… you realize none of the things in this thread ever happen to @SSGToms …
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When you finally decide to build a specific kit and the pe-parts aren’t for sale anywhere anymore…
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Thats why you need to get everything you need for a project,then stash it away.
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When you glue something perfectly, but it’s in the wrong position, d’oh!
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When you finally decide to buy an professional cutting knife from Tamiya after 40 years using a Stanley snap off. A week later you’re trying to cut some scratch part and when you’re almost there, the knife cuts your thumb in two, stitches and a pair of syringeshots and a week not able to work
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Knives are dangerous.
Sliced left thumb.
Sliced a chunk out of left index finger.
Countless little cuts to the right thumb fingerprint.
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Since I have a single blade nipper the countless thumb cuts are vanished 
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Same for me, the best “process improvement” I have ever done.
Saved a lot of cash on adhesive bandages …
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In the center of the pic you should just be able to make out an elongated lighter patch (has a couple of longish hairs next to it).
I was sitting in my grandmother’s den watching TV while trying to cut off a piece of plastic from a tank hull. I was applying too much force and the X-Acto knife came out the side suddenly and went across my leg. By some miracle it went over just deep enough to open the epidermis and no deeper. That was 46 years ago.
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What I hate are multi part tracks, while workable tracks aren’t bad, I don’t think they needt have as many parts as the real thing (tho I know I can do them, I was able with my meng T90A)
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Oh I have a few.
1 - when you make your own grabhandles from thick copper wire and decide one side is too long so try to nip it level, the bit you nip off goes flying at orbital escape velocity and either hits you in the eye or lips.
2 - seeing 1. happen, you try to be smart and close your fingers/thumb round the grab handle as you nip it even, only for the bit you nip off to go flying at orbital escape velocity into your thumb.
3 - (amazed nobody has mentioned this yet)…when you decide it is a nice day and your family are missing you so you go downstairs away from your model room workbench and set up on the dining table, only to knock over a full bottle of Tamiya Extra Thin over the top, removing the layers of varnish and staining the wood bright blue with remnants of liquidised melted cutting mat. Then having to listen to your wife give you a hard time about it for the next seven millennia.
4 - when you spend a fortune on a Dragon 3in1 Nashorn, and push way past a hundred quid on a metal barrel, two sets of PE, PE ammo boxes, resin crew and a set of Masterclub tracks only for Border to release a Nashorn that will, objectively speaking, be easier, nicer, less stressful to build OOB and end up looking better than the Dragon ever will in half the time, for a third of the cost.
5 - When you glue the fender runners on a T-series tank and the guide tabs don’t fit in the holes so you trim them down and the whole fender refuses to sit straight and bends downwards a millimetre or so, no matter what you do. You can see the gap and the sag from the other side of the house.
6 - when your hairspray chipping goes down to the bare plastic with the lightest of touches.
7 - when zimmerit applications go down nicely and look flush when you stick them on and then for some reason look twenty times as thick when you prime it, requiring you to go back and putty along the edges to soften the gap.
8 - you mix a perfect shade of colour in the airbrush cup and then, having forgotten to run water through it to test the flow first, find the airbrush is blocked from the get go and you need to pour away the perfect, never to be recreated shade, and deep clean the sodding brush.
9 - you drill out the end of a machine gun barrel and the tip collapses.
10 - you use Gunze enamel thinners for your streaking and it burns right through both the clear coat layers, the base coat, the primer, the other clear coat layer and goes right down to the bare plastic.
11 - you take hours to put down this immaculate base layer of the most wildly brilliant five layers of post-shading, precision transitions, stunningly on point brush highlights and then find out Mission Models is water soluble even after drying, and your hairspray chipping attempts has neatly removed the paint from the whole of one side of the turret. FFS.
12 - you spend hours on end trying to ensure the suspension on your wheeled AFV is straight so that all the wheels touch the ground. Then when it is painted and weathered, you notice one of the wheels doesnt.
13 - when RFM or Meng give you indy link tracks, with each link consisting of five parts. And the guidehorns STILL arent hollow/open.
14 - when you breathe on a model and one of the roadwheels falls off, having sheared the axle pin right off.
15 - when you have this super clear idea of how you want a model to turn out and then get the hump half way because the b**tard thing is fighting you the whole way and your build mojo evaporates faster than MiG Ammo instant cement.
16 - you are super excited that your Mrs and kids are out in the evening and you can have a couple of hours of bench time to yourself. You watched Top Gun again and are looking forward to making some nice progress on the 1/48 Super Hornet you are making, and have been all happy and smiley all day. You steam home from work as fast as your car will go and then sit down all buzzing to get started… take one look at the next steps which are assembling the ordnance, masking, chipping, decals and so on and your mojo disappears in a hot second. You try to crack on but cannot be bothered and anyway you are out of masking tape so you bin it off and fall asleep on the sofa watching NightShift videos.
17 - you finish this model and it looks the absolute business. You’ve taken the time, you’ve really pushed yourself, you’ve learned loads and you are super proud of this. It is a watershed model. It is so much better than anything else you’ve ever done, you are breathless with excitement to put the pics online. You do so and having done so, notice on the screens any number of seam lines… a whole injector pin mark somewhere right in the eyeline that you never even saw… tracks on the wrong way round (even though you checked twice to make sure they were right)… decal silvering that simply wasnt there when you finished the model… stowage that isnt painted properly… a roadwheel sitting half a mm off the track pads which was flush when you painted it…
18 - you get 95% of the way there on a massive 1000+ part Trumpeter kit, putting in 80+ hours of work, then forget you pulled the masks off the windscreens and then clearcoat the whole model.
19 - getting a rush of blood to the head and splashing out mega money on a Trumpeter HEMTT, the SPQ-53 radar trailer and two Patriot PACC3 launcher trailers for a massive diorama you really want to do and then lose all enthusiasm for it even before the massive boxes turn up. Your Mrs gives you abuse for it for the rest of your life when she asks “When are you going to build all THAT?” and you overshare to her that you likely will never build them and they will go to a charity shop when you keel over and die.
20 - having a massive collection of Russian modern era trucks, tanks, SAM missile systems, SAM radars, rocket launchers, ICBM TELs and so on, to the tune of several thousand dollars’ worth across more than two dozen huge box Trumpeter kits, and then Russia invades Ukraine so you cant build them. Alternative decal solutions are tough to find for your half completed 18 wheeler Topol-M ICBM launcher…
21 - when you spend hours of your life watching NightShift chipping videos and go back to the bench determined to try what you think you’ve learned and your chipping looks like someone has spilt dark brown paint on your model.
22 - when new guys on the FB groups join a group and start a post with “this is my first attempt at an armour build, never done one before so be gentle, anyone got any tips or hints to improve this mess?” (I’m paraphrasing) and then they show the pics of their supposedly messy model and their model is dazzlingly brilliant, so far more advanced and more technically superior than you will ever be in your life and it makes you question all your life choices.
23 - when you are lying in bed asleep and are woken by the sound of an impact and shattering plastic parts from upstairs and then the noise of your cat trotting downstairs like nothing has happened.
24 - when your three year old comes up to you with a palm full of styrene pieces he has removed from model boxes in your model room and asks if you can build him a model car wash.
25 - when you are hyperfocused on a really important stage of a build and your wife is talking to you but you aren’t really listening and you don’t look up and she gets more and more irritated and right at the point where she stomps off to bed in a rage you look up and notice she has the stockings and suspenders and basque and knee high boots on, has put her hair up and has been wanting you to do things to her that are illegal in 23 states. You could go after her but…
26 - when you have to go searching in your black masking putty for half a dozen bits of PE and fine plastic parts that were attached to your model but now are not.
27 - when you overdose on Panzer books and come away feeling “creative” in terms of camo patterns…and end up with something somewhere between a Dali surrealist work and a Disney cartoon octopus draped over your Tiger.
28 - when you get cocky with the first version track blackening solution and for some reason decide to pour the activator into the actual blackener and have to watch in horror as some unspeakable foamy creature climbs hissing out of the tupperware tub, wreathed in highly toxic and corrosive fumes and smoke and starts to spit acid at you as it starts to dissolve your cutting mat.
29 - when your 4BO shade you mixed perfectly sprays fine on the tester but spatters and runs the moment you start putting it on your model. You then spend the next two hours of your life with a paint that is somehow overthinned and going down too wet but is also tip drying and spattering as if under-thinned. It cannot be both… and yet it is.
30 - You take your model outside to do some daylight shots for the insta and a passing seagull takes a massive creamy, splattery dump on it. (yes this has happened to me). Guess seagulls don’t like IDF coloured AMX-13s… damned antisemites!
31 - when you see others do really good Ambush schemes and think “how hard can it be to just brush paint the dots”?
32 - when a new model box turns up at the door right in the middle of her giving you a lecture about how much you are spending on models and exactly five seconds after you tell her you haven’t ordered one for ages… the doorbell literally goes right when she is in full flow.
33 - when you offer to take her and the kids to Veldhoven for IPMS regionals and she tells you she “would rather shove Guatemalan fire ants in her ears than be that bored”, and you wonder if she will ever look at you the same way she used to, ever again.
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Chris, that is the ultimate contribution to this thread! Hilarious and true! Brilliant!
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Thanks Matthew - its some hard-won jokes there. I’ve done them all hahahaha
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Priceless
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Hilarious! About point 3, couple of years ago I took some figures and paint with me on a holiday in Tirol (Austria). I threw a tin of LifeColor thinner over the wooden table in the holiday home. A nice white ring accured, I tactically placed the tablecloth over it…
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I have a few…
When you paint something on your model and realize everything else is sub-par compared to it.
When you’re super jazzed about a kit and once you finish it you can’t stop thinking about what you could’ve done better.
When, as a teen, I’ve finally got the mojo for a kit I’ve been putting off but I have to do school or homework and that throws me off…
I’ve got more but they’ve been said.
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Agreed with all of it, BUT
My wife would have licked her finger, and put it in my ear, for 25.
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Absolutely brilliant😄
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