I feel the need to relate this sad tale of miniature misfortune. A year or two ago I purchased a 15mm Alouette III helicopter from Old Glory to go with my Rhodesian Brush War project. After painting some of the infantry I put the project on hold. Recently I decided to re-visit the project and get everything I had for it painted, including building some new terrain. Everything went well. Then came time to build the helo.
My model building skills have never been great. I am impatient, and have a habit of slicing my fingers with the xacto blade and then gluing said fingers together with superglue. At least the glue seals the bleeding wounds though.
The model came with instructions. Very poor hand drawn xeroxed instructions. And the casting was a bit rough. It took me several sessions to get it put together enough for painting. There was much uttering of unrepeatable phrases during the building process.
But this was only the beginning of the nightmare.
During the build process I put a magnet on the bottom of the helo to attach it to the flight stand I got with a Battlefront Huey. I attached it with white elmers glue just to make sure that it would work with this flight stand, as the spare magnets I had were a bit smaller than the one on the flight stand. I intended to re-glue it with superglue before painting. After seeing that it held onto the stand well enough I promptly forgot the need to re-glue it and began painting.
Painting went well enough. Once it was painted I put it on the flight stand and felt a great sense of relief wash over me. The helo was done, thus completing my Rhodesian collection.
A few hours later I came back into my room to find the helo leaning at a very precarious angle on the flight stand. "Right, what's all this then?", thinks I in a stereotypical London Bobbie accent for some reason. The white glue had lost the fight with the magnet. The helo was hanging on by a thin strand of paint. Pulling the magnet off I realized my mistake. I re-glued it with superglue and repainted the bottom where the paint had been pulled off. I left the helo to dry on my desk and I turned around in my chair and stood up to leave the room. But my desk chair swivels. And it just so happens one of the main rotors was sticking out just a bit over the edge of the desk. Snap goes the rotor.
Sigh. Another fix needed. As I was gluing the rotor back on, I realized something. I had put one of the other main rotors on backwards, so it was facing a different way then the other two. Already very annoyed I decided "screw it!" and decided to leave it facing the wrong way.
Once the broken rotor was glued back on and more paint touch ups applied I went to put it on the flight stand. But what's this? It's not being drawn onto the magnet. It's being pushed away! I had superglued the magnet on upside down so the polarity was wrong. [insert long string of expletives]
So I got some pliers and ripped off the magnet, flipped it, glued it back on and once again re-painted the damaged area.
Okay, NOW it's done. Right? Of course not. As I was handling the chopper setting up a game I got a case of butterfingers and it slipped off the flight stand and fell onto the table. A fall of only maybe half a foot, but enough to snap two of the main rotors. At this point I hurled the flight stand across the room in a fit of 1/100 scale rage. Luckily, the flight stand didn't break.
On the bright side, one of the two freshly broken rotors was the backwards one, so I was now able to fix that mistake.
NOW this must be the end. I set up a game and began to play. On the second turn I somehow managed to nudge the chopper off its flight stand and down onto the floor. All three rotors snapped off and so did the front wheel.
At this point I wanted to curl up into a ball and rock back and forth, crying at the heavens "why have the gods have forsaken me???"
So I repaired it yet again. Rotors back on. Wheel back on. Fresh paint. It's now dried and ready, yet again. Sitting on my desk. But I am afraid to go near the damn thing. I am seriously beginning to think this model is cursed by some unspeakable evil from beyond human reality. Only the elder gods living in undeath at the bottom of the sea could be this malicious.
So, does anyone else have particularly accident prone models that drive you to the very brink of sanity?