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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.

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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?