Silly mistake

[Nigel Bunker]

I have been making a Spitfire XII, and have used a Spitfire IX with a Paragon conversion kit. I carefully removed a radiator, filled and sanded it (many times) then noticed today I had taken the wrong one off.

What other silly mistakes have people made? Please tell me I'm not alone.

[NARSES2]

When I was building my Planet MB5 I managed to put one of the tailplanes on the wrong way round if that helps Nigel ? 

Expensive resin kit + superglue + stupidity = 

Managed to fix it though

[Mossie]

Once started building an Airfix A-10, it was a bugger of a kit, the wing & tail joints kept breaking open.  In order to make the wing stay, I thought I'd zap with copious amounts of tube glue.  Seemed to do the job, but a few days later the tail boom went all soft.  Couldn't work out what it was at first, finally opened it up & found a ton of poly in there.  While squeezing the tube, there had a been a pop & I'd figured it was an air bubble.  Trouble is, this air bubble shot a good amount of poly into the fuse which melted my model!  I meant to leave it several months to set & then ger back to it, but it ended up being hacked up for a kit bash.  Crap model anyway!

I've done the old thing of not reading instructions properly & getting parts in the wrong order, wrong way round etc. on many an occassion!

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Two things spring-to-mind.

Number 1Many years ago when I was living at my mums' I used to build/paint in the garage (she seemed to think spraying noxious fumes and paint particles around the bedroom was unhealthy !) - one cold autumn day I was spraying the then brand new Hasegawa F-4B. Got  a beautiful smooth glossy white coat on the underside so set it to one side to dry whilst I set-about the tank/weaps etc.

Turned back around a few minutes later to find my new pride and joy was looking more like a Hasegawa Egg-plane than a 1:72 Phantom..... why ?...... left it too close to the Calor Heater, it melted ! - I was so angry, I picked it up by the fin and drop-kicked it to the other end of the garage..... became a good source of spares though.

Number 2About the same sort of time I was building a lot of 1:24/25 American cars..... still do. Just finishing a NASCAR racer - the ones with the very complex engine & interior detail, last task GENTLY push the wheels onto the axles till you hear the 'pop'.

Instead of working over the desk I was leaning forward over the floor. Instead of the usual 'pop' there was a 'crack', the rear axle snapped, I jumped, the finished model dropped and shattered into more pieces than originally came in the box.

When I stopped roaring in frustration/anger I actually found a tear in the corner of my eye.

No, Nigel, you are most definitely not alone.

Ian

[Ed S]

A recent misque was when I had a model already assembled and painted and realized I hadn't put any weight in the nose.  Sure enough it was a tail sitter.  So I drilled a small hole in the front, put in some small pieces lead until it was back in balance then mixed some epoxy and squirted it in the hole.  Once it had time to cure and I was happy with the balance, I pluged the hole with a piece of sprue, sanded and cleaned up the nose and repainted it.

Not a biggie, but annoying.

Ed

[Aircav]

I've got the conversion set for the Revell 1/72 U-boat to make it into the minelayer, marked up the two hull halfs with tape ready for cutting, ( you need to cut the hull in two to fit a center plug as its longer) cut one side no problem and the started cutting the other side, wasn't until I was half way through that I realize that I was cutting the wrong side of the tape, Doh!!

[Craig]

August 2002 and then Cdt Sgt Craig was moving his entry for the wing modelling competition into the wagon. It had taken me months to knock it together: based on the Ju52 at the beginning of Battle of Britain I had the aircraft, a little reception committee of luftwaffe bigshots, the mercedes and kubelwagens, an 88 in the background and a lovely road/guardshack.

While I was moving down th dive to place the box containing it into the Escort of death I tripped on an uneven slab and dropped the box. Opening it up I saw that the Ju52 was knackered and the rest of the diorama with the exception of the 88 and the guardroom beyond immediate repair.I didn't know whether to laugh or cry-so I did both.

Realising that there was still a competition to be entered I swiped my He-177 (painted, no decals), some generic ground equipment and my modelling bag. The judges were a little surprised to find me still decalling the thing when they finally arrived.

[Radish]

Once fixed some lead weights with filler in the nose of a Super Etendard....after painting, the nose wrinkled like a prune

I'd once painted a Matchbox Privateer in Sea blue Gloss, put it on a box to dry, and the dog knocked it off onto the carpet with its tail A furry privateer a goundhugging dog, and a super blue mark on my study carpet

Was it Aircav who related the tail of a chap who sprayed a model after placing it on his leather settee?

[Jennings]

I proudly painted up the cockpit of my Tamiya F4F-4 kit, then noticed it sitting on the workbench after I'd assembled the rest of the airframe

J

[Radish]

I remember an AMT 1/48th A-20 built with the undercarriage assembled the wrong way round, entered in the NATS Competition, it received a COMMENDED, which destroyed my little faith in judges!!

[Radish]

Also, on Hyperscale, a C-47 model received lots of praise for its excellent finish, but no comment was made about the upper intakes being reversed

[Sisko]

Thought I grabbed a can of clear flat to spray on my USS defiant. It was actually gloss white.

When you see how much masking is involved in painting a Star Fleet Vessel you'll understand why I was so angry.

Regularly glue gear doors arse about. Regularly forget weights in the nose.

[Aircav]

Was it Aircav who related the tail of a chap who sprayed a model after placing it on his leather settee?

It was, the guy bought a blue spray can then sprayed his R/C model in the front room which had a cream coloured carpet and a white leather settee, by the time he had finished everything had blue paint on it including his dog, his wife went balistic and then he tried saying it was the shops fault because we didn't tell him he not to paint in his front room, drr 

[Joe C-P]

I once assembled the superstructure of a ship in the wrong order. A resin model, no less, so it was super-glued over a large surface, not just the edged.

I also tried building a USS Pine Island, a seaplane carrier, and the hangar came out trapezoidal. It was basically unrecoverable.

JoeP

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

A really, really good friend of mine - no not the Dork. We were staying in the barracks at Stoneleigh for the UK Nats - I'm certain only RADISH will remember those days. He had built a superb 1:32 UH-1D out of the ancient Revell kit, and painted it in the experimental Aussie splinter scheme.

For some reason, I've never been able to figure it out, on the Friday evening after setting-up, he bought a Humbrol 'mini spray' varnish to give it a final coat 

1 - Humbrol Mini Sprays were notoriously uncontrolable
2 - He bought Gloss not Matt
3 - He sprayed it in the room
3a - That meant we were sleeping amongst varnish fumes
4 - In the morning it was still tacky AND a wee bit furry
5 - He still wonders why, to this day, he wasn't placed in the comp....... I'm guessing it was the fact that his - up until that moment - superb model; was in part glossy/in part milky/in part tacky, had varnish runs, needed a shave and stuck to the judges fingers.......

The silly mistake..... thinking that spraying a model in the room the night before a National Comp was a good idea !

Ian