How to make a good kit into an awful model

Go out for supplies (I promise just paint this time, honey!) and buy the kit on a lark, even though the mark up is worse than if you'd simply ordered it through the mail and eaten a $5 postage fee. Let your five year old son open the box hoping he'll get interested in the hobby. After you've found all the pieces he scattered around the house (probably a couple years after he gets out of college) start buying every book you can on the ship/tank/airplane/car in question. Spend three times what you spent on the kit on books, especially those rare ones that just have one picture of the subject, and a blurry one at that ( Aw, come on honey, it was the only one that had the correct markings I want to do!!!).

Find out that some part is inaccurate and start to scratchbuild a fix for it. Two months later and 90% of the way to the completion of the correction, you see that some company has released a detail set that fixes the inaccuracy and drops in place in only five minutes. Buy the aftermarket set anyway, just in case you want to do another one of these.

Airplanes Armor Automotive Naval

The wings are warped. when you bend them back into place the control surface lines no longer match up right and the wing has developed a thinner profile so that it doesn't mate up right. Spend hours sanding and rescribing the control surface lines and getting the wings on with the correct dihedral and thickness then realize you forgot some critical part that was supposed to be glued in BEFORE the wings went on.
While removing the canopy from the tree you cut yourself. After bandaging yourself you accidentaly crack the canopy washing off the blood on it. You write away for a new canopy and wait. Your gun tube and running gear has a slight warpage to it. You also are missing a bogey wheel (Probably still under your son's bed or in the dog's digestive track). While the letter to the company for a replacement wheel is off getting processed you begin fixing the road gear and gun tube. The gun tube has some molded rings on it that are just a smidgen *too* small for your super-duper favorite jewelers file to get to. You contemplate adding a nude female figure to the top of the gun tube to draw everyone's attention away from the defect. When you get the running gear on, it's STILL not straight. You decide the best fix id a diorama base with uneven ground that mysteriously manages to match the deformations *just* right. Your windshield is warped. You accidentally craze it while trying to heat and bend it back into place. One of the tires also has a large sink hole that is too big to fix by just facing it down (I decided to model the car in an accelerating right turn, that's why the left front tire's off the ground like that. No really, I meant for it to look like that!). Someone vacuums the house the day before you put on the last coat of paint without telling you and stirs up the dust specks. All of them manage to make their way to your workbench and hang around in the air until just after you hit the body up with the tack rag. After you polish them out and repaint, the cat jumps up and rubs on you just as you start painting the emblems on the car. You make a really long streak on your perfect hood and an enemy for life of the cat who doesn't like flying long distances inside the house. While putting on the rails, you sneeze without warning and remove half of them. You also leave a large wet delight on the bridge and spend 5 minutes just staring at it wondering how you are going to wash *that* off without damaging anything. when you finish the railings you start on the rigging. Halfway through the rigging the cat gets in and vigorously defends the household from the evil photo-etched pieces. You order a new set.

The new decal setting technique you heard about turns out to be incompatible with the decals provided and they disintegrate. There is an aftermarket set available, but the guy at the store will have to check his sources and get back to you with a price. When they arrive, they are slightly out of register and have a puncture mark on the biggest ensignia on the sheet from where someone stapled something in a really dumb place before shipping.

You have the model finished and place it in your display case. Your friends and family comment, "sure, great job. what an UGLY vehicle though!!! You know, why didn't you do a P-51/Corvette/Sherman/battleship??"

Airplanes	Armor	Automotive	Naval
The wings are warped. when you bend them back into place the control surface lines no longer match up right and the wing has developed a thinner profile so that it doesn't mate up right. Spend hours sanding and rescribing the control surface lines and getting the wings on with the correct dihedral and thickness then realize you forgot some critical part that was supposed to be glued in BEFORE the wings went on. While removing the canopy from the tree you cut yourself. After bandaging yourself you accidentaly crack the canopy washing off the blood on it. You write away for a new canopy and wait.	Your gun tube and running gear has a slight warpage to it. You also are missing a bogey wheel (Probably still under your son's bed or in the dog's digestive track). While the letter to the company for a replacement wheel is off getting processed you begin fixing the road gear and gun tube. The gun tube has some molded rings on it that are just a smidgen too small for your super-duper favorite jewelers file to get to. You contemplate adding a nude female figure to the top of the gun tube to draw everyone's attention away from the defect. When you get the running gear on, it's STILL not straight. You decide the best fix id a diorama base with uneven ground that mysteriously manages to match the deformations just right.	Your windshield is warped. You accidentally craze it while trying to heat and bend it back into place. One of the tires also has a large sink hole that is too big to fix by just facing it down (I decided to model the car in an accelerating right turn, that's why the left front tire's off the ground like that. No really, I meant for it to look like that!). Someone vacuums the house the day before you put on the last coat of paint without telling you and stirs up the dust specks. All of them manage to make their way to your workbench and hang around in the air until just after you hit the body up with the tack rag. After you polish them out and repaint, the cat jumps up and rubs on you just as you start painting the emblems on the car. You make a really long streak on your perfect hood and an enemy for life of the cat who doesn't like flying long distances inside the house.	While putting on the rails, you sneeze without warning and remove half of them. You also leave a large wet delight on the bridge and spend 5 minutes just staring at it wondering how you are going to wash that off without damaging anything. when you finish the railings you start on the rigging. Halfway through the rigging the cat gets in and vigorously defends the household from the evil photo-etched pieces. You order a new set.