Forgotten part(s)

[GaryG64]

I'm nearing the build of my P-38. As I was combing over the sprue I noticed I forgot a part, a side wall of the landing gear bay! Now I'm tasked with how to install this, very obvious missing part. I cannot remove the boom where the gear is located because I glued it in place the night before. The only option, trim and modify. It fits! *whew*
What a bummer, though.

 

[blakeh1]

I've dome things like that countless times

 

[GaryG64]

I've dome things like that countless times

 

[blakeh1]

For me the worst is kits where you have to drill holes in something before putting together, especially with certain manufacturer aircraft and ship kits

This seems to be my Kryptonite

The first time I really got burned was with my 1/72 Academy F-14. I was coming off decades of building nothing but Games Workshop 40K and Bandai, Fine Molds, and Revell Star Wars stuff so it never dawned on me that a kit would actually need you to drill holes in it out of the box. Of course once I put the fuselage together I was missing all the holes for the armament wracks and had to wind up doing a best guess where they went and cutting off the pins and gluing flush

So I tried to be more careful after that, but still miss the occasion hole here or there as I sometime build out of instruction order due to painting requirements.

Most recently I was working on a Trumpeter 1/700 USS Yorktown and you need to cut some tabs so later you can plug in gun islands.
I had gone back and forth over the instructions and thought I caught them all, but then looking at the sprues,
I realized I had some parts that needed a place to go. And worse yet, it was one area of the hull that had hangar sections on the inside so you could no longer see the inner wall to find the recessed part that you need to cut out
So, I poured back over the side wall instructions again and sure enough found what I had missed.
My saving grace was that if I held up a really bright light at just the angle I could see the sink marks on the surface where the tabs should be and was able to rescue myself using that as a guide instead

But I think my worst moment was after putting lots of effort in painting a figure, I went to dull coat it, and instead blasted it with Black Primer from the same manufacturer. It did not dawn on me at first why the figure was getting darker with these little black spots all over after doing a few passes

I did the passed more like a mist coat so I was holding the can far away and moving quickly so it wasn't completely opaque black, but more misted black

I tried fixing it up, but of course I felt it never came out as good as it did the first time

If you look close at the skin area around his belly button you can still see a blackish tint to the skin

 

[GaryG64]

For me the worst is kits where you have to drill holes in something before putting together, especially with certain manufacturer aircraft and ship kits

This seems to be my Kryptonite

The first time I really got burned was with my 1/72 Academy F-14. I was coming off decades of building nothing but Games Workshop 40K and Bandai, Fine Molds, and Revell Star Wars stuff so it never dawned on me that a kit would actually need you to drill holes in it out of the box. Of course once I put the fuselage together I was missing all the holes for the armament wracks and had to wind up doing a best guess where they went and cutting off the pins and gluing flush

So I tried to be more careful after that, but still miss the occasion hole here or there as I sometime build out of instruction order due to painting requirements.

Most recently I was working on a Trumpeter 1/700 USS Yorktown and you need to cut some tabs so later you can plug in gun islands.
I had gone back and forth over the instructions and thought I caught them all, but then looking at the sprues,
I realized I had some parts that needed a place to go. And worse yet, it was one area of the hull that had hangar sections on the inside so you could no longer see the inner wall to find the recessed part that you need to cut out
So, I poured back over the side wall instructions again and sure enough found what I had missed.
My saving grace was that if I held up a really bright light at just the angle I could see the sink marks on the surface where the tabs should be and was able to rescue myself using that as a guide instead

But I think my worst moment was after putting lots of effort in painting a figure, I went to dull coat it, and instead blasted it with Black Primer from the same manufacturer. It did not dawn on me at first why the figure was getting darker with these little black spots all over after doing a few passes

I did the passed more like a mist coat so I was holding the can far away and moving quickly so it wasn't completely opaque black, but more misted black

I tried fixing it up, but of course I felt it never came out as good as it did the first time

If you look close at the skin area around his belly button you can still see a blackish tint to the skin

View attachment 96516

I think your figure looks very cool!

My kryptonite is missing parts and discovering later my mistakes.

I build out of sequence too, just to get the parts painted and still miss several pieces during that process.
After I notice a part I forgot to spray I'll need to mix a small amount in the air-brush & spray that one little part then clean it all out.

Another mishap is grabbing what I thought was the right color sparying the parts on the sprue only to notice it is not the right shade at all. So, I left it, it kind of ads character.

One other fun thing is noticing a part on the sprue and going over and over the instructions trying to find where this part fits only to find out that the part is not needed for that build.

I drilled about a dozen holes under the wing of the P-38 for the drop-tanks. I drilled too small. I'm trying to force the pins in like a puzzle piece then *snap*! The pin snapped off. Then, like you, I have to position the part, sans pins, in the area.

I guess we all have our kryptonite lol.

Here is a pic of my bicolor prop. I don't think it's too bad.

 

[blakeh1]

One other fun thing is noticing a part on the sprue and going over and over the instructions trying to find where this part fits only to find out that the part is not needed for that build.

Yeah, that is frustrating sometimes. I have done that myself on the ships models I am working on. They have quite a number of parts for other variants, but building out of order due to painting needs, I could not be sure they weren't just missed

I love instruction sheets that have a section showing pics of the sprue where they have an X through unused parts so you can at least confirm that way, or in a more recent Tamiya kit, it explicitly stated after making x number of parts, you will have 4 left over

as for that bi-color prop, chalk it up to a patch job and it actually look good that way!