I’ve made a few screw ups myself.
I overdid the nose weight in a 1/72 CP-140 Aurora and the landing gear are really starting to show it. I’m still deliberating on the best fix to that one.
My first model contained my first screw up, it was Monogram’s Snap Tite 1/72 F-4 Phantom II. Excited 7 year old that I was, I put one of the wing insignias on backwards, so the top of the star was pointing to the trailing edge of the wing.
Not long after that, I stuck the radome on Revell’s old 1/48 F-16 on upside down. I fixed that, though in hindsight it was interesting to see it have a General Dynamics family resemblance to the F-111 as it had a bit of a turned up snout.
There’s probably several more of my screw ups that aren’t in my mind at the moment, I’ll add more when I remember them.
In the meantime, have any of you ever dealt with someone else’s screw ups? Several years ago, I came into the possesion of a big box of finished models. Some of them were damaged beyond repair, but some could be salvaged.
One that could be saved was Monogram’s 1/48 B-25 Mitchell. I started pulling it apart to correct a few things that its first builder had done wrong. I was pulling lumps and lumps of plasticine nose balast out and something small fell out and hit the floor. It didn’t sound like plastic or metal, on closer inspection, I found it was a little glass tube filled with mercury. Can you believe someone would be that much of a bonehead to use mercury as nose balast?! How long have we known it wasn’t good for our health and needed special procedures to handle it safely? Longer than plastic model kits have existed, thats for sure.
Luckily, it didn’t break open and spill all over the place. I quickly ditched the Mitchell in a garbage bag, not wanting to know what else might be lurking in it that had no place in a model.
We’ve all screwed up on a model at least once, sometimes worse than others, but I can’t think of one screw up that I’ve done, or seen any one else do that tops that mercury nose weight.
