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I just have the usual hobby related incidents:

Lots of cuts in my fingers from hobby knives.
Stabbing myself with drill bits.
Gluing fingers together.
Ruining clothes with superglue drops.
Showing up to work with paint on myself.

My main hobby related problem (not including injuries) is a combination of shaggy carpet and butterfingers. I always end up having small pieces jump out of my fingers and end up in the carpet. Probably got half an army hidden in those fibers.

We wrote:I work in environmental health and safety so I have to deal with chemical safety every day.


MEK is a lot nastier, again a time time off thing is pretty unlikely to give you long term health issues, however MEK is a lot more toxic than acetone so your short term exposure risk is much greater. Also, if for some bizarre reason you would ingest either of these it would be really bad, especially MEK. Don't use these with children around. Out of curiosity how fast did the MEK strip the paint?

like I said I work around these chemicals all the time and I have always had this morbid curiosity to take some of the various solvents I have access to and see which will strip mini's the best. I have a respirator so that's not an issue. I am just worried b/c the only thing i need to strip is plastic and I don't want them turning into a pile of goo.

I agree, MEK is nasty stuff, I had some leftover from a project I worked on in the mid 80's, as I am a cheap bastid, I figuredit was worth the risk. Not a good thing to do,especially if you are the Safety Petty Officer for your work center. My daughter ratted me out. To answer your question about how fast did it strip the paint, about two minutes, one minute dunk followed by minute of scrubbing with lacquer thinner and an old "tooth" brush that we used to use on M60 GPMGs.

As I once worked both in the Aviation Fuels and Ordnance field while in the Navy MEK is probably not the worst thing I was ever exposed to, willingly or otherwise but it's one of the ones that scared the hell out of me.

No I don't work for Boeing. EH&S is a common term for environmental health and safety many companies use. I started out in the field as hazardous waste disposal so for years I had access to any type of chemical I wanted (granted it was slightly illegal for me to take anything however not saying it didn't happen....)


The thing that would worry me about people using these chemicals at home is no so much the exposure issues is that people may leave them lying around and their small children gets a hold of them and seriously harms themselves. Plus these chmicals should not be thrown down the drain when you are finished with them.

Hobby wise the worst thing I did was super glue a model and while holding the parts together with my fingers I sprayed some Zip kicker (which insta-bonds super glue). Apparantly I had some super glue on my fingers and it insta-bonded the glue to my fingers, which apparantly causes a chemical burn. On top of it the burn is now encased in a hardened glue shell that can't be washed off. My finger was burning and I was frantically trying to peel the glue off my finger so on top of the chemical burn I ripped the glue off a burn which didn't feel very nice.

Actually of all the crazy things that I have had happen to me working with chemical waste, this was probably the worst, definitely the most painful, and it happened wth household chemicals. I guess because at work I was prepared for the nasty chemicals while household chemicals I let me guard down. That's why I have *ahem* aquired various PPE over the years such as nitrile gloves, respirator, haz mat suits etc.

I worked in DG for several years.
PPE is not something I have to think about - it's just something I do out of habit.

MEK is nasty stuff - but it strips paint like nothing else (QANTAS used to use it in their Engineering section for stripping paint of airframe panels - when they actually still had an engineering section worth a damn). You can get chem-resistant gloves, but they aren't known for allowing much in the way of dexterity enhancement.

It's also a catalyst in acrylic resins (which is where my experience comes from - SFX casting workshop). Apart from the health risks, it readily vapourises at room temperature and the vapour is explosive (the liquid is flammable - but requires a naked flame or spark - the lit end of a cigarette won't do it - not that most of the apprentices were aware of that little detail).

Landlord has his crew over mowing the yard in the morning.

In the afternoon I went outside to prime models, and hit them pretty decent with spray primer. Tripped turning around and models went spinning off into the grass with trimmings..

Grabbed all the models that I could, and dunked them into a bucket of water that was on the back porch.

Wasn't pure water though.. wife had put some Scott's Miracle Gro plant food thing in there to slosh over flower garden and I didn't realize for as long as it took my hands to start "rash"ing up..

-P

warp spiders,
+
Montana Gold,
=
epic fail.....
horrible turn out.

I changed my mind about modeling my Kabalite Warriors. I had put together a few with helmets and two without. After I painted one without a helmet and one with a helmet, I discovered I loved the helmeted look. I chose to keep the helmetless, painted one as a future proxy or to put on my desk because it is the first one I painted and did not look bad. Plus one of my troops would only have 9 warriors, so it would not be missed. So I tried to use a hobby knife to pry the head off. When that didn't work I used plyers, ripping off the head and half the neck. I had take a new head and file it down to no neck and use a piece of finecast frame from my Archon's packing to build the rest of the missing neck. It didn't turn out too bad, but it took forever.

Jihadnik wrote:I was chopping the hands off of marine arms to reposition them by pushing down really hard on the blade of my scalpel and bracing them with my other hand. As i did, the blade snapped from the pressure and a piece flicked back and cut me on the nose...

I sat there for about a minute, thanking god that it didn't go in my eye, and then added safety glasses to my list of things to buy...

This is why I am grateful that I don't use contacts.

I got some Poly cement in my ear, think it's still in there.

(Not quite the same type of story here but still stupid and thought I'd mention it...)

So last night in fact, I was GS sculpting an arm back on to a big mutant character...though to myself "Hmmm I better try and get the muscle groups right here or it'll look crappy"...

Typed into google images "Big Muscles" for some source images...

Hours later and Girlfriend comes into find me at my desk, hunched over, busying away with half-naked muscle men photos up on my PC monitor...She exclaims "OMG what are you doing?!"

Haha! It looked bad but as soon as I started talking about minis and GS she just glazed over and left me to it

wash-away wrote:warp spiders,
+
Montana Gold,
=
epic fail.....
horrible turn out.

i feel your pain. 40 termagants turned to piles of goop!

Ghostflame wrote:(Not quite the same type of story here but still stupid and thought I'd mention it...)

So last night in fact, I was GS sculpting an arm back on to a big mutant character...though to myself "Hmmm I better try and get the muscle groups right here or it'll look crappy"...

Typed into google images "Big Muscles" for some source images...

Hours later and Girlfriend comes into find me at my desk, hunched over, busying away with half-naked muscle men photos up on my PC monitor...She exclaims "OMG what are you doing?!"

Haha! It looked bad but as soon as I started talking about minis and GS she just glazed over and left me to it

Did you have you back to her as she came in?

First time I was trying out green stuff, I was wondering why there was two different colours.
So, I went for the blue one, as it felt harder and I supposed it would be better to use than the yellow. Finished off the model, and it looked good.

So I set it aside to harden, but the odd thing was that after a day, it still was the same. Then it struck me why it is called "green stuff".. Major facepalm-moment.

Sonophos wrote:Did you have you back to her as she came in?

Yeah...haha

oveku wrote:First time I was trying out green stuff, I was wondering why there was two different colours.
So, I went for the blue one, as it felt harder and I supposed it would be better to use than the yellow. Finished off the model, and it looked good.

So I set it aside to harden, but the odd thing was that after a day, it still was the same. Then it struck me why it is called "green stuff".. Major facepalm-moment.

Haha, amazing.

Once I was using old and slightly thickening superglue not realising how much stronger the fumes get and feeling 'buzzed' It was like an enormous pressure trying to force my eyeballs out of their sockets. Felt awful for about 6 hours.
I've shaken an open jar of yellow paint. I've dropped a tin of matt olive enamel (open at the time) on my duvet. Dropped a mini I was painting into my tea(which I stopped drinking). While scrubbing paint off a mini the paint stripper speckled on my face(numerous curses and mad dash to the bathroom)
Not much later I dropped superglue on a brush with dried varnish on it which promptly caught fire.
Opening Revell's paintacleaner not realising how strong the smell of this stuff is, it stinks! What made it worse was that it was galeforce winds outside so I couldn't open the window. After about half an hour the whole house smelt. I was really popular that day.
Painting today I tried to clean my brush by completely missing the water jar and using the unprotected surface of the table. It didn't work.

I was trying to force an exacto knife through the ball joint from a Tau battlesuit leg. It made it through but took the tip of my thumb off lol...

Using black spray primer while holding the model, so I could get full coverage only to realize I had notihing to wash the paint off of my now black hands. After scrubbing my hands damned near raw, I got it off of everything but my nails nd had to put up with all my co-workers inquiring about my nail polish....

themandudeperson wrote:Using black spray primer while holding the model, so I could get full coverage only to realize I had notihing to wash the paint off of my now black hands. After scrubbing my hands damned near raw, I got it off of everything but my nails nd had to put up with all my co-workers inquiring about my nail polish....

is this still facepalm or already headdesk? lol

you could have used a nail file to clean your nails. also, a mix of sand and soap gets rid of everyting

MrMerlin wrote:is this still facepalm or already headdesk? lol

Better to facepalm than headdesk, especially given how accident prone you people seem to be with the glue...

Glueed both hands together. Don't ask how

glued Archaon the everchossen to his base at the wrong angle.

Went back with our good friend the hobby knife to remove him, had just enough of my other hands thumb sticking up on the opposite side of the model to lop off a decent chunk when the blade slipped.

My friend lets me take 5 points off his cost now as i have paid my homage to chaos in blood.....

One of my paint pots slipped from my hand, and the paint landed on the ceiling.

one of the dumbest things I do:
post in contentious threads (usually OT forum)

MrMerlin wrote:
is this still facepalm or already headdesk? lol
you could have used a nail file to clean your nails. also, a mix of sand and soap gets rid of everything

Yeah, I have since learned the error of my ways...

08ak1 wrote:glued Archaon the everchossen to his base at the wrong angle.

Went back with our good friend the hobby knife to remove him, had just enough of my other hands thumb sticking up on the opposite side of the model to lop off a decent chunk when the blade slipped.

My friend lets me take 5 points off his cost now as i have paid my homage to chaos in blood.....

Hyeeeeh! Sounds painful!

Bounty wrote:That made sense in British right?

Sigged


I think the worst one I've done is glued myself to a model...not realised...and glued myself to a second model...then glued my other hand to the model while pulling it off me...that was 15 minutes of hilarity

Close calls are normally cutting through sprue or new model to get it off the sprue...apply force...apply excessive force...cut through 5 pieces of sprue and merely *touch* my finger with a very sharp blade...a millimetre more and I'd have ended up with stitches...

Dheneb wrote:One of my paint pots slipped from my hand, and the paint landed on the ceiling.

You just broke the Earth.

Honestly, I'm pretty good about modeling. Using plastic cement generally means that if I completely derp when I'm putting something together, I can usually fix it before the glue dries completely. I do have one big battle scar, though - when I was shaving off some excess sprue from a Broadside, the knife slipped out of my hand and cut into my pinky about half an inch. I wound up getting a few stitches in there, though it was a pretty lame story to tell when I had them.

I've got one big modeling derp that I did, and it wound up being three different things in one. It was my first ever Land Raider - I had bought the Redeemer/Crusader kit and planned to make up a Redeemer for my Wolf Guard Terminators to roll around in. Cue derp number one - a model with giant flamethrowers on it that is also a troop transport, and I glued the doors for the guys to get out in front of the guns themselves (though to be fair, it's exactly what the stupid directions tell you to do). #1.

After that screw up, I opted to try and magnetize the sponsons as I'd seen my friend do, so that I could pull 'em off if they got blown apart in battle. I did this by cutting out a big hunk of sprue and trying to get it inside, so that it would form a sort of harness for a magnet to sit on top of. Well, it turns out that the sponsons go a lot further into the doors than I thought, so my neat little sprue spider web is cemented in place, and the doors sort of hang off of the side of the Raider itself. #2.

The third one came when I was gluing in the magnets for one of the doors. As I did with the other, I dabbed a drop of superglue onto the magnet, set the Raider down sideways with the 'web' facing upwards, and gently set the magnet down on top of it. Or at least, I tried to do that. I don't know what happened, but the glue on the web wound up slipping, and the magnet slid right off into the bowels of the Land Raider itself. Just my luck - the one time I want superglue to not dry instantly, it does, and I've got a magnet that's permanently stuck somewhere inside. Now why can't the glue insta-bond when I'm doing metal or Finecast models.

Eventually, when I started my Ork army, I decided that since I hadn't ever gone back to finish it (I bought the model and wound up never using it due to bad luck with it, always getting blown to smithereens on turn one or two) I was going to loot the heck out of it. I haven't gone over it yet, but I have plans for it to become one of the centerpieces of my army as a looted battlewagon.

I used to store cans of spray paint and bitz boxes on a shelf over my work table, once pulled off a bitz box without looking and brought a spray paint can down onto a finished (and painted) 10 man squad of the new plastic immortals who were chilling under the shelf now i dont put stuff under that shelf anymore.

My finger now has like 7 vertical gashes in it where I won't learn to not cut towards my thumb

Was Putting togeather a Ork stompa almost 3/4 done and my brother was bitting me with little rocks then I lost and ended up throwing the Stompa at him thus hitting his face and the Stompa hit the floor and I ran to him and literally said "Oh S**** is the Stompa ok I meant to throw the Lamp" he had some cuts and brusises on his face where the pionty sticks hit him but hey now whenevr I working on WH40K hes no where in sight