I had a minor Catastrophe when painting today. The B-24 that I am working on is separated into three pieces to make it easier to work on (the two wings and the fuselage). Well, the top portion had been painted, along with the underside. All that was left was the black strips along the leading edge of the wings. After alot of careful masking, it was ready to be painted. All went well…for a while. Once I was done painting, I went to hang everything up to dry. And that’s when it happened. I watched as the wing slowly fell and hit the ground. It seemed to happen in slow motion. I quickly picked up the wing and began to inspect it and found that the main impact occurred on the wingtip. Cracks split through the seams I had so carefully filled and sanded.[BH] Luckily, the wing is still in one piece. Now I just need to find out how to fix those cracks. Take a look at the pictures and see what I am talking about. If anyone has some suggestions on how to fix this wing, I’d be glad to hear them. Like the saying goes, if it hasn’t happened yet, then it probably will.
Here’s the underside and the topside; they look fine.
I would actually try just gluing them back together and lightly sand the resulting seam. So long as no large chips came out of the putty, the two pieces should go together rather nicely. Check it first by pressing the cracks together to see how they go together.
As for the engine cracks- I don’t know. Apart from a re-putty and paint job, I don’t know of any quick fix. It may be one of those things where there’s no easy way out.
Oh boy that’s terrble! I know you wont want to hear this, but it looks like you’re going to have to reglue, refill, and resand. After that, a nice dose of repainting is in store. Sorry man. Shouldn’t take you too long! Good luck!
I had the same thing happen to a '109 a while back. Except that I dropped it three times in the course of three painting sessions. Ended up parting it out- luckily the cockpit and canopy were OK and the gear and doors were not glued on yet. Good luck on your repair job!
I hate it when that happens! I had a perfectly good paintjob on a Ferrari I was working on and dropped it while putting it on a shelf to dry. well luck would have it it bounced off my shirt (many dirty creasymarks) and then landed with a thunk on the ground (huge hole on paint job a couple smaller ones near the big one where it bounced). I was so sick I just started a new one. the canopies and the interior had all been glued to the frame (idiot me) so I couldn’t just strip the paint and repaint… aaah
like what Lucien said, as long as no chuncks came flying out, those two should go together nicely. I found that Mr. Surfacer has an easy method to cleaning it. when I fill in rescribing mistakes, I take Mr. Surfacer 500, fill the line and take a Q-tip, dip it in alcohol and start moving the Q-tip back and forth across the seam.
moving fast helps it to not take off any inside the seams while neatly removing the excess. going perpendicular to the seams help, but that might be difficult on the edges of the wings…
good luck! hope everything works out ok with minimal pain.
Anyone ever notice a person has four fingers and a thumb on each hand, except for a model builder. They have five thumbs on each hand. [banghead] [:-^]
In away you should not worry too much, it happens to all of us! My worst disaster was when I just painted a car in high gloss paint and one of my cats though it would be nice to scratch behind his ears, very near to my model…I still get sick thinking about it.
When you’re trying to re-apply some putty you may try to make it a little less thick by using thinner.
As far as the repainting goes, I would mask of the area that are damaged using the panel lines on your plane. If you add a little bit of white to your base color you have been using before this panel will have slighty different shade. In real life the panel could have been damaged, renewed and painted in the field at some stage (sounds like a good excuse to me)
Good luck with the repair and post some pics of the finished model please.
resounding the other members’ sentiments: it’s not THAT bad, probably more frustrating than damaging. A nice application of liquid cement should bond the plastic together nicely. Having to re-do anything is frustrating…we’ve all been there, but at least it’s not an insurmountable problem. [8D]
Thanks for all your input. When I get some spare time, I’ll try to work on it. It probably was more frustrating than damaging. I was almost done and then this happened.[banghead] I’ll post some pictures when I get some progress made.
