The true measure of a human being is not to be had when things are cheerful and gay.
Rather, allow me his measure on his darkest day.
Y’all can see where I’m going with this one.
I was nearly done with my P-38 AiraCobra. It was my first free hand airbrushed camoflage job and I was really happy with it, I had given the entire model a base coat of silver, and had done some salt chrystal weathering. Like I said, I was really happy with it, then I masked off the upper surfaces with scotch tape to spray the underside white.
The white went on really nicely, then I peeled off my masking, and about 15% of the camoflage paint with it. (Insert your favourite string of expletives here.) Now, I have a VERY weathered plane, (it is something I can live with) I simply added some yellow zinc-chromate to the edges of some of the worst bare patches of silver and it’s tolerable.
I know I can’t be the only one, please share your hell-day horror stories with me, and what you ended up doing about it.[:D]
You mean something like being able to spend a whole day working on a paper for a final and come to find out you have the WRONG packet!! It’s 430 and the prof. still isn’t back to me. I need it by 945 tomm. morning!!
Now 10 after six and no reply. I’m gonna do the wrong packet and hope it works out.
well stormy, i’ve had several of those days since i began this hobby in july of 03’. murphy has been campin’ round my hobby room having a hay day my friend.[B)][V] my first complete build was a 1/48 tamiya P-51D that i built to hang from the cieling over my computer. a week later my lovely wife decided to rearrange my hobby room/office and moved my computer across the room and my hobby table!!! outwardly, i grinned and bared it, inwardly i was panic stricken. as my knees wobbled, i began to piece through the disarray my hobby table was in. so, i took the P-51D down because i loved having it hang over my computer and decided while it was down i’d dust it off a bit. i left it on the computer desk for a couple of days as i became busy and just didn’t dust it right away…it succumbed to my 3 year old daughter. then, i went through i would say…4 model kits of various types with several incidents and they never got finished because i would become dissatisfied with the way they looked. then, there was another P-51D that i meticulously finished the True Details cockpit set and installed it. came to the alclad II bare metal finish and to make a long story short melted the plastic trying to strip some orange peel off. lost the kit and the True Details cockpit set. so, after a couple of days of mourning that loss, i shifted into high gear and built hasegawa’s F-16A in 1/48 scale with the cool israeli dessert cammo. got it all together to hang from the ceiling (i dont have much shelf space OK) and went to put the finishing touches on the bird and couldn’t find the box which contained the instructions, decals, and the remaining parts!!! below is the pic of the F-16A after all the hard work on the cammo shceme. she took a nose dive and the canopy and left elevator snapped off so i’m just gonna put this bird up for a while until i get some motivation to repair and or finish the kit. i’m gonna try to salvage this one but the aftermarket exhaust nozzle is $13!!![:O] hope this “lifts” your spirit some my friend![:P] no pun intended. later.
It had to be a bad day if you were doing a P-38 Airacobra. Maybe you meant a P-39 [:)] ? Anyhoo, we all have those days once in a while. Just be thankful when we have one where everything goes well.
you mean like putting decals on two planes, posting the update, reading the first response and finding out that after fifteen years of building a/c i have not placed the us star the right way. no never had one of those type of days.
Joe, I still feel extreme guilt for pointing that out to you. I honestly thought you had a reference that showed em that way. Hope you got the Cat corrected OK.
im sorry rjk, wasnt taking a shot at you, more at myself, after fifteen yrs of building these things youd think i wouldnt miss something so obvious. i do thankyou for noticing and for pointing it out. i would have been in more trouble if i had put the future on that i had planned. would have been tough to get it off.
Well, I’ve been modeling about the same amount of time as you, and I have to say the list of not screwing up is a LOT shorter!! LOL Broken kits, wrong paints, wrinkled decals…stupid Future does NOT work at all for me!!! Masking, a crap airbrush failure…you name it, I’ve done it. It’s been fun though. I just dread having to try and pick out the crap out of my Corsair I primed last night…because I was crazy and thought that cotton balls would be a great way of masking…as long as it’s nowhere near where you are painting!!!
What about spraying TWO coats of glossy green on a B-17 and not even noticing it was glossy!. I wanted flat, well, now it looks extremely bright green B-17. I’m thinking about leaving it that way…It don’t look all that bad…
I guess this means that you too are only human my friend. [:D] [;)]
We all make mistakes that we dislike but it is always a learning experience as we seldom make that same mistake again! [;)]
How about painting a Spitfire in brown and green camo, being real pleased with the results, putting on the decals, coating it with Future, admire it for a week, and then realize that the brown and green are reversed.
LOL all, misnaming a kit I spent two weeks on, THAT tells you about today. In my 29 years on this planet, Murphy has been my steadfast companion and co-pilot.
When you understand that it is a malvolent universe ruled by Murphy’s Law, you realize that at heart you’re really an engineer.[:D][}:)][8]
You bet you’re not the only one. This is why I have a phobia when it comes to masking especially NMF. I was doing my B-29 then when these paint metalizers were new and I was congratulating myself already for a magnificent NMF( a paint job like aluminum foil finish) when I decided to spray over-all gloss. That’s when the world crumbled! The decals wrinkled, the silver finish turned gray, and when I lifted the masking to separate the different shades of aluminum, oh my foil-like finish, it’s gone. I retouched it after I got over the shock but it was never the same.
Last night…applying decals to my SBD-1…I had a rather long decal “US Marines” to put on…in the process of sliding it off the sheet and onton the model, it curled up under itself…spent a hectic minute trying to get it unfurled…put it back in water…proceeded to put it on backwards…took it off to try to fix it…got curled up again…back in the water…tried one more time…almost had it perfect and ripped it. Luckily I was able to carefully arrange it so it looked intact, but I had to quit for the night after that maneuver…
I had finally finished my Tamiya 1:48 F4U. Then one of the folded wings broke off on the way home from an IPMS meeting. I just glued it on in the unfolded position then, not too bad. Then it was sitting out on display when my little brother was playing. He was throwing stuffed animals around, and one just happened to slam into it, totally destroying it. Corsairs have a very bad kill ratio in dogfights with stuffed Baltimore Orioles. So I got a new Corsair, also a -1D. Well, somehow my little brother managed to knock it off display, badly damaging it. After a few weeks, I got up my courage and repaired it. It didn’t come out that bad, actually. So I put it on display on some shelves. It hadn’t been there a week when the shelf above it collapsed, ruining it entirely.
What I wonder is, does the “Curse of the Corsair” only work on -1Ds, or does it go for all variants. I am currently working on a -2. I wonder how long it will survive.
Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I was putting together a Revell 32nd Corsair, and painting it in the three color scheme. After painting the intermediate blue, I decide to mask with a liquid. I don’t remember which one now, I think it was Micro. After spraying the sea blue, I tried to remove the mask. It stuck better than the paint did. Never could get it off. The kit may still be in the closet.
I’ve had one or two of these days. The most recent one was when I got color references for my 80% complete F-86, and found that i painted the front windscreen the wrong color. so i take it off the model and try to scrub it off “gently” with a q-tip dipped in a small amount of thinner… apparently it wasn’t very gentle and i snap the thing in half! Needless to say I dislike working with clear parts. [:p]
The above photo of the Isreali F-16 reminds me of a project I set aside recently - Hasegawa’s Brakeet with resin spine add-on. I followed the kit recommended colors for the camo, only to realize after I had all the decals on that they were the WRONG colors. Duck egg blue? It’s GREEN, dammit, GREEN!! Now it just looks … completely wrong.
