Have you ever had a hard time finishing a model

Post regular progress reports on this list. The desire to have something to report can be very motivating.  If you are really brave, start with a photo of opening the box. It is like performing without a net.

Don't feel bad... it took me 1 year to finish a O scale LaBelle passenger car...

La Belle Woodworking O scale passenger kit- A true craftsman kit! | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum

La Belle Woodworking O scale passenger kit- A true craftsman kit! | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum

I started building a grain storage unit from scratch.  I got six silos assembled and primed. I built the elevator tower building, but never put a roof on it. I still need to build a structure for the top, over the silos.  My layout is temporarily in storage, and I can't get motivated to work on this.  I quickly dummied up some finishing touches with paper to get it on display in the background on my Christmas layout, but it still sits unfinished.

George

You could always model a construction site. 

I am notorious for not finishing projects. I usually get 90% of the way and drop the ball. It seems like there is always some difficult step that I dread doing. It's too easy to set it aside and start something else. When I reach that point, I just need to grit my teeth and do it. Once I get into it, I find that it wasn't as bad as I had built it up in my mind, then it feels like fun again. Then I wonder why I didn't just finish it in the first place.

Pete is right - make a post and report on progress. I did this for my "Plastruct" shop cabinet. It forces me to work on the cabinet every Sunday and report progress when it would be so easy to move over to customer work since like always I am way behind.

Joe

dobermann posted:

I've been trying to finish this for maybe 2 months now. I just can't seem to apply myself to this 1 building. How do you motivate yourself when you're stalled. I work on some part of the layout everyday but when I sit down with this I just stare at it until I walk away. In the meantime I have another 20 buildings still in sealed boxes waiting to be assembled.

It's supposed to be a fun hobby, not an obligation to keep up to artificial expectations of whoever. Sounds like you've burdened yourself with too many detailed building kits that you "have to" construct. Find something else that is more fun to do !!!

One of my favorite diversions in the hobby is to build small layouts in different scales using misc trains and structures picked up cheap at train shows, or sometimes given by friends.

Two months? I wouldn't worry too much about that kind of delay. That's amateur level.  I had a model airplane kit that I bought in 1973, worked on it a couple times over the next 40 years, and finally sat down and finished it in 2013. (A personal record that I'll never be able to match!) I was sentimental about it at that point. An incentive was that I was afraid it was going to disappear - I had to fish some of the parts out of the trash where my wife had thrown them after she cleared some things out of the attic.  

I had a scratch built water tower project that stayed half built for a very long time. Then when I decided to finish it, I think I went faster at the end than I should have. I'm not 100% happy with how it turned out, considering how much work went into the build to start with:

I have a Locomotive Workshop MP54 kit that I was bashing into a combine that has been on my one workbench now for ~12 years.  I look at it, reach around it, but never actually touch it, and only approach it with the greatest of reluctance.  

I know better to disturb it, too.  It's totally mental, malevolent, evil incarnate, demon possessed, and a source of total madness when contacted.  It may even be a cross dimensional extension of Cthulhu,   Maybe if I sacrifice a chicken or a goat?

Big_Boy_4005 posted:

I am notorious for not finishing projects. I usually get 90% of the way and drop the ball. It seems like there is always some difficult step that I dread doing. It's too easy to set it aside and start something else. When I reach that point, I just need to grit my teeth and do it. Once I get into it, I find that it wasn't as bad as I had built it up in my mind, then it feels like fun again. Then I wonder why I didn't just finish it in the first place.

Boy, that's the truth for me, too!

Also, I think that part of it is that, if I finish, I will have to confront the fact that somewhere along the line, I made a few goofs, and the end product is not perfect, as I imagined it at the beginning of the process. If I never get it done, I can just keep seeing it as I want it to be in my mind's eye.

I may have a project in a box for a long time (especially since the layout was being built), but once I normally get to a project, I work it until it's done. It drives me nuts to have something half finished, normally. I guess that's why my layout was just a pile of lumber and boxed supplies and rolling stock less than 2 years ago...

One project I had a hard time with was changing out the headlight on my Lionel scale Allegheny but I did stick with it and figured out what to do.

Bob C.

I often take 3-4 weeks to complete a Craftsman type kit.  I don't rush. I just enjoy the experience.

Patrick1544 posted:

I often take 3-4 weeks to complete a Craftsman type kit.  I don't rush. I just enjoy the experience.

I simply don't have the time. Between a job where I can take almost zero time off ever, a 'honey do' list that never seems to end and the usual insanity around a house, I take advantage of the difference in times my wife and I go to work (she works 8-4:30, I work 10:30-7) to do a lot of my model work at night.

Most of my structures (and almost all of my rolling stock) were completed long before the layout existed at all, back when I was still planning...

I was actually working towards finishing a set aside project today.  It started with adding an observation deck to this run of the mill 2531 a few weeks ago.  Other urgent chores took precedent and it got pushed to the back burner.  That gave me time to think about how to proceed with the project.

Walking through Micheals the other day, I came across a shelf full of acrylic spray paint in a variety of colors at clearance prices.  Suddenly, like a flash of Daylight, it struck me!

I'm still working on the finishing details, but when compared to the MTH dome car can you believe that color match? 

I look upon stuck points as opportunities to fall back and regroup.  Eventually you get around to tackling the project with a fresh frame of mind.  As ACE said, it's supposed to be fun.

Bruce

   If I get bored I box it, and say "next".

   I shelve lots of things and finished them later. I built cars, and models of cars like that too (3 unfinished, & 5-6 sealed). Many times a new idea or just thinking about it, kicks the project off again. Some train car issues, sat for decades in the dark; while others at least pulled holiday duty.

    Scenery pans out a little different on the layout. Way more likely to cause track closures. That's motivation 

I tend to do one project at a time like the SP cab forward chronicled here.  I've been working on it for over a year and keep going back redoing things I'm not happy with or to make stronger for handling. Almost finished. I'll run into a problem and think on it for as long as a week before resolving it. I'm so glad it is a hobby and not my job. I'de be canned big time.

MOST! projects I begin, with trains (got to have that caveat, as there are others in other interests), I finish.  If things slow down due to waiting for drying paint or glue, I start something else to work on concurrently, so as not to waste time.  However, two buildings I started scratch building, one a huge grain elevator, for which, after a day sitting in a library, and still no news photo found of the front of it, when it burned decades ago, remains unfinished.  The other is a mine structure I started from copying an HO kit, then found the kit was not supposed to be correct....the prototype has been restored, to reported accurate plans, and a guy involved in the restoration says the two different HO kits offered are not correct.  The prototype is at least a two days drive away, above 10,000 feet, and the one time I did visit, without taking measurements or detailed photos, was in a sea of mud from snowmelt.