A Comedy of errors - when kits go bad!

I'm not sure whether modellers make more errors during a build than they admit to - certainly those lovely tutorial builds you see in the glossy magazines always seem to go without a hitch - but my experience so far is that every model hits snags or I mess up somewhere along the line. Last night's modelling is a prime example of my 'bodge it' style of model making.

I was working on two different models and maybe this has something to do with my lack of perfect concentration as I had problems with both of them. With my Finnish KV I made an elementary boob with the painting and I also had some minor construction problems with my Soviet rocket launcher build.

My Finnish KV went a bit pear shaped when I was touching up my shoddy camouflage job. I tripped up and selected completely the wrong green to over-paint the ragged areas of my dark green camo pattern! Oooops!

Because of the light - or my eye sight - I didn't notice the mistake until I took a snapshot, the harsh flash bringing out the differences in the greens!

Next, I had a problem with the material I chose to make the rocket launcher with. I selected a delicate styrene 'I' frame rod which was roughly the right shape. But the thin sections of plastic proved a little too flimsy and bent slightly, despite my careful efforts. Not badly but enough to annoy me.

As you can see from the photo the bending isn't huge but it is apparent, especially at the ends. I now have to decide whether to live with it or re-make the frame in a more ridged material (believe it or not I am looking at wooden coffee stirrers at the moment).

With the green paint job I may have to over-paint the rest of the dark green areas to match. I'm already unhappy with this first stab at camouflage painting and further tinkering will only make it more messy. But them's the breaks!