Your most embarrassing mistakes when building model kits?

[seadude]

Just for fun, and also because I'm curious...........what has been everybody's most embarrassing mistakes when building model kits over the years? 
The things that make you (or others who see it) want to do a facepalm.
The things that make you go "Oh ****, I can't believe I just did that."

I'll go first.
Thought I'd share a bit of humor (or horror) that I had a few weeks ago.
From time to time, I would always hear people say that if a person had a warped model part, then place it under/in hot water to help straighten it out.
Oh, I did that alright for a warped wing for a Testor 1/72 scale B-2 stealth bomber I started working on a few weeks ago.
Problem is, nobody ever told me "how hot" the water should be. 
I don't think there's any way to straighten this out, is there?  Good thing I got two extra B-2 kits to use for spare parts. 

[Old Wombat]

My biggest "D'oh!" moment was when I used mineral turpentine to scrub enamel paint from a nearly finished model.

Who knew mineral turpentine dissolves styrene?

Apart from every modeller other than me?

[kerick]

It's like every paint shop were the experienced employee give a styrofoam cup to the new guy and tells him he needs a cup of paint thinner. New guy comes back with a melted cup!

[Old Wombat]

Point is; I should have known better but my chemistry brain had gone AWOL that day.

[Rheged]

It's like every paint shop were the experienced employee give a styrofoam cup to the new guy and tells him he needs a cup of paint thinner. New guy comes back with a melted cup!

A former colleague reports being given a surreptitious slug  of gin in a styrofoam cup at an event "somewhere in Saudi"    He informs me that gin and styrene is not a felicitous combination.

[Hobbes]

Mine are mostly the 'usual suspects':
- forgetting to put ballast in before gluing the fuselage together
- when L and R versions of a part exist, glue them the wrong way round

[PR19_Kit]

I spent some time researching a Norwegian Air Force RF-5 once. Spent out on a Hasegawa T-38 (They hadn't got a proper F-5...), converted it to an F-5 and scratchbuilt a recce nose for it, painted it in umpteen shades of NMF and decaled it to the ultimate level.

Then took it over to Norway where I was working with a guy who used to fly their RF-5s and presented him with the model.

He was chuffed to bits, but then pointed out that I'd got the roundels on back to front! 

Norwegian Air Force 'triangles' have the pointed end facing backwards, mine faced forwards............

[zenrat]

I wanted to dechrome some hot rod parts so I mixed up a nice strong solution of caustic soda and dropped in the parts...

...forgetting that caustic soda dissolving in water is an exothermic reaction.  It was hot enough to seriously warp the parts.
Got the chrome off though.

My biggest "D'oh!" moment was when I used mineral turpentine to scrub enamel paint from a nearly finished model.

Who knew mineral turpentine dissolves styrene?

Apart from every modeller other than me?

I didn't know when I used it to wipe down a model car body before spraying...

I also didn't know that brake fluid, while removing paint will also give resin parts a jelly like consistency.

But the most soul destroying one was when having masked and sprayed a gold and black enamel paintjob and fully decalled a 1/25 Monogram Hurst Hairy Oldsmobile I put down a coat of Tamiya TS clear which created an uncalled for crackle paint effect.  I stripped it and repainted it differently but i've never been happy with it and want to have another go at the RW gold and black.  I'm still looking for another set of transfers.

[DogfighterZen]

I guess mine would have been gluing the canopy on a Monogram Bearcat and leaving the masking tape that protected the instrument panel's coaming in place... 
Obviously, i only noticed it when i removed the canopy masks when i finished the build so, instead of a black coaming, it's a pretty Tamiya masking tape yellow one...
Also painting navigation lights in the wrong sides(green where the red should be and vice-versa) but i guess that these are small.
The one that hurt me the most was picking up a model on which i'd used Tamiya spray can flat clear that seemed to by dry enough to handle but it wasn't fully dry yet... left a finger print on the top of the fuselage which went all the way through the paint to the plastic...   it could've been worse and more noticeable but it was on a build that i was really happy about till that happened and it was enough to get me very disappointed and to use every swear word in the book for quite a few minutes...

Almost forgot, i did melt some stuff, not with hot water or thinner but with putty. I thought it was harmless stuff so i dabbed a ton of it onto a 1/72 revell F-16's main gear doors to create a wider main landing gear for my first F-16W build... Needless to say, it melted the styrene... i did manage to use it... and that was how i learned the true meaning of PSR...

[Pellson]

I've scrapped a very nice Monogram F-105 over a warped fuselage I tried to rectify with hot water. Next time, I just glued it and put it in a rig for drying over a week. It was a pain sorting the rig, but I'm still annoyed by losing an example of the nicest Thud kit around.

[PR19_Kit]

I had a PSR disaster on the infamous 777-900. As it used FIVE 777 fuselages there were a lot of joints to be puttied, and at one stage I ran out of my fave Presto putty, and had to do subsequent PSR sessions with a different manufacturer's product, I can't remember which one now, but the two putties reacted with each other and blistered and bubbled my lovely paint job!

Not only that, they kept ON reacting for ages, so much so that the whole build was delayed by almost a year until they stopped!   

[The Rat]

Picking up the model to do something with it and:
1) Forgetting that some paint was still wet
2) Forgetting that some decals were still drying
3) Forgetting that my fingers were trying to occupy the same space as a delicate and easily knocked-off part

And things like:
1) Forgetting that I was using enamel paint and trying to clean my brush with water
2) Forgetting that I was using acrylic paint and trying to clean my brush with enamel thinners
3) Spraying a clear coat after removing canopy masking
4) Painting undercarriage doors in a different colour than the aircraft underside
5) Masking over the area that I DID want to spray paint, instead of what I did NOT want to paint.
6) Using strong putty to hold nose weights in place, and watching it melt the plastic
7) Absent mindedly dropping a used brush into a tumbler of whisky instead of water or thinner

Do I usually learn from my mistakes? No, no I do not.

[Poz67]

Poor whisky !

[Joe C-P]

I did something similar trying to un-bend the deck of a Kuznetsov, the Russian carrier, to make a what-if CVN.  Too hot water and the piece twisted and buckled, unable to be repaired. 

I also fogged the canopy of an HO3S helicopter, a real world model meant for museum display.  Fortunately I was able to remove, clean up, and coat it with Future to prevent a recurrence.

[Gondor]

Not me, but I remember what must have been a very embarrassing mistake for the reviewer for a Gannet aircraft kit where the wings were folded and the top most section of with was painted in the undersurface colour rather than the  uppersurface colour. This is due to the wing folding twice rather than the usual once for naval aircraft.

I also remember going to a model show in a small Bedfordshire village in the late 80's where one older modeller had a display of Airfix and Hasegawa Lightnings for what must have been every version flown by every operator on display, very impressive. Only one problem, with at least two models he had the exhaust the wrong way up so that rather than the airframe slopeing upwards as it went rearwards at the tail, it was downwards as it went rearwards.

Gondor