Generic Action Figure Repairs - Two Methods to Fix Most Breaks!

Greetings!

So I've been looking at my stats recently, and I am getting a lot of refers from people looking for info on fixing broken Figmas.
I haven't actually managed to break any of my Figmas yet, but they're not so different in the way they work to a lot of other figures, so here I will be explaining two methods of repairing figures which are applicable to almost all PVC toys (including Figmas!) and can probably fix over 90% of breaks!

OK, first up, I'll explain the difference between a low stress area and a high stress area:

Low stress areas are not put under much pressure. They're usually not moving parts and if they are, then they're only moved minimally.
If you want to fix one of these, read Method No.1.

High stress areas are the things which break most often. They're things like shoulders, knees, necks, elbows, hips, etc, which have quite a lot of stress put on them when the figure is being played with.
If you want to fix one of these, read Method No.2.

Method No.1 – Supa Glue
For low stress repairs.
This is a really good (and DUH obvious) method for visible areas which are not part of a moving joint. It would be great for non-posable scale figures, snapped accessories (like swords or firearms) or other small things.

The example figure I will be repairing is Nendoroid Millhiore F. Biscotti!
Isn't she pretty?

Unfortunately, just after I got her, she fell of her horse... er... bird... er... mount and her ahoge broke where it attaches to her head!

Ahoge means "foolish hair" in Japanese, and, if you didn't know already, that's the silly bit of hair sticking out at the top of her head.

In Nendoroids, large ahoge like this are actually posable! You can rotate it from side to side so it can point in any direction (I love Nendoroids)!
I would not recommend trying to fix anything which will be put under higher stress than this ahoge with glue alone. I'm careful when I'm posing it now, but it's been a few months and it hasn't broken yet.
I didn't take any pictures of it when it was broken because it was before I started this blog, but here's a shot of how it looks now:

You can see the break just above where it attaches to her head.

Anyway, after freaking out and practically crying (she is nothing without her ahoge! NOTHING, I tell you!) I glued it back on with supa glue.

This is very easy.

Just put glue on the broken surface and then push the two parts together until the glue grabs. This usually takes about 30 seconds or so.

If it doesn't grab the first time, it probably means you used too much or too little glue. Don't be discouraged if you have to try this a few times with different amounts of glue... oh yeah, and don't get the glue on your skin because it sticks to people :O

Note: Supa glue only works on really clean fractures, so if the plastic around your break is a little mushy, you might want to try a different adhesive. For info on choosing the right one for the job, have a look at my glue info page.

As you can see, the supa glue worked a treat on Princess Biscotti. Her ahoge is even still posable!

Look at that ahoge go!
(This looks way better when you're listening to fast music)

Another example of where this method is really useful:
Figma Marisa's cup had come unstuck from her hand and needed to be re-glued.

And that's Method No.1.

Method No.2 – Drilling & Pinning

This is my personal favourite method for fixing high stress fractures: this includes action figure joints! YES, THAT MEANS FIGMAS!

The equipment required is not necessarily the kind of stuff that everybody has lying in their desk drawers, but if you're a figure collector, these tools are an invaluable resource and well worth the small amount of money you will pay for them.

All of these things are easily obtainable from hardware stores, hobby shops and online!

This is the method I used to fix RAH Roy Mustang's broken head, which you can read about here!

For now, however, the figure I will be demonstrating on is Pure neemo Kanata Sorami!

Poor Kanata. Her knee joint popped out and so I took off her boots and trousers to fix it, but in doing so, I broke her foot off! *facepalm*

Even though she can still stand with the foot off (I just jam her leg into her boot) I wanted to fix it, because she's just not the same with an amputation.

Here's the busted foot and the ankle it's busted off:

The foot snapped off at the ankle joint.

Pure neemo ankles are extremely similar to Nendoroid and Figma joints!

Something like this is way too small and gets put under way too much strain to be fixable with glue alone, so I'm going to drill a hole in each side of the joint and insert a bit of wire before gluing.

Here is Kanata with the tools I will be using:

Anticlockwise from top: 1.25mm wire, pin vice with drill bits, a suitable adhesive for mending PVC,
wire cutters, pliers, a 1/6 scale designer Bauhaus chair for Kanata to sit in while I work (optional).

To start, drill a small hole into the fractured surface on each of the ankle and the foot. The holes should be roughly 3-4 millimetres deep (for my empirical friends, that's about 1/8") and the drill bit you use should be the same width as your wire, or as close as possible. My closest drill bit is 1.3mm and that works fine with the 1.25mm wire.

Me using a pin vice, in case you were wondering what it does exactly. It's
basically just a little handle for a drill bit.
(My hands aren't usually purple – I have eczema and it's cold.)

The foot, after drilling.

Notice, in the above picture, that there is a centreline in the joint. This is not a mould line. It is the juncture of two separate pieces of plastic. It is the movement of the two pieces against each other which makes the joint functional.
Also notice how the hole I drilled does not go directly through the centreline, but instead to one side of it, through the original broken surface.
If you glue a wire through more than one of these pieces of plastic then the joint will be frozen and will not move anymore!
It's exactly the same deal with Nendoroid and Figma joints.
In fact, here's an old Nendoroid joint which has been taken apart, so you can get an idea of how it works:

The hole in one piece fits over the central peg in the other. This allows
the two pieces to rotate around each other – simple, but very effective!
Many joints are constructed this way.

Here is the ankle after drilling:

If the end of the peg is really mushy after drilling, just neaten it up a bit
with pliers and a craft knife/wire cutters so that the joint will fit
together nicely when gluing... this picture was taken after neatening.

Notice how the hole is slightly to one side in the above photograph. This is to correspond with the fact that the hole in the foot is also off-centre. If you can't get this quite right, it's no big deal, but it's better this way.
... Actually, to be honest, I was hoping to pull the peg out of the leg part before drilling to make it less awkward to get to, but the pliers didn't grip properly and I just ended up mashing the peg :/

Of course, this method is not limited to this kind of joint. You can use it to fix all sorts of things, like this fracture, in the straight shaft attaching RAH Roy Mustang's neck to his body:

This was successfully fixed by drilling and pinning
and Roy has since been posed many times over.

Anyway...
Now that the holes have been drilled, it's time to cut a piece of wire to fit them.
The length of the wire should be equal to the combined depths of the drilled holes.
For example, if I drilled a hole 3mm deep in the ankle and 4mm deep in the foot, then the wire will have to be 7mm long so the whole joint fits together nice and snugly.
It is advisable to cut your wire to the right length before gluing anything. Believe me, it's just easier that way.

Once you've cut your wire, glue it into one part of the drilled joint and let it set for a few hours.

Kanata's foot with the wire glued in. The bent wire in the foreground
was used to spread the glue.

Now that the glue is at least partially set, apply more glue and glue the whole joint together... with glue (I really love glue, don't you?).

This is how the joint looks now that it has been put back
together – it looks a bit messy close up, but from a normal
distance you don't notice it much.
It's certainly better than having no foot!

Figma Chie has come to look at Kanata's foot while the glue is drying.
She makes a pertinent (if dry) observation.

Now wait for the glue to dry. I don't know how long this will take. It depends on the type of glue, the temperature, atmospheric conditions, alignment of the planets, etc...
Make an educated guess based on the instructions on the packet and add a few hours. That's my advice.
...
   ...
      ...
OK, so the glue is now set and... did it work?

Heh. Sorry about the lighting... I think a cloud must have come across
when I shot some of the frames...

Yep.

And that's Method No.2.

Well, that's all from me!
I hope this helps some of you guys with your Figma-related problems!
Cheers! Sparkey.

Painting Over Blemishes on Doll Clothes

   Hello, all!
     I don't know if any of you guys have ever bought a second-hand figure, but, is it just me, or was the previous owner always an idiot? ... more on that in a minute...

     Today I will be discussing how to cover up blemishes on doll clothes using acrylic paint.
     It may sound weird that I am suggesting that you paint your dolls' real fabric clothing, but, with a little tact, it works amazingly well.

     Back to my beef from earlier... Pretty much all of my "used" figures had some kind of stupid problem when they arrived. The stupidest was RAH Edward Elric, whose previous owner had thought it was a good idea to wash his clothes with ordinary washing powder. I mean, I would never want to wash those clothes EVER (the edges of his coat have wire in them!) but with washing powder? No! No! Wrong!
     The results are that his black shirt, with its lovely white edging, has bled and the lovely white edging is now a sort of off-burgundy, at its worst around the collar:

One side of the collar is stained a dark colour.

     Here's a closeup, in case you didn't see it the first time:

Oh, the horror...

     The reason that only one side looks awful in these pictures is because I have, in fact, already painted over the other side some time earlier. As you can see, the paint makes a really big difference.

     All in all, this is a pretty simple process, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind...

•      I wouldn't recommend this for every doll-garment. It's only going to work if the fabric is fairly thick, because acrylic paint is strong stuff and it will not blend in with dainty weaves.
•     Don't try this on any kind of stretchy fabric, since the paint will crack when the fabric stretches.
•     The colour of the fabric could have an impact on whether or not this is a success. Black or white will be the easiest to paint over since you won't have to mix the paint yourself. With any other colour, some mixing will almost certainly be required (unless you're lucky enough to have paint the exact shade of chartreuse as your botched garment). If you do find yourself mixing paint, just be aware that acrylic usually dries a slightly different tone to how it is when wet.
•     Acrylic paint is waterproof once it's dry. If you make a mistake, wash it off as soon as possible. Plain water should do this fine. If you're worried that you won't be able to paint the area you're working on without accidentally getting paint in places where you shouldn't, put some masking tape along the edge so that if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world.
•     Let's face it: this is not going to work for large areas. Small blemishes only.
•     If you're not sure about whether the paint will work or not, dab a tiny bit of paint on the inside of a hem or somewhere you can't see to test it out before you start working.

     OK, now to start.
     This is really fine work, so I'm going to use a really tiny brush.

     Since my paint is a brighter white than Edward's shirt, I'll water it down a little bit before applying. This means that the paint will a) soak into the material a little, maintaining the texture of the fabric better, and b) not be so bright.

     To dilute the paint, I just put a little paint on a bit of paper, get some water on my brush and mix the paint/water together on the paper. The paint should be nice and runny.

Sorry the mixed paint is hard to see – white paint on white paper...

     Now I just get a little bit of the diluted paint on my brush and carefully apply it all over the blemish. If you want to fade the edges out so the painted area isn't so obvious, make a gradient by diluting the paint more and more as you go.

     ... Done!

     This job is simple once you actually start doing it.

     Here's the finished product:

     ... and another closeup of the collar:

It's not perfect, but it's a huge improvement.

     For something like this collar, where the area was small, the fabric was thick and the colour was white, the paint has done a really good job of covering up the dye.

     Hmmm, this post seems to have come to an end already!
     Good luck with your repairs!
     Cheers! Sparkey.

Repairing a broken RAH joint (Roy Mustang: The Saga)

     It was about two weeks ago, and I had a larger amount of money in my account than usual. I had also just arrived home after nearly being creamed by a car when trying to cross the road, so I was in a weakened state... this is when I saw RAH Roy Mustang (from Fullmetal Alchemist) for sale on eBay at an extremely good price. The listing said "Good condition".
     Needless to say, that glut of cash was soon used up...
     About a week later, my nice big parcel arrived in the mail from Japan. When I opened it, Roy looked as if he was, indeed, in very good condition. His outfit is smart and clean, his sculpting is perfect...
     ... but when I removed Roy from the box, there was a nasty surprise waiting for me. There's one thing about Roy which is not in good condition. See if you can tell what it is:

     Of course, this is very subtle. Only a nitpicker like me would notice a little thing like this.
     Totally not something you should mention in an eBay listing.


     Needless to say, I hit the roof maintained my cool.
     After making threats involving PayPal and fire a short conversation with the seller, I negotiated a partial refund.


      Anyway, now to fix Roy.


     Roy is from Medicom Toys' "Real Action Heroes" series (pretty tacky sounding name, but they're nice figures) and they're notoriously pretty touchy. I hear a lot of people asking how to fix them when they invariably have accidents, which is actually what made me decide to start this blog.
     Before I begin, here's a picture of the break (incidentally, the very picture I sent the seller). As you can see, the neck has snapped off at the base:

When I received Roy, his stand had not been opened
and he had some slight damage to the front of his hair.
I'm guessing he fell off a shelf and busted his neck.

     The break wasn't super clean, but it was fairly good, so I first tried to fix it with Supa Glue. That didn't work, and since Supa Glue is the only adhesive I know capable of holding something as small as this together properly, I knew I would have to drill and pin the joint.
     Drilling and pinning is one of the more difficult figure repairs, but if you're up to it, it usually has pretty solid results.
     Here are the tools I used (excluding glue):

From left: Pliers, wire cutters, a tiny screwdriver, 1.25mm diameter wire.

     To drill the joint, you could use a variety of tools. I use a tiny screwdriver but this is dodgy, so I recommend using a pin vice (a little thing which holds a drill bit) and a drill bit the same diameter as your wire.
     For something like this, wire with a diameter between 1 and 1.5 mm is probably best, since it's a pretty small joint.
     Anyway, I used the screwdriver to drill a hole into each half of the broken joint. Each side should be drilled a few millimetres deep.

The neck joint, after drilling. (Yeah, RAH figures are really designed to have clothes on...)

     When drilling, it is tempting to push really hard to make it drill faster, but don't. Even though the joint is already broken, when doing something like this, any pressure you apply runs the risk of breaking other joints too, or even cracking the plastic around the break.
    To make the plastic easier to work with, I warm the neck joint over the heater. PVC is a thermoplastic, meaning it becomes soft when heated. Warming it is advantageous for two reasons:
     1. It's easier to drill because it's softer,
     2. It's less brittle and less likely to snap under the pressure of the drilling.
     You don't want to heat the plastic so much that it looses its shape, so just use a warm hairdryer or a gentle heater for this (at about 100ºC, PVC actually melts into a liquid).


     OK, now for the pinning.
   The first thing is to cut a bit of wire just long enough that it fills in the holes you drilled when you fit the joint back together (IE, the length of wire should be equal to the combined lengths of the drilled holes). You might need to fiddle around with this to get the length right.
     Here's a picture of my bit of wire and Roy's head to give an idea of scale:

The wire ended up about 1cm long.

     I probably should have drilled the holes a bit deeper, but the dodgy screwdriver was hard to work with, and the friction/heat of my particular drilling technique was actually enough to start warping the plastic. If this happens, just use a pair of pliers and gently push the joint back into shape before it cools.


     The next thing to do is glue the wire into the joint.
     To find the right adhesive for this, I spent a couple of days mucking around with different types of glue (testing them on old broken Nendoroid joints to see if they worked). After a few duds, I finally came up with something which seemed to do a good job. Since it was hard finding the right glue for this job, I ended up writing a whole article on the subject so that everybody else can learn from my failures: http://figurefixer.blogspot.com.au/p/more-about-adhesives-glue.html
     I glued the wire into one side of the joint and waited until it was dry before I glued the other side (it's just less difficult that way).

You can see the wire sticking out of the base of Roy's neck.
In the foreground is a small bit of wire – I used it to spread the glue all the way
to the bottom of the hole I drilled.

     After that was done, all that was left to do was glue Roy's head back on and wait.


     ... and wait...
         ... and wait...
             ... and wait...


      Finally this morning, Roy's new neck joint was ready to test!
     I had my doubts about the glue, but it actually worked really well. It's a little spongier than (I assume) it would have been originally, but all the joints still work and Roy can move his neck and head as much as (I think) he ever could.

Roy is back to normal.

     My work here is done! *dramatic pose on top of mountain*


     Good luck with your repairs, everyone!
     Cheers! Sparkey.