Being the "Great Railroad Molder" that I am, my grandson who is 7 years old but, very incisive for his age, agrees with me. I decided to buy three Tree Kits. I should be able to knock these out in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes or so. I looked at the instructions for all three. Just four simple steps and the same for all three kits. Why even a "Cave Man" could do it. Sorry cave men. But not to sorry, because you're the cause of so many women wearing short hair today. I opened the first one, a twenty-one tree kit. I started, as you should, at step one, bend and twist (shades of Chubby Checker) the tree Armatures into realistic tree shapes. I tried and tried but none of the armatures bent and twisted into a realistic tree shape. My most logical and realistic assumption was that, it was not my fault, but definitely a manufacturing error and the plastic armatures were no good. I'm also a great innovator, as well as a molder, so I decided to throw out all the plastic armatures and their bases. Now some people might use these for a flat tree on top of a mountain, or use the bases for tree stumps. But not me. If it's no good throw it out. No matter what my wife says you save money in the long run. And I knew she was exaggerating when she told me how much I'd spent so far. On second thought (I told you I was an innovator) I keep the foliage. The next two kits had much bigger Armatures. And as my wife says, some things should be bigger. Anyway, I checked the armatures and decided they needed painting. So I mixed a little oil based green primer I had left over from painting the house. Not more than 3 or 4 years old. and mixed a little red acrylic to give it that fall color. and proceeded to paint the armatures. Well! Right away when the limbs started falling off, I knew something was wrong. My super logic told me to stop. But to be sure, I tried one more, the same way, and with the same results. You would have thought I'd get different results but I guess not. Without a doubt I knew it was the Paint, Again, knew I did nothing wrong. So obviously, poor paint manufacturing was to blame. Due to excessive union demands, distracting management from watching the manufacturing process. I decided (see, no matter what my better half says I can make sensible decisions) glue the foliage onto the armatures. I pulled out my old calculus book and using my slide rule, good thing I don't need that center piece of the slide rule, figured out the correct mixture of glue and water. I wanted to guarantee the foliage would stick the first dip as it says in instruction #2. I dip and also painted the armatures with glue and try to add the foliages. But low and behold it does not stick. The foliage falls off. I tried 100 glue and it still falls off. I dip, I paint, I spray the glue and the foliage continues to fall off. Even hair spray did not help. This is taking way to long and just not worth my time. Finally, I laid a thick layer of foliage on a paper towel and soaked it in white glue. Then laid the tree armatures on it, soaked them and laid on another thick layer of foliage and soaked it all over till it turned white. I'll left it alone for a good five or ten minutes to see what happens. Well, would you believe it, paper towels, foliage, and tree armatures all stuck together. I knew just what I was doing was correct . Because I looked it up in my old chemistry book. So No doubt about it, The paper towels are defective. Again I don't make mistakes. So it had to be government regulations requiring management to be distracted from watching the chemical process of making paper towels. I'll not buy another tree kit. Only pre assembled trees. My time is to valuable to waste on defective products. When I asked my wife what she thought caused my problems, She looked at me, turnaround and left the room. See, women are pretty smart, when you know nothing, say nothing. Wow, that's some loud and hard laughing, giggling and pounding on the walls. For a minute, but no, it's the TV. I'll ask my wife to turn it down. See ya Ron
That's a great story! I had reached the same conclusion with the kits I bought. We must have had the same bad luck in buying all the same "defective" products. I was at the hobby shop a couple weeks ago - no doubt about - pre-made for me, too!
Hmmmmmm, Switchman seems to have discovered an Alternate Universe to my Stupid Mistakes. In this Alternate Universe, he is all-knowing, and it's others who make collossal mistakes, such as setting topsoil on fire in a 500 degree oven or melting plastic trees with, I'd guess, solvent-based paints. Hmmmmm, Ron seems to be making Basic Stupid Mistakes, and should probably start his own series on them, so he can keep track of them, and I don't have to. I am incapable of tracking my progress from the bedroom to the kitchen to get--oh, I should empty the trash. What am I doing in the kitchen? Oh, I should probably start the coffee before I empty the trash. Yes, I should probably feed the cats before that. And what was it that I was supposed to be doing before I fed the cats. . . These are great stories, Ron! And well-told, to boot! I'd just urge you to develop a theme line apart from mine because, if you depend on me--well, I fed the cats, so now what am I doing on Trainboard? Oh, I needed a glass of water a long time ago, so I started from the bedroom to the kitchen to get it before this whole series of distractions, and ended up on the computer with a beer in hand . . . Great stuff, Ron! Keep 'em coming.
My own alternate universe. Hummm, Yes, I like that. Informing manufactures of their Product defects. And advising Molders, from my position, of superior knowledge, and experience, how to achieve perfection in Model Railroading. Oh yea, I think it could work. Ops, I didn't say that, and you didn't hear that. I know it could work. As I said to a friend of mine (he later adopted it as his mantra), "I never fail at anything, but I have found 10,000 things that don't work." Boy am I glad I came up with this idea. Now what to call it, I'll go work on that. See ya
I love this site because people actually know what a slide rule is (was) and it's appropriate use in modeling N scale trees. Cool.
