It had to happen.

Remember that model I was so happy to have finally finished assembling? The one that I said was one of my favourite 40K models? Well, guess which model just fell off a high shelf onto a hard stone floor?

Sigh. I was moving a metal tray full of models with magnetised bases onto a high shelf when... I guess it bumped something that was on the shelf and slipped out of my hand a little, hitting the shelf? I really don't know what happened, all I know is that a handful of models went flying past my face and crashed into the ground. I still don't get how it happened; I took the tray to my desk and tried shaking it and jerking it and not a single model budged, but when I was slowly and carefully maneuvering it into place earlier the models had practically thrown themselves off.

So unless there's more models that ended up somewhere that I couldn't see, four models actually fell. Two were unpainted Tallarn, and seem pretty much undamaged. One was my painted Tallarn, but he only seemed to suffer a minor bit of chipped paint (and I wasn't all that fond of the model anyway), I could repair him easily enough if I could be bothered. And the fourth one was, you know, the model that I've spent hours and hours and hours working on over the span of close to two years. I mean, that photo you see? That little design made from wire? That probably took somewhere around 4 or 5 hours to do. Maybe more. You have no idea until you try it, how hard it is to bend such tiny pieces of wire into such specific shapes and glue them in such specific positions. Even just picking them up with a pair of fine tweezers is a challenge; I can't tell you how many times I applied a bit too much pressure when trying to lift them up only to have them somehow twing off and disappear. And that's not the only place where I applied that effect.

The base? I spent hours fashioning components and wiring them up, then after the milliput had hardened it turned out the switch was broken and stuck in the "on" position. Yes, at least it wasn't stuck in the "off" position, but still, I spent ages carefully cutting it back out, carving the hardened milliput away from the connections while trying not to break them. I had to go and buy a solder pump just to clear the old solder so I could fit the new switch and solder it back in. I'm not even going to talk about soldering wires onto an LED that's less than 2mm across it's widest point.

Having said all that, the only real damage that I can see is that the spear tip broke off, a tiny bit of greenstuff needs to be redone (literally half a finger), and a couple of bits need to be re-glued. The LED still works, thankfully. To be honest, considering it's a metal and resin model full of custom work that fell almost two meters onto a hard stone floor, I'm amazed that the damage wasn't much, much worse. The spear tip will be a bit of a pain to replace, but it's not so bad. Still, the moment when those models hit the floor... damn, but that's not something I want to have happen again.

In other news, I've finished Strakhov's fancy new base and glued him down. It's going to be a while before I can paint him, but he's ready for me to have another go with, which I've been looking forwards to. I'm really hoping he doesn't fall of a table or something.