We’re talking modeling related, not life in general. Otherwise we’d probably run out of room. [;)]
Reading a thread about Warhammer 40K reminded me of one of mine…
One of my most regrettable moments has to do with Warhammer 40K. [:(]
I had a plastic storage bin full of Warhammer 40K figures (probably 100+). The majority were all metal with a few plastic figures mixed in. These were completely painted / detailed. Some of the best work I’ve ever seen. A buddy of mine had given them to me. Said he was never going to play anymore and wanted to get rid of them. At that time, I had no idea what the figures were. Most of them were pretty neat looking (especially the Space Marines) but there were some which were somewhat gruesome looking. Anyone who’s familiar with 40K knows what I’m talking about. [;)]
Fast forward a couple of years, having moved a couple of times, married with one child and needing to make room for stuff. I must have given them away to my neighbor who was into gaming or perhaps someone else. If not, the alternative was that I … I can’t say because I shudder at the thought.
All I know is that 5 years later when I finally realized what I had once had at the time, I could have cried. Now that I’ve been collecting Warhammer figures and painting them, I have an even greater appreciation for the work that went into painting them. They were amazing. I still have a few pieces from the collection and whenever I look at them I’m reminded of this.
My most regrettable moments usually involve losing patience with a kit and tossing it out, only later realizing that the kit is out of production or was a rather pricey gift.
My two most famous examples:
Early teen years, I had recieved a 1/350 USS New Jersey as a gift, I was so excited by the huge kit and all the detail, and I started to diligently build it up and was determined to give it the best coat of paint possible. However, I didn’t have an airbrush, I was hand-painting this monster. Well it must have gotten to me, because I eventually gave up on the painting, rushed the construction and then promptly blew it to bits with a BB rifle! What was I thinking?
More recently, I had acquired a 1/35 AH-6. I was going along nicely with it, and had painted it up as a “what if” USMC grey helo. Then it just sat, 3/4 completed, until one day, for unknown reasons, (seriously, I can’t explain my actions here) I crushed it and tossed it out. Then, when I went looking for a replacement on the web, I found out it was out of production! It’s taken me almost three years to get my hands on this kit again.
I’m still trying to figure out what got into me at those times.
My regrettable moments are. Droping my P-51D, Buying a Testors Cousiar, And trading off all of my unbuilt Formula 1 cars and all are hard to come by now.
I built a 1/72 FW-187 with scratchbuilt cockpit, radiators, and landing gear. I did the works on this one. I had just applied the top coat over what I considered a near perfect build when it happened. My wifes long haired cat jumped up next to it and rubbed his cheek on it. I hollared and scared the cat but the model was stuck to him. When he hit the floor it dislodged in several pieces. I picked it up and and whipped it at Barney’s hinney as he bolted into the bedroom. I missed the fluffy demon but finished what he started.
Yes I still have the parts in a little baggy somewhere to remind me what a short fuse will earn you.[sigh]
Being that I’m still rather green with scale modeling, I’ve only recently discovered that a few kits that I had started quite a few years back but kept for future completion had a few critical parts magically disappear, rendering the kits worthless. I tossed a 1/32 P-38J once I had discovered the parts missing, but recently discovered my old '89 X-Wing had its canopy, cockpit and S-Foil hinge pin missing. I kept the X-Wing for spare parts/greeblies. Too bad, these old 12" X-Wings are getting hard to come by!
The latest regrettable moment was not properly fiitting the t-66 tracks to the WWll easy 8 sherman from DML. I cut 1st, fit 2nd. Munched the whole think badly, only to find it very hard to find another.
Fit 1st Cut 2nd…
Fit 1st Cut 2nd…[sigh]
Live and learn.
Mine must have been my first airplane model, a 1/48 Fujimi Dauntless. Well it was a pretty nice kit and I paid a pretty penny for it too (just a kid with no allowance). Well I didn’t really read the directions and was gluing left and right, including the prop. It was a mess after I was done. In my defence, I was about 8-9. Still, I blew a hefty sum for a piece of junk when I was finished demolishing it.
Trying to get the individual track links on Tristar’s Panzer Mark II B to fit.
They DO NOT work as per the simple directions. Thin wire works but then the molded tiny plastic pin on the other side fails. What a mess! And NO vinyl for a back up!
I’m going back to aircraft!
Thinking back to my childhood when many now vintage kits were sacrificed during the Great BB Gun and Firecracker Wars. I think every Aurora tank kit, dinosaur kit and a couple of sci-fi kits did not survive (except for one MBT70). When I see one go for massive bucks on eBay, I cringe.
Ok, my most regrettable moment…get your tissues out for this one fellas…
I spent about 48 hours straight completing a scratchbuilt 1/350 USS Bennington (Essex Class carrier), long before Trumpeter was even a company. The entire build took about 500 hours or so. It’s the day of MosquitoCon 1995, and I’m driving to the show with the model on the back seat of the car. It’s been snowing, and the roads are slick, so I’m real careful as I’m driving down my street. I come to the stop sign and street corner (I’m doing all of 2 mph), slide on a sheet of ice and bang the curb on the opposite side… Didn’t hit it hard enough to even damage the car…but…
The rear seat is a fold down, and the impact was just enough to dislodge the rear seat, which folds down on top of my carrier (no, it wasn’t cased). It crushed the island, the rigging, and drove the finials up through the keel.
Needless to say, I didn’t go to the show…in fact, I think that’s the only time in my life that I’ve actually cried over a model…
It was repaired, but it was never the same after that…in part, it’s my own fault, it should have been boxed or cased before I brought it out.
Or ya should have just made sure the seat back was secured… oops, shut your mouth Jon… I feel for ya Mr. Herne. This is why I try not to spend too much time on a model. [V]
Maybe not taking pics of the contract builds I do…there are a number of kits I’ve done that ended up looking great - and nothing but the memory remains…like the Tamiya King Tiger - the great big R/C one, I turned a couple of those horrible big scale Poscher Ferarri’s into real showpieces, the 1/12 Tamiya Yamaha YZR500 that I won Best Bike of Show at a Melbourne model contest many years ago…all gone.
Ah, well…such is life.
The lastest was actually several months ago now. I was working on a Haswaga P-38F and I couldn’t get the booms to line up at all. Finially gave up and destoried the whole thing.
Then there is the Pro-Modeler Me-410… Was working on the cockpit and something just wasn’t working right. I guess I was also having a bad day and was having a string of bad luck when it came to Pro-Modeler kits at the time. Anyway I ended up throwing the completed cockpit against the far war. Never did find all the pieces. I still have the rest of the kit and someday I plan on finishing it once I find an interior. I don’t want to buy a new kit just for the cockpit and the only after market cockpit that I know of is the old Verlin set that is now OOP. So I don’t know how I am going to ever finish that kit, oh well.
The biggest regret trough goes back to when I was eight. I had built this Huey gunship. I don’t remember who had produced the kit. But anyway I was showing it to some kid. He asked if he could see it and so I gave it to him so he could get a closer look. He then threw it on the ground and said it crashed. I think I wasin too much in shock to beat the s## out of him then. Plus he had been older and bigger than me. But still wish I could have torn him apart. Putting him back together would have been harder than it was putting the Huey back together after I got done with him. Anyway I did got the Huey back together with only one piece missing and I kept it until it just fell apart. But it was still never the same after that…
had a 1/48 tamiya P-51D ready to go in the paint shop for the NMF. she was decked out with a nicely painted and detailed Aires resin and PE cockpit. tried the cheaper krylon gloss black as a primer instead of the reliable alclad gloss black base…got orange peel big time…tried to strip it with easy off oven cleaner…put it in a plastic bag overnight…i’m a rookie…the canopy popped off in the bag somehow…stripped ALL the paint off inside and out…wasn’t a pretty site…she’s in the “salvage one day” pile…[banghead] not a very expensive mistake, but one that hurt. someday i’ll figure out how to re-detail the cockpit… already assembled inside the fuselage that is. later.
Our daughter and son in law came over with their three year old son. I was showing our son in law my just completed 1/48 Hasagawa F-4E, the one I was crew chief on at Eglin AFB. I had spent around nine months building the model. The wife asks us to load some plants she was giving our daughter in their car. I set the F-4 on the coffee table and Andy and I loaded the plants. When we came back in the model and grandmunster were missing. We found him on the back patio flying my F-4. Drop tanks, pylons, missiles, landing gear, stab, canopy, and other parts are scattered all over the concrete patio. He sends it up for its last flight and it lands wing first on the concrete. It shattered like glass.
The wife said it was all my fault as little boys will be little boys. Several months later when he destroyed one of her prized music boxes, she didn’t think so.
I was only about 12 (I’m 79 now!) and I used to make Paul Guillow 10-cent flying models ( a lot of money for a kit in the late 1930s!) with the stringers, formers, rubber-band powered prop. I used to work with a flashlight under a blanket on school nights when my parents were sleeping…It was about 1 a.m. and I was tired and frustrated from the long hours under blanket with only a flashlight. I was just about to put in a small joystick in the finally-completed plane when I couldn’t find the missing piece anywhere. As my temperature rose, I finally took the tissue-paper covered craft and crushed it vengefully into a pulp of tissue and balsa wood!. When that was finished, I then looked down at my desk. There, in plain sight, was the joystick, looking up and laughing at me! It doesn’t pay to 11) have a temper while modeling and (2) work beyond your limit!
The first thing that’s come to mind is dropping my fully rigged camel (1/72 about 40 wires) at my first nationals. I think I do not have to explain how that made me feel…
Secondly I would recal painting a I-153 (smer 1/72) I did a lot of work on correcting this kit, but it al went bad whilst painting. I experimented with enamel thinned with artist gloss coat. At first this looked fine, until I removed the masking. A lott of paint came along with the masking!
Between the ages of 14 and 16, I built about 20 1/72 scale aircraft. Everything from F-15’s to the B-52. I hung them all from my bedroom ceiling with fishing line. Heck, my ceiling was even painted blue.
Well, here’s the give away. There was a ceiling fan in my room. (I’m sobbing now…).
My mother thought it would be a good idea, while I was out, to open the windows and turn on the ceiling fan “to get some fresh air in”.
When I came home and walked into my room, there on the floor lay about 15 destroyed, decimated, crushed aircraft.
It took another 17 years before I built another.
My regret was not telling my mom: “Don’t turn on the ceiling fan”
Well here’s my entry on this subject. About three years ago I was moving and my friend was helping me move my stuff to the new house. About a week after I had moved I started going through my boxes that had contained my collection of models. I noticed that I was missing my big box that contained a 1/72nd KC-135A, a 1/72nd AC-130, a 1/48th B-17G and some other kits. I asked him what happened to that box and all he could do is bow is head and say that he was sorry cause he took it to the dump, cause he thought it was a trash box. [banghead][banghead] I was just a little mad at him, but I can always get them again, hopefully.