I was just in another thread in which someone had made a mistake and was ready to give up modeling. Luckily the problem was easily correctable but I got to thinking about all the ways over the years that I have managed to destroy a model. Not just screwing up a part, but doing such a number on it that it (A) can’t be completed or (B) can’t be displayed. Just stripped of usable parts for the spares box and the rest consigned to File 13.
In my 50 years of modeling, I’ve found several imaginative (read stupid) ways to make a model unpresentible and unrepairable. They include:
Sitting on them - Once placed a Comet balsa model Avenger which was ready to be covered on a chair and left. Came back a few hours later, not paying attention and sat down.
Knocked more than one bottle of liquid glue over on kit.
Left door to modeling room open and unattended - 4 year old son wandered in (2 models gone), 2 kittens got in and played for at least 2 hrs (5 models gone).
Put up additional shelves in model room, knocked hammer off shelf. Just completed B-29 located at ground zero.
Was keeping youngest son’s Black Lab pup while he was in college. Left brand new kit on kitchen table and left. Lab pups like to chew on things. (and I didn’t learn - she chewed up a second new kit before son rescued her).
Thats just a few of the ways I’ve discovered that you can destroy a perfectly good kit or completed model. I know you guys have even more imagionative ways of doing it.
Have a bookcase with about a dozen finished models on it. Knock over entire bookcase.
Have mother “Help” by dusting room and models (many, many years ago!) and then never finding all the antennae, lights, and other assorted small parts that got dusted off.
Remember the old Testors glue that came in tubes before they had screw-on tops (usually had to stick a straight pin in the tube to close it)? Never put a tube of that stuff in the box with the kit! It glued several spures together when the glue leaked out.
Get mad at something entirely unrelated, throw a crystal ashtray across the room right through the middle of a ship model, one that I had spent weeks tying small knots in the rigging.
Ooooooooooooooooohhh, I can tell this is gonna be a LONG thread[(-D]
Remove paint from 20 year old model, reach for dishwashing liquid to clean everything up, and watch in total horror as plastic dissolves and runs down drain.
P.S., Don’t leave washing liquid and industrial degreaser on same shelf.
Winter, -5 outside. Turn heater on without thinking of glass shelf above with 5 models displayed, 1/32 scale.
Most multi-coloured length of sheet styrene I have ever seen[:O]
Lost more parts than I care to remember to dusting, cats and dogs.
Thankfully I have a large sheet of styrene[:(]
Found out the hard way (23 years ago!) that acetone is good for removing oil from your fingers, and should not be used to clean your plastic prior to painting. [:)]
Come home late one night in a state other than normal. Open the door to the bedroom but forget to use the doorknob. Knock the casing off the door frame and have it fall and knock your latest tall ship model off of the dresser. To add insult to injury, continue walking into the room to see what just happened and procede to step upon previously mentioned ship.
Prime example of why booze, stupidity, and models don’t mix.
Build like crazy to attend the IPMS Nationals in CA (1996). Build 1/192 solid resin SSBN model (about as big and heavy as a baseball bat), attach that and other models to bottom of box, ship box to California from CT.
Make sure that in transit, the 1/192 SSBN breaks loose from her moorings and flops around inside the box containing the other models. Pay extra to have baggage handlers kick, toss, and otherwise mutilate the box marked EXTREMELY FRAGILE.
Arrive in CA all ready to rule IPMS world, to find a battered box with shattered remains of what used to be awesome models.
No, it didn’t happen to me, but it did happen to my buddy that travelled with me to the Nats in '96…I was smart, carried my models onboard and shipped my clothing…
This is going back a while. Couldn’t even tell you my age at the time probably somewhere around 8 or 9. You older guys might remember Revell had a really cool German Half-track kit, manned with a skeleton crew. Awesome kit. Probably had to wait for months to save up for it. I painted the assembled skeletons and didn’t like the way they looked. Easy fix, right, I just dropped them in a mayo jar full of Turpentine and went to bed. Woke up to an empty, crystal clear jar with some whitish sediment. [:O]
Of course I proceeded to accuse every member of the family of stealing my guys.
Had all the bits for the beautiful little 1/72 scale Hasegawa P-47 Razorback all laid out nice and neat on my workbench (a formica surface) - knocked over a bottle of Plastruct Bondene - the fumes were killer, so I vacated the joint for a while - only to return to find lots of “puddles” of light grey plastic…
I had to clean the work bench - dust everywhere. Moved everything around to dust, placing things where they normally don’t go - including a beautiful 1/12 bike (just completed) on the chair. No problem. I had no intention of sitting down. Wrong. I was lucky that the plactic was unable to penetrate my jeans and stab me in the butt.
It was like a Chevy Chase comedy - while reaching for a paintbrush,I knocked over the top heavy jar with the plastic and steel rods in it, which crushed the canopy of the 1/48 scale FW-190 I was working on, also knocking over the full coffee cup, which splashed all over the decal sheet for the Butcher Bird, and my knee-jerk reaction knocked the 3/4 built plane off the desk - in my incredulous anger and panic, I stood and took a step - right on the 190…didn’t go near the work room for a month after that nightmare.
I’ve deliberately used the pellet gun on of of my poor first attempts at modeling. 1/72 hasegawa pzIV, one shot and the road wheels all fell off and the hull seperated. boy, that was fun!!!1 [:D]
That sounds like me every 3 years or so, I keep the best, destroy the rest before we move to a new duty station…
Funny thing, the few that I’ve taken to my parents house slowly gain battle damage as they are knocked over, dusted, etc…so they really aren’t the best anymore, are they?
One time I did not like the color scheme on a airplane I was building and used a strong thinner to clean it.It desloved right before my eyes.
When its time to say good buy to the old,firecrackers do a good job at distrction.Digger
Oh yeah, I forgot that one. When I was about 12 I did basically the same thing, but we didn’t have any thinner so I used lawnmower gasoline. The results were pretty much the same [:D]
I was working on a black widow, and i dumped over a full bottle of liquid cement from testors and well the fumes were bad so i had to leave the house, and i came back some time later to find a blob of black plastic glued to the coffe table, had to throw model and tabel away.
I had an F-4 Phantom. The Manufacturer had this bright idea to have all the parts made in black plastic (It was to be painted black).
I thought I would save time and not paint it. It was black already right? I painted and put every single bomb that came with the kit on the thing. All these itty bitty decals even stuck. There was a minor flub with a bunny ear on the tail fin, but other wise it was great. Only after standing back did I realize I should have painted it, because it looked like black plastic. Though I kept it for many many many years, I consider it destroyed because of that.
I think it got “shot down” after I moved the airbase a couple of times (moved).