When you all first started out in this hobby, what are some of the mistakes you made? maybe you dropped your model on concrete? maybe you spent 4 days trying to paint 1 base for various reasons...

It doesn't have to be a major horror story, it can be a very basic thing that happened which you found very annoying.


I have made many mistakes, but the worse one is this. When i first got in to wargaming/modeling, i painted roughly 5 tanks and about 24 troops with no primer at all, straight abadon black over it instead. So i had to strip them all, which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact i had already stripped most of them before painting over with abadon black since they were preowned and already painted sort of, so yeah had to strip like 5 tanks 20 ish troops twice when i first entered this hobby.


Any way if i think of more stuff ill share it in another post in this thread after some other people have shared there horror storys.

Have a great day everyone.


Listen to this song while you think about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NA332r73As - Thats When Your Heart Aches Begin.

Trevor.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/659995.page

Genuinely laughed at that post. Thanks lol. But your stuff looks great, so im sure your just being hard on your self.

There was a point in my life were primer wasn't used at all,
Nor thinning paints, the minis didnt look bad but you could see under the paint. I think I was 10 or 12 when it was done and im sure It was probably done so I could get on the tables quicker.

I haven't really had any major disasters but I usually cut my finger end open with a scalpel every few months.

Snapped a drill-bit while drilling into an old metal mini, slipped and put the broken end into the end of my index finger...

Dremel'd the end of my thumb...

Sliced the side of my thumb off with a scalpel...

The list is extensive for injuries however for model related horror, I believe converting an old Carnosaur into a dragon (a la the old Bretonnian army book) only to then drop it for it to smash into smithereens is up there...

I started painting with Testors Enamels. <shudder>

I built an old school metal Eldar War Walker, without pinning, using 2 part epoxy resin.

I painted a Tau army in white and red, with blacklining.

 John Prins wrote:
I started painting with Testors Enamels. <shudder>

I built an old school metal Eldar War Walker, without pinning, using 2 part epoxy resin.

I painted a Tau army in white and red, with blacklining.

I tried the same enamels to start. Terrible

I recently did a White Red Tau army lol. Drybrushing and washes

I painted 3 of these Cryx armies.... ghostfleet/the same exact list





and cant find the third, but literally painted the same 75-100 point all metal Cryx list three times

Oh man, some of these storys make me laugh, like dropping your model and it smashing in to peices ( sorry, im very sorry, might just be the words you used or some thing ), but thanks for sharing guys really great. But yeah the injurys sound awful, sorry to hear that.

I built, painted without priming and subsequently dropped a metal Hive Tyrant back in the day. Watched it explode all over the floor as I hadn't pinned it and still didn't pin it upon reassembly.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
I built, painted without priming and subsequently dropped a metal Hive Tyrant back in the day. Watched it explode all over the floor as I hadn't pinned it and still didn't pin it upon reassembly.

Sorry for laughing again man but i appreiacte the laughs weather or not you intend to do that, but i am sorry for your pain for real. Why did you not pin it after you fixed it?


Why do i find this funny? I dont know, i think because i can relate and it would piss me off so much if that happened, so my reaction is to just laugh for some reason...

Fully intended and looking back on it's quite funny but 13 year old me didn't know what pinning was at the time and I blamed GW for my own problems. He was the centrepiece of my army and he sucked because he literally couldn't hold himself together.

Building and painting Zarakynel/The Violet Heart was a comedy of errors.

First of all, when I went to give her a bubble-bath to wash the mold-release off Her, I didn't put a guard over the drain and I turned the tap on with far too much force. Cue spending the next ninety minutes removing a u-bend armed only with a tea-towel and bare hands (S1, Dn/a).

She got another bubble-bath, I then spent a few hours gluing spikes and chain on Her, then a few more hours painting Her. I returned from work the next day to find that most of the paint on Her had bubbled and blistered. So she got stripped, whereupon all the chains and spikes fell off.

le sigh.

She turned out alright (by my standards), but it took another month or so before I could even look at her again, let alone work on Her.



Spoilered, 'cause NSFW.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Building and painting Zarakynel/The Violet Heart was a comedy of errors.

First of all, when I went to give her a bubble-bath to wash the mold-release off Her, I didn't put a guard over the drain and I turned the tap on with far too much force. Cue spending the next ninety minutes removing a u-bend armed only with a tea-towel and bare hands (S1, Dn/a).

She got another bubble-bath, I then spent a few hours gluing spikes and chain on Her, then a few more hours painting Her. I returned from work the next day to find that most of the paint on Her had bubbled and blistered. So she got stripped, whereupon all the chains and spikes fell off.

le sigh.

She turned out alright (by my standards), but it took another month or so before I could even look at her again, let alone work on Her.

Spoiler:

Spoilered, 'cause NSFW.

Oh man that reminds me actualy of when i first started the hobby with my pre owned Rhinos/CSM i was stripping, lost quite a few bits down the drain... never got back... maybe there still there? But yeah thats some thing to keep in mind when stripping since all the glue gets weakened, but yeah i definitly wasn't thinking at that time. Yeah it looks great, good work for continuing through the struggle to what looks like a great success! But that bubbling of the paint must have made you absolutely freak out!, i cant fathom that happening to me, if it did i would feel pretty sick.

Edit - I didn't even put down a guard after the first couple of bits went down...Guess i thought the first 2 times were just a complete fluke.....

I found one of my first conversion attempts recently!



He's a rough rider.

I have regrets

 Excommunicatus wrote:

First of all, when I went to give her a bubble-bath to wash the mold-release off Her, I didn't put a guard over the drain and I turned the tap on with far too much force. Cue spending the next ninety minutes removing a u-bend armed only with a tea-towel and bare hands (S1, Dn/a).

Oh, I have nightmares about doing this. I generally wash my minis in a fine hole strainer, with the drain plug in place but not screwed down. Horrors.

My first beakies, 80's era citadel paint.

I was in 5th grade. They qualified as the "please kill me" of models. I had them for a long time and even tournied with some of the orks I painted shortly there after.

But the general meta paint quality back then was pretty low. Even Eavy Metal was cringe worthy looking back.


All my old lead minis were assembled with OLD SCHOOL (they changed the formula in the 90s) JB Weld 2 Part Epoxy. One.. it took over 24h for the minis to set.. which meant rigging up ridiculous bracing but that old JB Weld was hard a s steel. You could hit the minis with a hammer and the epoxy would not fail.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

meatybtz wrote:
My first beakies, 80's era citadel paint.

I was in 5th grade. They qualified as the "please kill me" of models. I had them for a long time and even tournied with some of the orks I painted shortly there after.

But the general meta paint quality back then was pretty low. Even Eavy Metal was cringe worthy looking back.


All my old lead minis were assembled with OLD SCHOOL (they changed the formula in the 90s) JB Weld 2 Part Epoxy. One.. it took over 24h for the minis to set.. which meant rigging up ridiculous bracing but that old JB Weld was hard a s steel. You could hit the minis with a hammer and the epoxy would not fail.

Wow! never herd of that for glue . Very interesting stuff, thanks for sharing that!!

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I haven't really had any major disasters but I usually cut my finger end open with a scalpel every few months.

oh man, I cut my finger with an ultrasonic knife. That was like cutting into my soul, the wound went super weird too, had to recut it.

Decals. On flat surfaces they're fine. But on curved surfaces? Hoooh boy. It's such a nightmare to get these on Space Marine shoulderpads. The guy who decided that Space Marines should have giant logos on their curved shoulder guards needs to be fired and forbidden from designing anything ever. They crinkle up and refuses to lay nice and smooth even after I gloss varnish, apply microsol or microset. I have to physically smooth them out and even then they tend to get messed up like this. I paint it so it just looks like weathering but damn.

Imperial Knight shoulder decals are also annoying. But not as bad as Space Marines.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Decals. On flat surfaces they're fine. But on curved surfaces? Hoooh boy. It's such a nightmare to get these on Space Marine shoulderpads. The guy who decided that Space Marines should have giant logos on their curved shoulder guards needs to be fired and forbidden from designing anything ever. They crinkle up and refuses to lay nice and smooth even after I gloss varnish, apply microsol or microset. I have to physically smooth them out and even then they tend to get messed up like this. I paint it so it just looks like weathering but damn.

Imperial Knight shoulder decals are also annoying. But not as bad as Space Marines.

Mine always look damaged...because they are. I have to cut mine in order for them to lay smooth.

I spent hours/days basecoating a Thousand Sons army with a colored metallic I found that looked cool. Basecoated the entire army before I realized two things:

-It looked pink rather than red.

- Even though I thinned it really well, requiring two thin coats for full coverage, the texture was still gloppy.

Had to strip all 150+ models and start over.

Dang son, those decals sound like a real pain in the ass. And from the 1 video i have seen of some one trying to put one on, i get what your saying, it looks like a real pain. ( i have no experience with decals )

Maybe if you left the decals in some sort of liquid for a few days it would make it very very soft? i dont know.


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 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I haven't really had any major disasters but I usually cut my finger end open with a scalpel every few months.

Sorry to hear that, sounds awful.

Yeah decals on shoulder pads suck. Even with micro sol I can't get them flat, so I tend to buy legion specific shoulder pads with the designs already on them to circumvent the problem.

My worse one has to be when I tried the spray bottle biostrip to strip a librarian dreadnought and squad of assault terminators.

Put them all in a tub covered them in biostrip and put the lid on. When I came back to them all of the plastic and glue was melted so all I had left was the metal terminator arms and a load of gloopy plastic.

Ooh i lost a resin ctan deciever in the same tub too

Oh Jamie, I feel your pain.

I lost TWO FW Scout salamanders to Dot3. Bad day...

Damn that sucks Jamie, sorry to hear that. Thats a real horror story.

ha a green colour scheme for my tyranids so I painted a carnifex with off-the-shelf green spray paint. It did not hold the detail!

assembled 3 boxes of necron warriors to then get up in the morning to find all their guns had drooped to point at the floor.

trodden barefoot on an old-school metal chaos terminator, said "ouch" said I, "oh bother, that hurt!".

snapped so many flight stands off tomb spyders, deffkoptas, landspeeders... ...why can't they use the ball & socket from the Piranha kit on everything?

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 some bloke wrote:
ha a green colour scheme for my tyranids so I painted a carnifex with off-the-shelf green spray paint. It did not hold the detail!

assembled 3 boxes of necron warriors to then get up in the morning to find all their guns had drooped to point at the floor.

trodden barefoot on an old-school metal chaos terminator, said "ouch" said I, "oh bother, that hurt!".

snapped so many flight stands off tomb spyders, deffkoptas, landspeeders... ...why can't they use the ball & socket from the Piranha kit on everything?

Why had the necrons guns drooped?

Disassembling a second-hand Valkyrie to magnetize the wings for easier transportation. I had to re-done the whole wing holding system so the wings won't fall off with each movement.

Same thing with magnetizing the Avenger. Model expensive AF and I had to drill holes into it + me being inexperienced, so I had to drill several times and then cover the messed-up holes with greenstuff.

My first ever 40k vehicle was a Chimera. I wanted to do some battle damage to it, but I vent over the top and did so many holes into it that you can strain your pasta through it. No kidding. Also, I wanted to put some mud on the tracks and it didn't end up very well too.

A soldier's beret I was sculpting before I pricked myself with my scalpel(which is also no1 sculpting tool). The putty mixed with blood and something came along and gnawed it off in the night. He has, with a half eaten hat stared accusingly from that corner of the desk from that day since. Alas he may never joint the tanks.

Some greenstuff abominations, borne from overambition, I guess I could always convert them to chaos spawn...


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That's a nightmare Jamie.
What happened to your cron guns Some Bloke?

 Stormatious wrote:

Why had the necrons guns drooped?

Plastic glue takes a while to 'set' so anything with any weight can and will droop/shift if you're not careful.

I built a Kabalite Warrior recently, I didn't notice until a day or two after I built her that during building I had knocked the torso out of alignment with my sausage-fingers. So now I have a test-mini. Hoorah.

 OldMate wrote:
A soldier's beret I was sculpting before I pricked myself with my scalpel(which is also no1 sculpting tool). The putty mixed with blood and something came along and gnawed it off in the night. He has, with a half eaten hat stared accusingly from that corner of the desk from that day since. Alas he may never joint the tanks.

You allow wildlife to come into your room, or how it could have been gnawed off?

For many of us it's more a case of not being able to keep the [Expletive Deleted]ers out, rather than letting them in.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:

Why had the necrons guns drooped?

Plastic glue takes a while to 'set' so anything with any weight can and will droop/shift if you're not careful.

I built a Kabalite Warrior recently, I didn't notice until a day or two after I built her that during building I had knocked the torso out of alignment with my sausage-fingers. So now I have a test-mini. Hoorah.

Oh ok, thanks heaps.

precisely, the plastic glue hadn't set, which I thought it had, so all my "aiming at the enemy" warriors ended up standing at ease with the ends of their guns resting on the floor.

- I started off painting models with Testors Enamel paints... time I will never get back.

- I started off using Testors tube glue, after a few years of "spider-web" glue strings and blobs, I am free of that garbage (decades ago).

- I converted a skimmer (the old metal one in 40k) as a CSM one... I was new and the guys did not have the heart to say it could never be used.

- Not my goof but my friend finished detail painting a squad of 10 SMs and went to clear coat, he hit them with primer by mistake. We all gasped and almost cried.

- Put together a metal Vindicator (40k) and fully painted the guy. Left in the car overnight in the winter. All the metal parts "popped" off. That was a mess.

- Put together the MPC X-wing fighter ~1978. The biggest piece of "hot garbage" of a model I ever put together. Almost no body part fit together, it is obvious to me now they ran the mold too hot and most parts sagged. No hull assemblies joined, wings were bent. Also the pilot had the detail of the "michelin man" (round blobs with little or no detail). I should have walked away. Much heat applied, clamping, in some cases cutting things off, pinning and filling.

- The GW Land Raider Crusader, metal one. Those darn ammo feeds to the bolters were insane. Pinned the guns directly to the ammo "box" and rejigged the shield and pivot points. Still have those ammo feeds in a bits box somewhere.

- Late to the game on learning about "shade" method of painting (basically pigment with a bunch of flow-aid). There was much swearing when I finally tried it out and saw how good/easy the results were.

- Tried out that fancy thing called an "air-brush", there was much cursing and swearing when I saw how it could in seconds paint a gradient that took me years to learn to do well with hairy brush. Worse thing was I was "delayed" for a couple years from using it because I was trying to shoot too thick paint through a fine (0.2mm) needle. Took a wee bit till I found out the problem after I had "moved on" for a time.

- Changed the blade on my hobby knife and placed it on the table. Went to reach for something and it rolled off the table and landed point-first straight into the top of my leg to the "hilt". Could not re-create that if I wanted to.

- Was trying out low-melt metal molding. Just did my pour and gave the mold a tap to help ensure the pool fed in right. One blob popped out and landed right in the web of my right hand (between thumb and forefinger) had to wait to peel it off or run the risk of spilling the contents of the mold. Used clamps from then-on. I still can look at the scar now.

- I had just applied a high-flow crazy glue and did not notice I had slopped a fair bit on my hand. I proceeded to do some knife work on a model and went to let go... and well, despite my best efforts of cleaning off and hot water, I left a good quantity of skin on that knife handle.

- My opponent had a fully painted army of CSM and they looked awesome. As we played a game, his taniks progressively fell apart. He used crazy glue on his models over painted surfaces I figured out. . I could not stand it any more, I insisted on carefully trimming / sanding the paint off and carefully applying proper weld glue with little or no joins to see. It was both comical and a horror-show to me and I did not own the models or do the painting. I think I was in fear of the guy after all that work just rage-quitting, an intervention was needed.

Model desk is in an area we keep open, to let the breeze in I live in the tropics and the bastards will get anywhere. Better just not to drip blood/food over your models or at least wash them afterwards to make sure to avoid the gnaw.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Most of my figures are 3rd party resin. (Mainly Anvil Industry and Victoria Miniatures) just finished painting one of my sergeants and as I was gluing her arms on accidently flooded her with superglue. Luckily didn't frost and I was able to just paint dull-coat over the top to get rid of the glossyness.

Oh, you are an Australian. I bet you were lucky to survive.

- Also, I once bought a Land Raider out of hardly saved allowance, with a plan to convert it into some super-awesome IG tank. I start cutting it into pieces and never finished it. Wasted 1200CZK (enough to have a hearty family dinner at a decent restaurant, or buy 85 0,5L bottles of beer). Luckily, a friend started to play the Death Guard, so he put it pack together with some tentacles added and it serves him well.

I find another form of "critter interference" is the darn cats seem to really like my chairs and pretty much sleep on them.
So before any painting session I have to vacuum for "cat-tamination", I get pretty upset when my carefully painted stuff turn fuzzy from the cat hairs everywhere.
Heaven help you if you drop a model, you might as well start over even with regular vacuuming.
I keep a couple large blush applicator brushes for cleaning off models as well as an air-line.

A recent one: I wanted to paint some Star Wars Legion figures and figured I'd save myself some time and effort on the stormies by getting some Krylon Fusion satin white, figuring it'd both bond with the plastic, basecoat and be easy to do a quick wash over for the main armor. I don't use acrylic washes like GW or Armypainter much anymore, mostly I use oil washes or enamel washes because they're so much faster and give a better result.

Found out the hard way that Krylon Fusion is soluble in odorless mineral spirits, the white paint wiped away with the enamel wash on top :( Even after sealing them with a coat of acrylic varnish it still didn't work, and I had to do everything the old fashioned way with AP Dark Tone wash then repainting all the white basecoat. Luckily I did a few test models before washing all 4 squads in enamel, but even so my "time saver" took so much extra work to fix that I lost interest in finishing the models (let alone doing more) until only very recently

Carefully giving a final spray sealer coat on a troop of 10 orcs outside and carrying them back into the garage and immediately upon noticing that there are only 9 on the tray, my foot crunches down on orc #10 - destroying him completely.

Saving up for a 500ml bottle of black paint, painting half a model car and then the sisters white cat knocking the whole bottle over onto the new plush pile carpet and itself when I was like 10. Rental house too, parents weren't too happy! I keep my desk/paint station on wood or concrete floors ever since.

 Talizvar wrote:
- I started off painting models with Testors Enamel paints... time I will never get back.

- I started off using Testors tube glue, after a few years of "spider-web" glue strings and blobs, I am free of that garbage (decades ago).

- I converted a skimmer (the old metal one in 40k) as a CSM one... I was new and the guys did not have the heart to say it could never be used.

- Not my goof but my friend finished detail painting a squad of 10 SMs and went to clear coat, he hit them with primer by mistake. We all gasped and almost cried.

- Put together a metal Vindicator (40k) and fully painted the guy. Left in the car overnight in the winter. All the metal parts "popped" off. That was a mess.

- Put together the MPC X-wing fighter ~1978. The biggest piece of "hot garbage" of a model I ever put together. Almost no body part fit together, it is obvious to me now they ran the mold too hot and most parts sagged. No hull assemblies joined, wings were bent. Also the pilot had the detail of the "michelin man" (round blobs with little or no detail). I should have walked away. Much heat applied, clamping, in some cases cutting things off, pinning and filling.

- The GW Land Raider Crusader, metal one. Those darn ammo feeds to the bolters were insane. Pinned the guns directly to the ammo "box" and rejigged the shield and pivot points. Still have those ammo feeds in a bits box somewhere.

- Late to the game on learning about "shade" method of painting (basically pigment with a bunch of flow-aid). There was much swearing when I finally tried it out and saw how good/easy the results were.

- Tried out that fancy thing called an "air-brush", there was much cursing and swearing when I saw how it could in seconds paint a gradient that took me years to learn to do well with hairy brush. Worse thing was I was "delayed" for a couple years from using it because I was trying to shoot too thick paint through a fine (0.2mm) needle. Took a wee bit till I found out the problem after I had "moved on" for a time.

- Changed the blade on my hobby knife and placed it on the table. Went to reach for something and it rolled off the table and landed point-first straight into the top of my leg to the "hilt". Could not re-create that if I wanted to.

- Was trying out low-melt metal molding. Just did my pour and gave the mold a tap to help ensure the pool fed in right. One blob popped out and landed right in the web of my right hand (between thumb and forefinger) had to wait to peel it off or run the risk of spilling the contents of the mold. Used clamps from then-on. I still can look at the scar now.

- I had just applied a high-flow crazy glue and did not notice I had slopped a fair bit on my hand. I proceeded to do some knife work on a model and went to let go... and well, despite my best efforts of cleaning off and hot water, I left a good quantity of skin on that knife handle.

- My opponent had a fully painted army of CSM and they looked awesome. As we played a game, his taniks progressively fell apart. He used crazy glue on his models over painted surfaces I figured out. . I could not stand it any more, I insisted on carefully trimming / sanding the paint off and carefully applying proper weld glue with little or no joins to see. It was both comical and a horror-show to me and I did not own the models or do the painting. I think I was in fear of the guy after all that work just rage-quitting, an intervention was needed.

Thats a nice entertaining list you have there, makes me feel great.

Thanks


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 dodgemetal wrote:
Saving up for a 500ml bottle of black paint, painting half a model car and then the sisters white cat knocking the whole bottle over onto the new plush pile carpet and itself when I was like 10. Rental house too, parents weren't too happy! I keep my desk/paint station on wood or concrete floors ever since.

Damn how depressing Lucky thats over!.

 Talizvar wrote:
I find another form of "critter interference" is the darn cats seem to really like my chairs and pretty much sleep on them.
So before any painting session I have to vacuum for "cat-tamination", I get pretty upset when my carefully painted stuff turn fuzzy from the cat hairs everywhere.
Heaven help you if you drop a model, you might as well start over even with regular vacuuming.
I keep a couple large blush applicator brushes for cleaning off models as well as an air-line.

Yeah i dont like the idea of having a cat ( not because they knock gak over, like Dodgemetals cat lol ), but their hair is a scary...painting some thing then taking a good look after its dried only to find cat hairs stuck in it lol...





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 MDSW wrote:
Carefully giving a final spray sealer coat on a troop of 10 orcs outside and carrying them back into the garage and immediately upon noticing that there are only 9 on the tray, my foot crunches down on orc #10 - destroying him completely.

Hah, damn. Where was the video camera!

edit - Sorry for your loss, hope you gave a good burial.. ( even if it is a orc )


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kalamadea wrote:
A recent one: I wanted to paint some Star Wars Legion figures and figured I'd save myself some time and effort on the stormies by getting some Krylon Fusion satin white, figuring it'd both bond with the plastic, basecoat and be easy to do a quick wash over for the main armor. I don't use acrylic washes like GW or Armypainter much anymore, mostly I use oil washes or enamel washes because they're so much faster and give a better result.

Found out the hard way that Krylon Fusion is soluble in odorless mineral spirits, the white paint wiped away with the enamel wash on top :( Even after sealing them with a coat of acrylic varnish it still didn't work, and I had to do everything the old fashioned way with AP Dark Tone wash then repainting all the white basecoat. Luckily I did a few test models before washing all 4 squads in enamel, but even so my "time saver" took so much extra work to fix that I lost interest in finishing the models (let alone doing more) until only very recently

Scary, bad luck!


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 some bloke wrote:
precisely, the plastic glue hadn't set, which I thought it had, so all my "aiming at the enemy" warriors ended up standing at ease with the ends of their guns resting on the floor.

Oh, haha thats quite funny. I thought they had melted or some thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh i thought of some thing stupid i did. I was trying to pour out a small amount of medium straight out of the GW pot, and yeah lets just say i went through the whole medium in like 1 -2 days and it was brand new.....

And i also did the same with Nuln oil trying to pour out a little puddle straight from the pot lol.


So yeah don't do that if you folks can avoid it..

Was looking at one of my fully painted APCs today, 1 wheel fell off. I had thought I'd glued it, but it was just being held on by bluetack.

I got a few
:When I first started I had the AOBR deffkoptas. They broke off their stands, as flight stands are want to do. I thought "let's take a lighter and melt them together" it worked.....but it was stupid.
:I was building a storm raptor and I was using super thin super glue. The piece snapped together and the glue went flying into my eye. I super glued it shut.
:My sculpting tool fell off the table with out me knowing. I sat down and swiveled my chair, the knife part went into my foot like, an inch. I screamed like a banshee, two months later still hurts.
I got more, but maybe later

Bought a Leviathan dreadnought kit, did some pleasing conversion work so that it fit in with my Death Guard, and added 6x4mm magnets to the waist to allow me to pose it, and for easier storage. I must have been tired during the assembly, because I only noticed once the magnets were glued in nice and tight that I'd got the polarities wrong.

No horror stories but I have assembled some parts incorrectly or broken a couple of delicate parts during build. Each time I've managed to neaten it up before painting and unless you knew it was supposed to be different you wouldn't notice. I notice though...

The feeiling you get when you use a spraycan for priming.... And it stops in the midst of a squad

Alternatively: Decimator shoulderpads by FW tm.
3 hours.......-_-

Never get superglue on your pants while at work.

For many years I've had a small stash of models at my work desk in a box for when I get there early, have to stay late, or dinner time. I wasn't paying attention one day and glue dripped right onto the crotch of my khakis. By the time I noticed there was a nice, thick bead running right past my zipper.

The stuff dried and my pants turned dark with a nice bright, crispy sheen to them. It looked like I'd been at my desk having some "alone time" and got "gentlemen's relish" all over myself.

Bad enough, eh? No. Then the border of the gluestain began to crack and actually break apart. My pants were splitting in the front as the whole stain broke the fibers whenever I moved.

I managed to get out the door and head home before showing off my wardrobe malfunction.

The worst part is that it can feel like the glue is burning when that happens.

I went to do a quick bit of priming yesterday afternoon. What was going to be a nice 20 minutes of relaxing me-time turned out enormously frustrating. My airbrush was majorly acting up and ended up exploding paint out around the screw thread of the nozzle cap. Looks like I've managed to write off a pair of trousers, have a nice series of grey drips of Vallejo PU primer across the knee of my burgundy chinos. They've survived 2 trips through the washing machine and being scrubbed with washing liquid with a toothbrush. That stuff is durable.

Was painting my new Keeper of secret models (have 3) when I was about to use Druschi violet wash. The bottle had been opened before and should have been easy enough to open but was some what stuck. So natural I gave it more force to open and it did but it also slipped out of my hand spilling over the table, my legs and hands. Quickly got some paper towels to clean up most of it and then change pants and wash myself. All done and back to work I thought!
It was then I saw the splash pattern on all three keepers of secrets! Then in my despair I dropped down my head taking a big breath too cool off from the anger that’s building up I see my 30 man unit of pink horrors on top of the box under the desk with a newly painted violet color on them!!!

In my anger I splashed on the wash as fast as I could then didn’t do anything with any miniatures for a month or so but I did repaint the horrors white and then wash with carriburg crimson and added dry brushing highlights on them.


I still consider myself a new table top gamer 2-3 years. So before I got my scissors or clippers or what it’s called in English, I used my knife to cut out the parts from the sprue and was cutting out all parts for CSM Raptors/ Warp talons. Home alone, girlfriend working on the evening I cut right through the sprue and right into my longest finger so hard that the exacto knife got stuck in the bone so I had to wriggle it up and down to come loos, quickly in to bathroom in sink for cold water and paper towel. After a fair bit of time (10-20 minutes) I wrapped my finger in the toilet paper then waking up on the toilet floor!!! Standing up thinking what happened and then waking up outside the bathroom in the “second hallway” still in the same thoughts (I think) I look at the finger under the paper and no more bleeding so all good I think and standing up walking towards the kitchen but the next room (main hallway) I feel dissy so sitting on the floor and then waking up on the hallway mat I begin to crawl to the kitchen getting a big glass water and the crawling too the living room laying down in the sofa and watching some movie and drinking water til my girlfriend came home yelling her ass of when I told her what’s happened.
Had a bruise on my shoulder from one of the fall from passing out and a cut in which you could se the bone if moving the flesh a little I learned to get myself a clipper or scissor or whatever. Still have a scar!

All things funny but please people, learn from others mistakes like this one. Sorry for bad explanation and English! Haha

Yikes.

That will be a lesson.

The Adventures of the Flying Dutchman
Oscar P. Parnassus purchases a fine metal cowboy figure from Black Scorpion miniatures, purveyors of gaming good. He paints this metal miniature. He dips this metal miniature. He uses his common pliar-technique to shake the miniature free of excess dip in the middle of the night. He hears a thunk as the Flying Dutchman plinks into the ground and vanishes into the night sky. The Dutchman is found some yards away, his brimmed cap askew and smeared by an angry concretian impact. Parnassus curses the skies and throws the Dutchman into a chemical vat, stripping him of life. The Dutchman finds his way to the painting desk some days hence. The Dutchman has his cap sanded and filed, cleaned and repaired. The Dutchman receives new paint, and dip. The Dutchman is carefully cleared of excess dip using a new scientific method. The Dutchman, in a fit of insanity hurls himself off the resting desk to the concrete floor of the surrounding garage, where he nestles amongst spider webs and foul beasties. Parnassus recovers the miniature....and again re-paints him. To this day, Mr. Oscar P. Parnassus winces when he handles said Dutchman (who, notably recently received a strip and repaint...marking the fourth wardrobe change...)


The Flying Dutchman, left. Colour, 2018.

The Tale of the Jumpless Jump Marines
Oscar P. Parnassus acquires plastic Space Marines and resin jump packs from a foreign business. He paints these plastic Space Marines that they may serve in the glorious Wandering Sons Renegade Chapter. He patiently paints their chainswords, their jump packs, their beakied helmets. He dips them. He loves them. He flat-coats them. He brings them to the house for final basing. What's this? The screen door doth protest too much! The cardboard platform is struck! Merrily the jump pack laden marines do leap for freedom...failing to ignite said jump packs! For shame they plummet into the hazard! Half of their brother remain on the cardboard gantry, fearful of flight. In his madness, Parnassus nearly snaps, fighting the demons which tell him to hurl these coward marines to their doom...after all, so many have fallen, what's a few more!? Thankfully calmer minds prevail...and damage is replaced. However, there are vicious rumours, tall-tales that the forested floor adjacent to the house still contains the limbs and back packs of many of these marines...


The Cowardly and Flightless Bastards, Colour, 2017

I once sprayed a squad of painted metal Catachan Jungle Fighters with white primer instead of mate sealant. Realized my mistake very quickly, but the damage was done and five Catachans had to be stripped and repainted.

Sincerely,

CB

I sprayed 1500+ points of Orks on a hot, humid Virginia summer day.

Y'all know what sandpaper feels like? Just imagine a few dozen Orks with their trukks...that feel like sandpaper...and Simple Green doesn't usually take primer off plastic...

One of my Riptide battlesuits has his left shoulder pad (next to the shield) upside down. Not sure how I made that mistake considering it was not the first one I ever assembled.

I've nicked myself with the hobby knife a couple of times, but never down to the bone or anything like that.

I also spilled a pot of Mournfang Brown on the carpet once. Boy was that hard to clean up, and I think there's still a slight stain. Another time I spilled most of a pot of Screaming Bell on my card table. That mess wasn't permanent or anything but it was annoying to lose almost an entire pot of paint.

My Phobos Captain has lost a lot of the detail on his left arm due to the fact that when I was assembling the model, I squeezed the bottle of plastic glue a little too hard and so it squirted all over the arm. Tried to frantically wipe the coating of glue off with a napkin, but the damage was done. Thankfully now that it's painted it doesn't look too bad.

I have one annoying/horror story that repeats itself over and over again, and consists of these steps.

1) Open a box of Imperial Guardsmen.
2) Assemble the gun and torso, ditch the head and replace it with one from Bolt Action. Scour Bolt Action swap shops for spare heads if you don't have any. Dive into bitsbox and cut stuff apart to create an interesting pose.
3) Cut off the blouse-part from the legs bit.
4) Make a greatcoat out of Green Stuff.
5) Wait.
6) Use sandpaper thoroughly, repair holes and mistakes with more greenstuff/superglue. Add a backpack, pouches, canteens, grenades, and other bits
7) Wait.
8) Prime the model with white color.
9) Paint armor and the gun with medium gray.
10) Paint the face and skin. Don't forget the eyes.
11) Paint thin green lines all over the clothes, including helmet canvas.
12) Curse because you forgot to paint the pants before.
13) Paint paints with green-gray color.
14) Paint details.
15) Repair mistakes.
16) Apply decals.
17) Wash with Reikland Fleshide (skin only) and Nuln Oil (the rest)
18) Drybrush the hell out of it with white color.
19) Spray with matt varnish.
20) Sigh and nod approvingly, feel happy you survived this dreadful process again.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Hawky's Guardsmen are made. Over a hundred of them.

That’s a lot of love for IG characters.

I have to ask...why not just buy great-coat resin guardsmen from Anvil with heads/bodies/etc. of your choice? Seems much easier.

Not to the model, but my thumb still has a faint scar from 15 years ago when I was trying to cut an arm piece in two and held my knife against the piece, against my thumb, and pushed, hard.

Went right down the middle from where the nail starts right through my fingerprint in a line..

I fifnaly did it.. I took a swig of my paint water for the first time ever.. I was working on my wraithlord easting dinner and playing Warhammer total war at the same time.

I was just taking final couple sips of my coke which was in my right hand. Was about to get up and change the water in my cup/put stuff away and I geld the paint water in my left. I put the coke down to press end turn button on my campaign screen and was watching intently what the AI are doing around me. Took a final swig of my diet coke except it wasn't diet coke.. I was just washing a brush covered in texture paint so it could feel it bitty AF..

I have almost swigged paint water and I have also almost washed my brush in my Pepsi.

i took ages gluing this old metal figure together, that squig arm is a pain to fit.

and then after taking a photo... this happened

 Elbows wrote:
I have to ask...why not just buy great-coat resin guardsmen from Anvil with heads/bodies/etc. of your choice? Seems much easier.

Reason #1 - Money
Reason #2 - I already did over 40 guardsmen this way, switching to bits would look odd. And I already mastered it to the point it looks quite good. Similar to the old Valhallan miniatures.

One of these heads has had brush on varnish applied. Guess which!

I had painted a bunch of these heads, and unfortunately was three heads in before I realised what was happening.



Switched to spray varnish. Haven't looked back.

Glueing a resin figure, and then realising as the super-glue takes that the arm (always happens to be with arms with me) is not square on the shoulder(or rifle does not line up with other arm), and that 80% of the glue has run out and stuck the figure to your finger/fingers.

Every time without fail when I put a new blade in my scalpel I cut myself. I guess it does not help that by the time I change them I can get a bit complacent, and well a brand new scalpel blade just has to sniff you to draw blood.

Great thread!

I've had a few good ones over the years.

Literally the first miniatures I painted when I re-started in the hobby after a 25-year break went badly wrong. My gateway back was Star Wars Imperial Assault, and I thought I'd start with the stormtroopers. I didn't know what I was doing with the spray primer, having never used it before, and turned them into a squad of abominable snowmen. I emptied a whole can onto ten stormtroopers. Obviously, they needed stripping but again, I had no idea how to do this, or anything to use. Researching on the internet, I discovered that the consensus at the time was to use a product called Fairy Power Spray, but you had to get the old type, not the new type which had a different formula and didn't work. Coincidentally I was struck down with food poisoning the same evening. For the next two days I was laid up in bed. In my delirious state, these abominable stormtroopers grew into a much bigger deal than they really were. In my mind, it was suddenly hugely important to get them stripped quickly. Still feeling terrible, I trawled round half a dozen supermarkets looking for this powerspray stuff for several hours, but all they all had was the new formula. I gave up, headed home, and popped into the fruit and veg shop literally next door to my house to get a drink. Of course, they had some in there.

Excommunicatus' story about washing minis in a sink without the plug in rings a bell. I was carefully washing the bits of a chaos lord in a little plastic tub, with a toothbrush. Satisfied, I stupidly went to rinse a tiny (but vital) bit off under the tap. I hadn't got a strong enough grip on it, and as soon as it went under the tap it vanished from my hand, as if by magic, and disappeared down the plughole before I could grab it. I never saw that bit again, and have never finished that chaos lord.

The first time I entered the painting competition on here, I painted R2D2 and C3PO models from Imperial Assault. I finished them, and gave R2 a spray of dullcote. For some reason, this caused the metallic paint I had used to crack and peel off the model. Determined not to fail at my first attempt at entering, and without enough time to strip the R2 I had, I bought another one and painted that up the same night in one mammoth painting session.

The most visually impressive mishap I've had while painting was when I tried to put the top back on an almost full pot of Agrax Earthshade (one of the big pots) and slipped, causing the pot to flip into the air. It did a full somersault, spraying the shade in a circle over everything on my painting desk (about twenty miniatures in various stages of painting) and up the walls. It looked like a Catherine Wheel firework, spinning in the air as it's contents emptied over my hard work. The only upside is that we have a horrifically ugly carpet, and the patches of shade still stained into it only improve the monstrosity.

I bought a matte varnish rattlecan, read the instructions carefully, and read horror stories online of temperamental sprays depending on air/can temperature and air humidity. I checked the temperature and humidity for several days to try and find an optimal time to spray, and warmed the can with via bodyheat before using it. Confident it would work, I sprayed: and ended up with white flakes on my models that I couldn't get rid of. I now use only brush on varnish and (so far) haven't had any issues with it.

I've cut my fingers and thumbs plenty of times when my hobby knife has slipped, but thankfully only minorly.

My dog collided with the table leg I was working on and knocked models, paint, and painty water onto the floor, and my cat likes trying to walk through my models while I'm painting. I've also had to stop several times to retrieve a model she's trying to chew or collect a (closed) paint bottle from the floor because she pushes them off the table then bats them under the sofa while playing with them. If I don't get them before they do, they can't be retrieved without moving the furniture. She also likes chewing sprues, which isn't great if they still have bits on.

sleeptowin wrote:
and then after taking a photo... this happened

as an old orkplayer.



Rest in pieces

One word, in all seriousness... Yellow

SG

Spilled a fresh bottle of vallejo liquid metal, old gold on my junk.

outside from that. painted up a bunch of test of honor ninjas, hand painting rope details. hit it with matt varnish by mistake and lost ALL the detail. 3 days of work gone in an instant.

 Desubot wrote:
Spilled a fresh bottle of vallejo liquid metal, old gold on my junk.

Isn't that what Goldmember wanted to do to people in the third Austin Powers movie?

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Spilled a fresh bottle of vallejo liquid metal, old gold on my junk.

Isn't that what Goldmember wanted to do to people in the third Austin Powers movie?

 Desubot wrote:
Spilled a fresh bottle of vallejo liquid metal, old gold on my junk.

That's why I don't do pants-less modelling.

Got an X-wing model second hand with the flight stand or snapped off in the circle hole. Took to it with my knife, started pushing way too hard and voila the knife was in my thumb. Rinsed washed and superglued the wound and nothing left of rhe scar by now. I even finished fixing the flight stand. It was quite easy too, just by cutting the circle bit off, pushing out the broken piece and reattaching the circle to the model.

Got quite a few Tyranids as my first 40k project. Super excited. Painted some of them and had a good time, but ran into "too much plastic syndrome" and regretfully sold them. The real horror story here is not my loss of my beloved Nids, but rather that my first attempt at spray primering them was with Army Painter White which sprayed on fine and then in drying coalesced into gigantic nigh-irremovable globs of white on 1 of my 3 Carnifexen. It even a dry warm day and it was a sad day indeed. I never got around to fixing ol' globby and ended up selling the poor thing along with the rest of the lot.

Forgot to pin some Menoth warjack until painting was done, using airbrushed chrome and all. Dremel caught inside the resin, pulling the model out of my hand and spinning it so hard that it exploded, pieces flying across the living room. The repaired cracks where the legs separated at mid-femur somehow didn't look that noticable.

Don't know if this counts, but I need to vent.

Came home from work today and found all my foam trays ripped to bits and every single mini I own, roughly 3k pts painted and about another 1k built and waiting, utterly smashed to pieces. They even opened up boxes and trashed stuff still on the sprue.

Because I didn't respond to a text message quickly enough. While at work.

So... yeah. Pretty depressed about that.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Don't know if this counts, but I need to vent.

Came home from work today and found all my foam trays ripped to bits and every single mini I own, roughly 3k pts painted and about another 1k built and waiting, utterly smashed to pieces. They even opened up boxes and trashed stuff still on the sprue.

Because I didn't respond to a text message quickly enough. While at work.

So... yeah. Pretty depressed about that.

What?!?

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Don't know if this counts, but I need to vent.

Came home from work today and found all my foam trays ripped to bits and every single mini I own, roughly 3k pts painted and about another 1k built and waiting, utterly smashed to pieces. They even opened up boxes and trashed stuff still on the sprue.

Because I didn't respond to a text message quickly enough. While at work.

So... yeah. Pretty depressed about that.

Who the hell is they?

burglers? cats? mice? toddlers?

and holy corpse emperor that sucks.

What the hell!?

'They' is my now former significant other.

Everything's gone. Some of it might be salvageable but honestly I'm too depressed to really look at it right now.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
'They' is my now former significant other.

Everything's gone. Some of it might be salvageable but honestly I'm too depressed to really look at it right now.

Jesus thats a double whammy

im sorry for your loss.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
'They' is my now former significant other.

Everything's gone. Some of it might be salvageable but honestly I'm too depressed to really look at it right now.

Holly fething hell mate.

Like why? Why take out the frustration on a bunch of painted miniatures?

Because the minis were important to me, I'm guessing.

The people closest to you know where the weakpoints in your armour are.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Don't know if this counts, but I need to vent.

Came home from work today and found all my foam trays ripped to bits and every single mini I own, roughly 3k pts painted and about another 1k built and waiting, utterly smashed to pieces. They even opened up boxes and trashed stuff still on the sprue.

Because I didn't respond to a text message quickly enough. While at work.

So... yeah. Pretty depressed about that.

The person responsible for this is a wretched example of humanity. Condolences.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Because the minis were important to me, I'm guessing.

The people closest to you know where the weakpoints in your armour are.

Human decency prohibits this.

Lad that is a shame, and a crime.


I am also appalled by this and deeply sorry for you....

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Because the minis were important to me, I'm guessing.

The people closest to you know where the weakpoints in your armour are.

I'd file a lawsuit. If you lived in the US you could take him/her to Judge Judy.

It's not the worth the time, the effort, or the continued and prolonged contact.

And 'Judge' Judy acts as an arbitrator, these days,

That's a truly horrible story. I'm sorry for your loss, mate.

Irrationality is (one of the) the(s) bane of humanity.

My very first minatures when I was 13ish was they kislev winged Lance's absolutely amazing looking models.

However they were an absolute pig to put together the Lance's were a pain to straighten, the wings were heavy with a tiny contact point, the arms looked crap unless perfectly aligned but the weight of the lance made that difficult and even the body halfs took a lot of work to get to fit.

They nearly broke me took me a week to build 10 and while I did get them built I was a lot more wary of what I bought from then on.

Even now with a lot more experience and knowing a lot of the tips and tricks noob me did not I still would not fancy getting the wings attached.

That's nasty Excommunicatus. Wouldn't wish that on anyone.