Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

ok, I admit it I'm a plank.

I bought a load of Eldar on ebay and left them for a few days in a glass jar of nitro mors.

No probs? I've done this loadsa times, unfortunately I left the jar with the top on in direct sunlight and it exploded! The nitro mors which had turned orange from the stripped paint splattered over the upvc window frame and has now stained it bright orange.

My Missus is not impressed.

My worst ever calamity was about 7 years ago, I was building a polysterene blood bowl arena and had sprayed it black ready for painting. I notice a lump of polysterene i wasnt happy with and decided as I couldnt be bothered to go fetch a knife I would burn it off with a lighter( I think you can see where this is going). The still wet primer ignited and the whole thing went up in flames, I legged it across the house carrying what can only be described as a fireball and dumped the whole thing in the bath. I had burnt the carpet, my hands and was sans eyebrows for a while.

Has anyone else managed an act of supreme stupidity in this great hobby of ours?

Spray priming my models too close to our house with the wind in the wrong direction meant that our white UPV door was covered in a fine mist of black spots.... d'oh!

That and the sadly predictable regular mixing up of my paint water and current beveridge. I can say from experience that wine is great for washing your brushes but foundation paints taste like cack!

I have a friend who decided it would be a good idea to sculpt large pieces of polystyrene terrain with a belt sander.

In his bedroom.

Schoolboy error.

I think the worst I did was while dipping my models in minwax. I was working on dipping my trygon (no easy feat since its huge) and while I was swinging the trygon to get the dip off I hit a box of carnifexes. The carnis were still wet and hit my deck. Being more worried about what crap the carnis would have stuck in them from the dirty deck I set down the trygon on the nearest surface and started picking up/cleaning off the carnis.
When I'd finally finished the trygon had dripped minwax onto my mothers wooden gardening table.
To this day (2 years later) there's still a snaky outine on the stained wood.

Another one was where I decided to prime my drop pods outside on the trash can. I set down a box top catch the blue primer, this however didn't help much because it was so windy. I ended up with the entire trash can lid being blue, apart from a few rings where the pods where sitting.

I was sawing a sprue with a hobby knife while the sprue
was suspending in the air with hand.

I got away with a small cut that was so clean it wouldn't
clot for days.

i once droped a pot of black paint on a white carpet.
i dabbed the paint up which just made it a thinner but bigger mess and then decided to try and soak it up with water and a towel.
i started adding water to dilute it and had a pond of black ink. the funny thing was it started to sort of work so i figured i just need more water right, so i got a gallon jug and used it. now i have a pond on my moms carpet...
low and behold i see the vacuum cleaner sitting there and figure its kind of like a shop vac, right?
i proceed to vacuum up the pond and think, wow, thi is actually working... that is until water starts spewing out of the vacuum bag. it made a neat foam like substance and made yet more mess to clean.

the best part... it worked overall. the black paint came up and after things dried everything looked good...

I had a similar knife incident cutting my CoD sprues. Hour 5 or 6 into cutting and cleaning and I buried a new hobby blade into the side of my thumb joint. Didnt' clot for two days, ruining any chance of painting for the entire weekend.
Otherwise, priming models on the railing of the back deck, while I did use a box to hold them and catch paint, I left a black and white pattern on the rails. My wife never goes out doors, but somehow managed to spot that and scolds me about it every time she hears the rattle of spray cans.

I somehow managed to superglue a chaos terminator arm to my face about 7 years ago.

Great thread

Disappointingly my worst mishaps just involve dumping brand new $3.50 pots of paint on my hobby table / camo shorts. Clearly my wallet was damaged much worse than the table or camo

- Salvage

probably my worst was during an aggravating session of Planetside. I used to convert and assemble my models right on my computer desk for the distracting convenience factor. Well one day I had just finished assembling a box of boyz for a friend and decided to get my game on. At about hour 2 the frustration of dieing repeatedly to a cloaker made me angry enough to the numeral 9 key. What I didn't realize was that my old x-acto knife, the one with the big red handle and 45 degree blade had rolled right intot he path of my finger as I was slamming to and fro on that number 9 key. Sliced all the way through the pad on my middle finger. And I had to work the next day. In the Aquatics section at my local Petco, not fun!

Yup, this is pretty funny.

Probably my worst was when I funished gluing and didn't notice I'd knocked the left the top off. I then knocked it over, but didn't notice.

By the moring I had an empty superglue pot stuck to my desk

I remember about ten years ago I was cutting foam with a good sized knife ( I did not yet realize there was such a thing as a foam cutter) and I lost my grip on it. Well, it fell at such an angle that the blade passed through the flesh on my left index finger, almost down to the bone. I found out that a knife passnig through tissue makes its own uniqe sound that is hard to describe. Wasnt all and all a bad cut but it was deep, and I bled all over the carpet

About six years ago I’m trying out different stripping agents. I remembered my dad cleaning his fence painting brushes in a coffee can of gasoline. Now, I do consider myself of above average intelligence. I really do. Well, there on the shelf is a gallon of gas for the mower. On the next shelf up… the coffee can I keep there for just such an occasion. It’s December. I won’t be needing the gas for the mower. What the hell. I fill up the can and throw in the next bunch of metal figs. (Not plastic, I wasn’t being that slowed) No lid of course. That would not be very conducive to the idiocy at hand. I grab a bunch of minis, put them on the work bench and start priming, like 200 minis worth. Many, many cans of black primer are used. Okay, remember it’s December? It’s cold outside. My wife is gone so the barely fits one car garage is empty. The doors are closed. I’m wearing my cool little respirator mask so I don’t smell a thing. After finishing priming, an hour or two, I finally notice the haze of black mist in the air and think to myself, “I need to open the door and air this place out before the wife comes home and yells at me.” As if on cue my neighbor, Bill, opens the side door and has his hands cupped up to his mouth lighting a cigarette. WOOF!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It lasted about half a second. Thank God it was cold and I was wearing a hat and a coat otherwise I’d have gone up like all the oxygen in the garage. Bill stood there at the door… smouldering, staring at the lighter and cigarette held in each hand.

Nobody was hurt but I did have a nice sunburn around my eyes for a while. Like a reverse sunglasses tan. When my wife got home she didn’t ask but the look on her face was telling. She knew. Maybe not exactly what had happened but that if I was involved it had to be good… or dumb. Now when I head out to the garage in our new house, which is an oversized double with a little spray painting booth for minis complete with exhaust fan, she hides my lighter.

LOL! Great stuff!

I was designing a battlewagon for Ghazkull with a drawing program on my PC. I use a laser engraver and cutter to make wooden and plastic models. I had the overhead view at 1:1 scale on my screen and I wanted to check that Ghazkull and my mega armored nobs would fit well into the wagon, so I just held Ghazkull's base up to the screen. I didn't remember that I had a 3/4" rare earth magnet in the models base for transporting to tournaments. My screen went rainbow colors and started distorting like a Dali painting. I realised what I had done the instant I did it. Thank goodness for the degauss button on the monitor.

i love forgetting to put the lid back on the glue and gluing random items to my desk... pens, pencils, brushes, models, books, cups... everything...

Okay... I bought a chimera on ebay and the sod had glued the turret down. I would have none of that, so after stripping the model, i grabbed my large retractable carpet knife and slid it out several clicks. I was slowly working the blade under the turret when suddenly it popped off (apparently he only glued the pivot point and a little behind it....).

I managed to literally fillet my left thumb on the inside. I still bear the scar with... what's the opposite of pride again?

P.S. great thread

Note to everyone: epoxy _can_ stick to tooth enamel.

I did the same thing as "Malfred", only diference was that I took a chunk out. Ouch!!

rryannn wrote:i love forgetting to put the lid back on the glue and gluing random items to my desk... pens, pencils, brushes, models, books, cups... everything...

...pockets...

Some of my favorite pants too --I still wear 'em.

But really, I've got nothing that compares to most of these stories, not even cuts.

-LE037

Actually, remembered near disaster story ...

Long time back was building marines or something, and my superglue had glued shut over night. Instead of clearing the barrel with a paperclip or pin like I do now, I instead grabbed the bottle with some pliers and started crushing the thing to try to pop the clog out and get things moving. The blockage popped alright, and since I was squishing the bottle maybe a foot from my face AND had the tip pointed towards me I suddenly had a big gob of glue headed towards me left eye!

Thank god I wear glasses, cause while Lens Crafters cleaned the stuff right off I don't think my poor eyeball would have liked a nice superglue coating

- Salvage

Awesome thread. Fortunately for my minis but unfortunately for your entertainment, most of my greatest feats of stupidity have been unrelated to modeling. The biggest mishap I can think of was when we had a power outage while I was painting and I just put down the Termie I was working on and left my worktable w/o putting the lid on the Shining Gold paint sitting right next to the mini. When the lights came on 1/2 an hour later the cat had knocked the paintpot over and I had a Terminator that looked like he'd spent an assault phase base-to-base with King Midas.

My fingers bear many a scar from slipped knives. I even went to the on-campus health clinic once to see if I needed stitches (I didn't). Another time I was cutting something and my knife slipped, down to my leg and cut a neat little hole in my jeans. I didn't even realize it got my leg too until it started bleeding.

Other than that, nothing too bad. No explosions... yet.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Morskul wrote:I somehow managed to superglue a chaos terminator arm to my face about 7 years ago.

Ok, I want to hear more about this one. Glued to your hands...normal. Glueing something to your face is something of a feet.

About 12 years ago I'd just finished painting my Space Wolf army and decided to display them on a shelf in my room (one of the ones thats just resting on brackets). My grandma came into my room and I decided to proudly show her my army. She walked over to the shelf and at the same time as saying "You mean these here!?" She plonked her hand down on the edge of the shelf. As you can imagine, watching your entire army fly across the room and disintegrate on the floor and wall is not fun.

Craig

Ouch...that must have hurt, Death_Master.


Luckily for me, I think I've read enough of these type of threads on Dakka to learn from the mistakes of others. I don't really have any horror stories so far. I've never drank paint water, never had to get stitches, never accidentally primed finished models instead of varnishing them.

Knock on wood, of course.

Really, the worst I can speak of is a few minor cuts (and by minor I mean I didn't even need a band-aid - just a quick wash in soapy water), and I've gotten superglue on my fingers (but so far I've been quick enough to separate them before they dry permanently.)

I guess there was one time where I accidentally got a few drops of black paint on a crappy pair of jeans...not really much of a tragedy.


I just hope my good luck doesn't reverse all of a sudden and I put a pin vise through my hand or slice my pinky off.

Yeah, I don't have any specific disaster stories, but I always feel like if I haven't drawn blood on a conversion, then I haven't tried hard enough.

Hordini wrote:
I guess there was onetime where I accidentally got a few drops of black paint on a crappy pair of jeans...not really much of a tragedy. :p

Yeah, that's more like business as usual around here.

Mine is merely another paint-all-over-the-carpet story (red on cream, in this case, and so it remained), but my method was extra stupid...

I was painting a scale model of some kind about 6 years ago, and as such was using enamel paint - one of the small, squarish glass Testors jobs. Anyway, it was an old pot and was firmly stuck closed with dried paint. Now, you can run one of those pots under a hot tap for 30 seconds and it will open easily... but who's got that kind of time? So I grabbed a monkey wrench and a slide-adjustible wrench I kept on hand for just such occasions, firmly clamping the monkey around the glass bottle and the other onto the cap. I then torqued the wrenches in the appropriate manner. The lid was stuck on SO tightly, that the glass bottle cracked all the way around into two perfect halves, one in each wrench hand, dumping red everywhere.

Needless to say, I hold the bottles with my bare hand now, and just use a wrench for the lid. Lesson well learned.

Crikey, horror stoiries/lol.

Ok, I have just gotten a new box of Assault termies. I get out my pliers and start de-spruing them. A 6 yr old cousin asks "Can I help?"

Sure I think, (it is a pair of pliers with a little cutting section in the back near the hinge).

I watch David carefully seperate an arm or two, and say"Good work Mate!"-and then go to watch a couple of highlights of the Australia vs India Cricket test match.

After 2 beers and about 40 minutes, my Aunty(who was supervising) calls out..
"Johnno, come and look at all the stuff David has done!"

I walk out, and to my horror, he has carefully cut every piece in half. Chests, Hammers, Legs, and arms are all over the table, with the sprue still attached to each 'piece'.

It was a Jigsaw puzzle that cost me $65.00 Aus.

Who was dumber though?

Me, methinks.........................

I have a super-glue horror story, and this is a warning to all of you with contacts: do not wear them while working with super-glue.
I was building my blood angels, I used to work in my basement, hunched over a little white desk. If i remember correctly, I started building at around 6 and by the time i was done it was 11pm or so. In five hours I cleaned and glued together an assault squad and two tactical squads, I work slow, I know. I was only 14 or so at the time, and I had just started wearing contacts. It was time for me to go to bed, and this was when I discovered my problem.

Later in life, when I was in college, I discovered what had happened. Apparently Super Glue fumes are an organic solvent, and something that apparently will dissolve plastics. When the fumes evaporate off of the melted plastic, the plastic hardens again. With plastic based contacts this means that your contacts will adhere to your eyes, although amazingly, without any noticeable depreciation of function, however to get them off you need to have them surgically removed.
At the age of 14 all I knew is that my contacts were stuck to my eyes, and no matter what I did, I could not get them out. It took a painful surgery where I watched as they cut the contacts off of my eyes, not a pleasant experience.