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.