Who else has had a disaster build?

[mustang1989]

>You can't run! You can't hide!!!

You can run but you can't hide!

jb

Ok ok ok.. I stand corrected! lol

[slusher]

There are no disasters. Just kit bashing opportunities...

Very positive way to look at it Fred, and that does help make a parts box...

[Tom Geiger]

Palmer kits when I was young. Even as a 9 year old, I knew they sucked.

Palmers seemed to be sold in smaller stores, like drug stores and luncheonettes. When I was 10 my grandmother used to drag me along to Bingo. Right across the street from her church as a small luncheonette, and she'd give me enough money to get a Palmer kit, glue and a Yoohoo drink to keep me busy. I knew the model sucked, but it was what was there in that moment, and since it was Nana's money, free to me. So you'd get one mainly due to circumstances (or as a present from a clueless relative).

Now I wonder if the folks who worked at Palmer knew their models sucked? And how did they drag themselves into work every day, knowing that? Imagine a resume that included "Head of Tooling At Palmer Plastics".

[clovis]

Now I wonder if the folks who worked at Palmer knew their models sucked? And how did they drag themselves into work every day, knowing that? Imagine a resume that included "Head of Tooling At Palmer Plastics".

Very funny!

[ToyLvr]

I was a kid and bought AMT 57 corvette gasser. Nothing lined up or fit properly. 25 years later I still have some of the parts rattling around in my parts box

Pretty much sums up my attempt at building Revell's '57 Nomad back in the 70s....

[Tom Geiger]

Pretty much sums up my attempt at building Revell's '57 Nomad back in the 70s....

Back when I first went to GSL in 2000, the big event was a forum with the entire old staff from Revell talking about the good ole days. When it came to the question and answer session, I stood up and told them how many times I tried to assemble that kit as a kid. It just felt good.

[Lovefordgalaxie]

I consider all my models to be controlled disasters. In every single one of them something go wrong and has to be re done.

I think there are two basic kinds of disaster:

A building disaster;

A post building disaster.

A building disaster happened to me this last December while I was building my '57 Ford Custom Kustom. The freshly cleared body went to the ground and ruined all the paintwork.

Painting disasters happen more to me when I'm trying some new paint. For some reason it always works great on the test parts and plastic trees, but ruins the body of THE SAME KIT...

A post building disaster happened to me a few times, but the one I remember the most is another '57 Ford. This time it was a AMT Ford I had bought from ebay built for cheap, and decided on rebuilding it.

After I had it repainted, cleared, foiled, polished, and looking pretty nice, it fell from the shelf. The front end separated from the rest of the body. Both "A" pillars broke, as the rockers and the front end with the doors went it's marry way to the other side of the room. The bare frame/floor pan somehow bounced and ended back on the shelf, and all the other 500 thousand pieces ended all over the room.

At first, my urge was to step on every single hateful little part, and believe me that was hard to resist. I sat down on the ground, counted to ten, then I still wanted to step on the parts. Counted to a 100, and this time I only wanted to kill them all slowly. Counted to 100 again, and just wanted to send them to the trash can in shame, maybe writing "Chevrolet" all over them just to make my point.

Finally, I was able to control myself, and collected all parts. The pillars broke under the BMF, so it was easy to glue back, and hide the glue with more BMF.

The rockers were more of a problem, as they broke in different places, but I glued them back together, sanded the seams, and did a touch up painting there. Had to clear coat the body from the side trim down again to blend the repair, but it was successful.

The only permanent mark was on the front bumper, that had the chrome scratched.

I call it F-AIR-lane now

[peekay]

All sadly familiar, Tulio, but a good read.

[clovis]

I consider all my models to be controlled disasters. In every single one of them something go wrong and has to be re done.

I burst out laughing when I read it, but it is so true for me!!!!

[Tom Geiger]

Just reading through this thread again reminded me of my "Great Model Room Implosion".

Here's a photo of my model room back in New Jersey, back before the disaster. Everything you see in the foreground is actually sitting on a small folding table. Remember the shelves above the bench. The critical thing that may not be apparent in the photo is that the top shelf is loaded with magazine file boxes of Scale Auto and other model references. We went away one weekend and came back to...

Kapow! Sometime during our absence, the shelves decided to let go. It seems that I didn't have them secured all that well. They had lasted up there for years, but came down hard. So hard that the chair I had at the bench was completely bent back and destroyed.

And across the room! Magazines everywhere, project boxes everywhere. When we got home from our trip on a Sunday evening, I didn't even go into the room so I had no idea. My wife discovered it the next day while I was at work. That day happened to be our anniversary, so she didn't tell me until after we went out to dinner! She knew I'd be devastated and it would ruin the whole evening.

And thank God for little miracles! Here's my 1950 Ford pickup just as I found it. The bottom shelf was a narrow one that I had paint and supplies on. It came straight down and was caught by a couple of exacto wood boxes! That perfectly protected the cars stored under that shelf like a little garage shelter. I glued the perfectly severed bumper back on the pickup. Next to it, that body is my Ranchero police car, which was just in primer that day.

And the big circumstantial miracle... my Pyrite's Paddler '53 Ford pickup had been front and center on the bench. I was in the process of fixing a broken antenna when we left on our trip. We got as far as the kennel to drop off TJ and there was a note on the door that they weren't there but would be back in two hours. So we went back home. Having some time to kill, I went up to the model room and finished that repair, and put the truck safely back in my show case.

The interesting part was that I lost nothing during this event. No models were smashed. The unfinished projects on the shelves seemed to float down as the shelves tilted and ran ahead of the crash. I just had to sort a lot of stuff back into boxes. There wasn't even paint, glue or thinner spills. Nothing. I got very lucky!

The shelves did go back up on the wall. This time the screws were all very long and secured tight. I used to joke that the screws were straight through and could be seen from the outside of my house! And the big lesson was that the heavy books and stuff are no longer on the shelves. Just model projects and such. These are the same shelves that are over my bench here in PA. And very well secured here too!

[MsDano85gt]

I've been working on my "mad" resins 79 notchback foxbody! great kit!!

although somehow the body got slightly warped! justin from mad told me how to correct the warp with warm water and reshaping body to chassis, i still had issues and i broke the very thin a pillar post

well with the bad since the body was already warped i figured what they heck why not convert the nose to the cobra / 82 gt front ent and convert it to t-tops

seems to have come out great now i just need to figure out how to release the front window without damaging the hard work on the t -top conversion! i also re used the resin roof and made new a pillars to put a roof back on revell donar car (originally a sunroof car) now hardtop

[MsDano85gt]

other pics of the two "faceoff" transplants side by side

[MsDano85gt]

what the hard top looks like now with paint on her

[MsDano85gt]

ooops last pic depics converting a revell body to the newer cheesegrater style foxbody taillamps lol found in mpc amt 87-88 mustang gt kits requires careful use and paitence with no. 11 exacto to remove those badboys!