canopy.

I was at the final stages of finishing a Raiden Jack. Finish and weathering looked great. I managed to dump a 3 oz. bottle of laquer thinner right on top of it. The finished pretty much melted and plane fused to a paper towel it was sitting on at the time. So, needless to say the whole project was a bust.

Andy

jeaton01 wrote:

Now I'm afraid to go out to my workshop.  Not only do I have to fear the rug monster, apparently there is another worse mosnter you guys have seen that I have yet to confront!

It is called:

The Beast Within.

Fear it!

I had a similar experience to Desert Rat's, except that it was an old table, in the basement. I was about ten or so. I spilled a bottle of Testor's liquid cement. It at the finish on the table and damaged two floor tiles. It took my father all of fifteen minutes to replace the tiles, and the table was inconsequential.

I was forbidden to build any more plastic models. That hiatus lasted until I was a sophomore in college, when my second room mate was a scale modeler. I think the first thing I built was the old Aurora XB-70, or maybe it was their MBT-70 tank.

I still have the top of that table, in my workroom. The finish is in much worse shape, now.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood!

My worst disaster?  Check this:

Before:

After:

Six foot flight, straight down.  First, last, and only flight. 

I've had a few disasters.  One, my 1/48 Tamiya Lancaster decided to fall from the ceiling.  Broke into major pieces mostly and I was able to repair it.  Second, my 1/48 Monogram B-25 took a similar nosedive and amazingly though it hit the concrete floor of my garage, I was able to repair it as well.  Both are still "flying" through my garage in remarkably good shape.

Which leads me to the real disaster:  In my garage workshop I had 4 shelves on the walls displaying most of my non-hanging models.  Two of the shelves decided to pull out of the molly bolts they had been in for a year or so and took roughly half of my built models, dating all the way back to when I got back into this hobby in '95, with them.

Got a call at work and was told that there had been an accident in the garage and that, well, ahem, my models were in many hundreds of pieces on the floor.  Well, there wasn't much I could do at that point, so I went about my business until it was time to leave.  That drive home was kind of a dreadful drive, wondering just how bad the carnage would be.  When I got home and pulled into the garage, the first thing I saw, in kind of an homage to Robert Ballard's discovery of the Titanic, was a lone propellor from my Monogram 1/48 P-40.  Coming around the corner, the remainder of the mess was there every bit or worse as I had imagined.  But I used the disaster as an excuse to get replacements of most of the kits I lost. 

Worse disaster?

Deciding, 15 years ago, that I wasn't going to build models anymore.
Gave away 300+ kits, decal sets, scratch building material, detail sets, photo etched spats... just about everything. Some of that stuff is now going for HUGE money on eBay now-a-days.

Lucien Harpress wrote:

My worst disaster?  Check this: Before: After: Six foot flight, straight down.  First, last, and only flight.

Ouchh.... Now that is a real disaster. How did that happen?

All of those are pretty bad... Mine was when I was finishing a 1/48  testors bearcat I just got done airbrushing some dark blue paint on it as it was drying my little brother came and spilled baby powder all over it! I was pretty mad... it stuck to the paint so I had to throw it out. But luckly they're pretty cheap at squadron so I got another one.

This isn't technically a "modelling disaster," but it's not exactly good. 

 My stash was located on some shelves in the cellar.  The washer and dryer are located directly above the area where the kits were kept.  Long story short, I didn't check on the kits for awhile because they were in a safe place.  Then, when there was a problem with the washer, I went downstairs and discovered that about half the kits (Tamiyas, Hase's, AM's, a couple Revellograms) had at some point been doused with water, and the boxes were rotted out; in a couple cases, the boxes and the kits inside were moldy.  Being stubborn and cheap, I got out the bleach and saved most of the kits. 

 Other than that, my biggest disaster was the P-47N that someone dropped and broke a couple years ago.  I put it most of the way back together, but the gunsight is still missing.  No one ever owned up to it, either. 

goss this just hurts just reading all this. i've hadn't had any thing major happen to any of my models. had my guillow p-51 fall down which put a good sized gash in it that i repaired. most of my mistakes have been relatively small.

 I think the dumbest thing i've ever done was with my 1/24 tamiya nissan skyline. it had been sitting on my self for awhile and it had collected a good size amout of dust so i took it to the sink to wash it all off but not only did i wash the dust off, some of the decals too went down too. i felt like a straight retard for doing that. i got another decal sheet from ebay so it's all straight now but dang!

Lucien Harpress wrote:

My worst disaster?  Check this: Before: After: Six foot flight, straight down.  First, last, and only flight.

My guess would be that the prototype was not airworthy!

OUCH!

I thought the idea was to build a model on a subject from a war not to actually inflict it upon yourself!

My worst was snapping both wings and the body of a F-14 tomcat which was an expensive exercise!

Hope the rest of our modelling experiences continue on scratch free!!

I don't know if this really qualifies as a disaster, but there was carnage involved. 

I built this collection while on deployment to Djibouti (pronounced Ja-Booty), Africa.  They were very helpful in killing time for 7 months.  It was a tough decision to leave them there, but I thought my friends (who were relieving me) would enjoy having them around.  They did.  The story I heard was...  One night around Christmas my buddies got a hold of some beer and liquor.  Then they got a Christmas tree from the neighboring Air Force unit, but I don't think they asked.  There was a great battle for the Chrismas Tree.  The Corsair fought the Zero which fought the Spitfire, and the Sherman fought the Tiger which fought the T-34.  It was the epic battle for the Christmas tree.  There were no survivors.  One M3 Lee was hit hard and caught fire while attacking the Ordinance tent.

ridleusmc wrote:

I don't know if this really qualifies as a disaster, but there was carnage involved.  I built this collection while on deployment to Djibouti (pronounced Ja-Booty), Africa.  They were very helpful in killing time for 7 months.  It was a tough decision to leave them there, but I thought my friends (who were relieving me) would enjoy having them around.  They did.  The story I heard was...  One night around Christmas my buddies got a hold of some beer and liquor.  Then they got a Christmas tree from the neighboring Air Force unit, but I don't think they asked.  There was a great battle for the Chrismas Tree.  The Corsair fought the Zero which fought the Spitfire, and the Sherman fought the Tiger which fought the T-34.  It was the epic battle for the Christmas tree.  There were no survivors.  One M3 Lee was hit hard and caught fire while attacking the Ordinance tent.

I would be flippin furious, thats just down right disrespectful

TheLastPriest wrote:

ridleusmc wrote: I don't know if this really qualifies as a disaster, but there was carnage involved.  I built this collection while on deployment to Djibouti (pronounced Ja-Booty), Africa.  They were very helpful in killing time for 7 months.  It was a tough decision to leave them there, but I thought my friends (who were relieving me) would enjoy having them around.  They did.  The story I heard was...  One night around Christmas my buddies got a hold of some beer and liquor.  Then they got a Christmas tree from the neighboring Air Force unit, but I don't think they asked.  There was a great battle for the Chrismas Tree.  The Corsair fought the Zero which fought the Spitfire, and the Sherman fought the Tiger which fought the T-34.  It was the epic battle for the Christmas tree.  There were no survivors.  One M3 Lee was hit hard and caught fire while attacking the Ordinance tent.      I would be flippin furious, thats just down right disrespectful

I was a little miffed at first.  However, it didn't take too much time to realize that drunk Marines are like toddlers in many ways.  One way is that they're just going to play with models.

Semper Fi,

Chris

I'm currently LIVING my worst modeling disaster. This Tamiya F1M2 Type O "Pete" floatplane is kicking my butt. The FIRST paint job came out too green, it looked like the Geico gekko. But oops, it really didn't occur to me until after the decals went on. OK, so I painted it over, not disturbing the paint or decals. No problem, as the kit included many more decals. The SECOND paint job was about right, but after applying the hinomarus and any other red decal, it occurred to me they're almost a day-glo red! Yick! Now, I went to glue the top wing on, but after it dried, it occurred to me the cabane struts are too short at the front, thereby angling the top wing downward. Hmmm. I think I shouldn't sleep while I build! I never made so many absent-minded goofs on a project in my life.

But just so you know, these early Tamiya kits do not fall together like their newer kits! Several areas will require extensive reworking. And you'll be shocked at the lack of detail in critical places, such as cockpits.

My worst modelling disaster happened while taking some pictures of my completed Harrier.  I had a light bulb too close to the model for too long apparantly.  After 10-15 min the top had melted and come apart at the seam.  Fortunately, I got a few decent shots of her before she turned ugly on me...

ridleusmc; I'm sorry about your accident, but I can't help to say that the picture of the tank that got melt just made me laugh.

Here's one of my disasters: 

Had just been at the Hobby store and bought a Humbrol tinlet of Desert Yellow color.

Opened it, and stirred it,stirred it well. And I turned around to get a brush and touch up a german tank. And I hit the tinlet with my elbow and all the color flowed down on my bench, down on my my shirt and pants. Dripping from the table down on the chair, on the floor. Have you ever thought of how much paint there actually is in one of those small tinlets?

There was color a little everywhere in the house after that, on door handles etc. 

 My Mama wasn't too happy about it.

Moving a few years ago, at the time I had roughly 15(?) kits built, amoung them my very first, a rather large and OOP 1/48th scale YB-49. I had packed them all carefuly and was 110% sure nothing would happen to them, and, nothing did.

 One day someone is shifting boxes before I get the chance to unpack them...puts the boxes on the dead bottom of a 10 box high stack, most of them with rather heavy things in them.

Most everything was destroyed, the salvage list is as follows:

Revell B-25J

The OOP YB-49 (Never looked as good again )

1/48th F-15

1/32 Monogram(?) B-29A (Monsterous beast of a kit, never found the gears so I remodeled it to have the gears up)

 I still to this day am working on salvaging some of the kits on and off, almost done restoring an SR-71.

I think my worst disaster was ever getting involved in the first place.  It's cost me a fortune over the years (decades?) and I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it all - other than scarred hands and a slight addiction to the smell of polystyrene cement!

If I had my time all over again, d'you what I'd do?  I'd do it all again I s'pose. 

Michael