My Shaky Hand Problem Bites Back, With A Vengence!
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and to be honest I’ve been very fortunate that I have not suffered from model making accidents sooner and more frequently than this… But it finally happened. 😩
I have actually had little bloopers before and have gotten used to them as just an accepted part of my new reality. I knew this was the case when I started making this first scale plastic model since I had my strokes and so expected there to be little mistakes. But I hoped against hope that a major one wouldn’t happen… More fool me.
The big bloopers on this occasion came about because of my impatience, typically. I had had a long day baby sitting our family dog - who is getting on a bit now so is very needy - so when she went home I rushed up to my attic man-cave to do some late evening model making… Bad idea.
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| Above: Everything was going rather well… Until it wasn’t! |
I should have waiting until I was fresh and started again the following day. Instead, I started a particularly tricky bit of the model while I was a bit tired. I think I have mentioned before that while my shaky hand has improved over the three years since the original strokes, I still suffer tremors when I am either stressed or tired.
While joining together one of the delicate threads that make up the wing’s rigging, joining a length under tension from an outer wing spar to one of the plane’s nose spares I suffered a major uncontrollable shudder .
To make matters worse an effect of the spasm was that my grip on the model actually tightened and it was this that crumpled the delicate spars. 😩
It was all over in just a few seconds but the damage was done. The spars collapsed and pinged together in a tangle of threads due to the elastic tension (see the post’s header photo).
Recovering A Broken Model - What To Do?
There was a very brief moment that I thought it was all over for my Sopwith. The work so far had been something of a struggle anyway, but I had managed to get this far and was pleased with myself. The rigging had been particularly difficult and I had already had a couple of minor mishaps where individual threads had come loose and had to be re-glued back in place once again. (And unfortunately this was a bit of a messy process as nerves had gotten the better of me as I applied more glue.)
So, I had nearly given up! 😡
…But I took a breather - and had a cuppa - and returned to my workbench. We’re things as bad as I had thought? Well, kinda, as I realised that if I want to go forward with this model I would have to go back by removing the broken spars and a lot of the rigging - 😤 - so that I could rebuild again…
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| Above: The broken parts removed from the model and the areas where the spars had been originally glued cleaned up to remove any vestiges of the glue and the broken ‘nubs’. |
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Phew! That’s a lot of work and I have to hope I don’t have any more shaky hand accidents while doing all this. Still, lesson learned - I shouldn’t attempt any ‘quick’ late night modelling but wait until I am fully rested, particularly when it’s a job that demands a LOT of concentration.
Also, I have to finally admit that 1/72 scale model making is perhaps pushing the envelope for what I am comfortably able to do nowadays. As I mentioned in my previous post about ‘Going Up A Scale’ (link opens in new browser window) I will have to try out 1/48 or even 1/35 scale models if they have especially intricate levels of detailing like a WW1 biplane’s rigging.
Amusingly, I didn’t have to try the rigging on this Airfix 1/72 Sopwith, I did so just as an experiment to see what I could do… Well, now I know! 😖
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