Today, I set out to paint a car engine. So, I gather up all the parts I need and I come to find that one part is missing. It is a filler cap of some sort. This is an old style engine, so I am not sure what that reservoir is for. Probably oil. But that is besides the point, I can’t find it. It should have been in a small container that I store parts like these in. I am thinking, even when using the precaution of a closed container, I still lose a part. Sigh. Gremlins have struck again!
I am a determined person, so I set out to exhaust all possibilities. I dig in the model box, I look at the trees, I look in the scrap bits box, I search the bench, I look in the garbage can, I search the floor on hands and knees, and I even looked through my vacuum reservoir. All this produced nada! But hey… my vacuum got cleaned out.
I sit down at the bench and I accept defeat. Kind of like the old man in A Christmas Story as he carries out the broken lamp after failed attempts to fix it. Like in the movie, I thought I heard the sound of taps. [:|]
I will have to scratch build one. Not happy about it, but it is what it is. I grab the engine and begin analyzing the scale of what I need to make. Kaboom! I can’t believe my old eyes. The missing part was mounted to the engine. Son of a … I totally forgot I mounted it, and when I glanced at the engine before the search, I didn’t notice it. Dispair, back to joy. Lol.
I wouldn’t call it bone headed. How many times have you looked for a tool on your bench and you know you just had it but now can’t find it. Look and look, nowhere. Look again, there it is. Sometimes you can’t see the forest through the trees. Been there done that waaay too many times.LOL!
I have had a theory on that for years that what actually happens is the thing you lost ended up falling into a wormhole in the space-time continuum, and the only way you end up finding it is when you finally catch up to it at the time it jumped forward to. That’s why it seems to just materialize out of thin air, in a place you already looked before.
Lol. That’s a good one. Last year I built Tamiya’s Spitfire MK1. I often use the glue looper or small metal items for applying tiny drops of super glue. When the applicator gums up with glue it’s easy to take a lighter and burn off the residue. The kit comes with photo etched parts for much of the cockpit assembly. The plastic seat is attached to a plastic bulkhead. One side of this bulkhead has a PE part to glue on. I glue the part on and get a little to much super glue oozing on the joint. No problem I figure I’ll just burn the residue off just like when I clean the super glue tools. Of course forgetting the PE part is joined with the plastic pieces. The thing was a melted blob of plastic.
I emailed Tamiya and got replacement parts. I didnt feel the need to explain why I needed the parts.
30 some odd years ago, I was making a purchase at a little store in Telluride Colorado. I made the purchase left the store. I had walked about a block, and something didn’t feel right . With my RIGHT hand, I reached around to my back right hand pocket.( that’s wher I ALWAYS Carry my wallet)It wasn’t there! I searched the ground, asked passers by if they had seen my wallet, and realised I MUST have left it in the store.
I get back to the store, and proceed to tell the staff I had lost my wallet there.
As I’m describing the wallet ( black leather Harly Davidson with a 3 foot chain attached to it ) the staff just stare at me and say nothing.
I start waving my arms around frantically…
when suddenly, I feel a tug on my LEFT hand .
Yep… I had been holding the wallet WITH THE CHAIN STILL ATTACHED TO MY BELT, in my left hand the whole time !!
I " wish" I could tell you I made the whole thing up…
I have always been an absent minded person, but I am convinced that it has gotten worse since I had Covid (though maybe I am just using that as an excuse [:O])
Anyway, I have ended up resorting to adding those “Tile” tags to my keys, nametag, and wallet, and have several times had to use a “Where’s my phone app” to find my phone. [Once it ended up in a pothole in the street, because I apparently left it ontop of my car, before driving away, and another time it was up at 7-11].
Anyway, I have become surprised at how many times I “find” something in a place that I knowI had already looked. (especially for my keys in my pocket). I don’t know if its because my brain is just going through the motions when searching, but it drives me nuts. The worst though is when I loose my glasses, becauase it gets real frustrating looking for wire rim frames in poor lighting when you can’t see all that clearlybecause you don’t have your glasses on [:S]
I think my latest was my worst. I’ve been working on Tamiya’s Raiden and got fed up and called it done… twice, but morning comes and I look again and whoa - not done. I attribute most of that to wine [:P]
I don’t believe in ghosts, or flying saucers, or Sasquatch. But I do believe in the ‘Little People’. Gremlins, brownies, leprechauns, or whatever you call them- something swipes my belongings and hides them. And then puts them back later. Either that or I’m rapidly going insane.
My biggest bone-head flub is not having an accurate inventory of my stash.
I finally started to take inventory, located ATLEAST a half dozen kits that I have been actively looking for from my favorite shops…turns out they’re already in my stash. That explains the 6 1/48 ME-109s.
I just remembered my bonehead move from yesterday morning.
It was 0530 and I had been out on the flightline getting a navigation receiver reinstalled. It was dark…and it was C-C-C-COLD (12 degrees), so I was working with a coat, hat, and my trusty headlamp pulled over the top of the hat. My usual routine is to stop at the aircraft and get my headlamp out of the tool bag I carry in front of the passenger seat…then get the equipment and bring that to the aircraft. So, I get all of that done and get the receiver reinstalled, tested, and so-on…so now I have to get the weight & balance out of the POH so I can generate a new one. Since it was so cold outside though, this time I elected not to take my hat off (or my headlamp) like I would do if the temp was a little warmer. I return to the aircraft at about 0600 (still dark) with my adjusted weight and balance in hand…go to the passenger side of my truck to get my headlamp out of the tool bag, but its not there. But…it MUST be here! I start to get a little frustrated at the concept of having to go back to the hangar to find it, so I lean into the passenger side to pick the tool bag up onto the seat to start pulling stuff out of it. At that point, I hear and feel a clunk as my headlight (which is still happily sitting on my head) hits the top of the door opening…and the light turns on. [bnghead]