Repairing One of Those Pesky Broken RAH Shoulders

Hello, everyone!

It has been a looooong time since I posted here, but I assure you, my return isn't motivated by frivolity. No, ladies and gentlemen. This time I'm on a mission.
An important one.

Today I will be repairing none other than

this dismembered Plastic Torso!

No, seriously...

The torso used to be a part of Medicom RAH (actually "Real Action Heroes") Roy Mustang, but as you can see, the shoulder is broken. Roy's broken parts were graciously replaced by Medicom Toy a couple of years ago, but I'm going to be fixing the broken shoulder on the left-over torso anyway.
The reason is this guy:

Meet Medicom RAH L.

I get a lot of weird questions about a lot of weird figures, but this guy tops them all. I've had more questions about RAH L than any other figure.

To sum up, your standard RAH body has approximately one zillion Chinese-puzzle-box-like moving parts, which makes them delicate to start with, but some of the older RAHs like L go beyond mere delicateness – after a while, the plastic around their joints actually starts to crumble of its own accord.

This means that one day you're happily going about your business when suddenly your most beloved, most prized, most expensive action figure's ENTIRE ARM just FALLS OFF.

FOR NO REASON.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: *HYSTERICAL SCREAMING*

This – along with accidental decapitation – 

Oopsie

– is the most common RAH problem people ask me for help with. And I know my readers aren't making it up, because this is exactly what happened to my RAH Roy Mustang (after I put his head back on), and it is MIGHTILY DISTRESSING.

Don't feel ashamed for crying, ladies and gents. You're not alone.

So, short of replacing the parts, what can we do about it?

Answering this question took a fair bit of experimentation, but – EUREKA! I finally found a satisfactory solution.

This is where it gets Technical...

The main cause of all the anguish is this thing:

The Thing, shown here next to a tiny washer.

This peg used to hold the shoulder on, but now it doesn't because the cone of plastic it used to be embedded in has disintegrated.

But what's so bad about the peg itself?

At first glance, it seems rather like an innocent-enough screw, but look carefully at the shape, and you will see that it is actually an itty-bitty-super-fiddly RATCHET. The only way this ratchety little S.O.B. could have been inserted in the plastic in the first place is if the shoulder-plastic was heated until it was soft (or it could have been done with a tonne of pure, unadulterated force, which you'd think would break the plastic, but I could be wrong).

Now, I'm reverse-engineering all this, so I may be mistaken, but I'm guessing that pushing this knobbly chunk of metal through the hot plastic is probably what weakened said plastic in the first place and later went on to cause the infamous crumbling we all know and love.

So here's the question:

How the heck can we get the peg back in!?

The answer is:

We can't.

The plastic which used to hold the peg in place has now crumbled away, and even if it hadn't, the temperatures required to heat PVC to a point where it's soft enough to work are not all that convenient (and now that the plastic is a few years old, a tonne of pure, unadulterated force would definitely be out of the question).

So I'm going to show you how to modify a screw to act as a replacement shoulder-peg.

NOTE: READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE YOU BEGIN!

You may want to have the broken pieces with you, so you can see what I'm talking about.

--- EQUIPMENT YOU WILL DEFINITELY NEED ---

1. Needle-nose pliers

2. One (Self-Tapping) Screw (approx 2mm diameter)

3. A Ruler

4. A Hot Glue Gun OR Epoxy Putty

5. A Pin Vice

8. 2mm diameter Drill Bit

9. A Regular Size Phillips Head Screwdriver

10. A Small Size Phillips Head Screwdriver

--- EQUIPMENT YOU WILL PROBABLY NEED ---

11. Sandpaper

12. A Big Sewing Needle

13. Scissors

14. Forceps

15. A Hairdryer

--- EQUIPMENT FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE "EXPERIMENTING" ---

16. Bandaids

Part One: Replacing The Peg

First of all, get the metal peg out of the shoulder. You can do this by pushing it from behind (on the ratchety end) and then wiggling it out with pliers.

It should have a small washer on it (pictured above). Keep that washer safe. You're going to need it later.

NOTE: There's a possibility that the shaft that contains the head of the peg will be covered by what I'm going to call a "blocker". These are put in place for aesthetic purposes, but for us tinkerers, they're just in the way.

Blockers are made from soft plastic and not usually glued in. I personally remove them by stabbing them with a big-arse sewing needle and prising them out like so:

Note that the blocker in the photo is covering a screw, not the peg, since
my dismembered torso's peg-blocker was already removed.

With the blocker out of the way, you're free to remove the peg.

OK, now you've got that pesky peg out, the trick will be finding a screw which is about the same width as the original peg, but – and this is important – a few millimetres longer.

It was while pondering this that I realised I had kept a packet of small screws in my desk for the last five or six years for no reason.

*GASP* Could it be!?

Oh yah!

Had I not been so lucky, I could have just taken the original peg to the hardware store and compared it to the screws they had for sale until I found one with the SAME SHANK WIDTH.

Don't worry about the width of the thread, it's the shank which must match the original peg.

And speaking of the shank, make sure it is AT LEAST 10mm long (11mm is better). This is not including the head. You can see in the photo that the shank of the screw I am using is about 14mm long.

Anyway, something you may have noticed about the screw in the photo above, is that it is not only longer than the peg (good), but it also has a conspicuously wider head (BAD).

The reason this is bad is because the screw-head must fit down the narrow shaft from which you have just removed the original peg. What's more, it needs to be small enough to rotate freely within the shaft.

The shaft in the shoulder part. You can see by the comparative
hugeness of my thumb that it's very narrow. (If you're wondering why
 the edges of it look so mushy, my advice is to be careful with the pliers.)

If you managed to find a tiny-headed screw which fits down the shaft, good for you.

For everyone else, there's sandpaper.

Get a piece of regular woodworking sandpaper and file down the screw head, rotating it frequently, until it's small enough to fit down the shaft. This will take a little while, but it's overall not that difficult.

There will be some metal dust, so you might prefer
to do this outside.

Luckily, the screw doesn't need to be as insanely narrow as the original peg. Here's how the modded screw looks compared to an un-modded one:

Now you can put the tiny washer on the screw and fit it down the shaft.

You may find, as I did, that instead of rotating freely in the shaft, the screw threads bite into the plastic in the hole at the bottom of the shaft.

Instead of going around and around, in screws in and out.

This is a very tedious problem, but it can be fixed with some more tedious sandpapering.

The problem this time is the screw-thread.

Notice how the original peg is smooth at the top end, under the head?

Well, now we have to recreate this (roughly). Now we get the pleasure of REMOVING THE TOP 2-3MM OF THE SCREW-THREAD WITH SANDPAPER.

yay

There are probably a bunch of ways of doing this, but here's how I eventually managed it:

1. Cut a very thin strip of sandpaper. About 3mm wide.

2. Using forceps, make a noose for the screw with the sandpaper, like so:

Note the position and orientation of the screw-head with respect to the forceps.

This will hold it in place while you enact step 3.

3. Pinch the sandpaper tightly against the screw-thread and, using an appropriate screwdriver, turn the screw around and around until the sandpaper looses its bite.

Pinching the noose.

4. Undo the noose, move the sandpaper along a bit so that a nice fresh, abrasive part of the paper is in contact with the thread and repeat steps 1 - 4.

This process will slowly grind down the top of the screw-thread until it no longer bites into the plastic. You may have to repeat it quite a few times (I know I did!), but it works.

And luckily, you don't have to grind the thread down to nothing before it stops biting.

Here's what my peg-replacement looked like after sandpapering:

Not nearly as smooth as the peg, but it still does the job –
IE It turns around and around in the shaft.

The tiresome screw in the tiresome shaft.

Alright, so now the replacement peg fits down the shaft (with the washer in place!), and can rotate freely!

We must be done, right?

Wrong.

The next problem is the length of the screw shank. (Sigh)

This must not exceed 11mm, and, as I mentioned previously, the shank of my shiny new replacement peg is a whopping 14mm.

Luckily, there's an elegantly simple method we can use to get that shank down to size!

yay

Be sure to measure the length of the screw shank every once in a while between bouts of merciless sandpapering. When you've finished, it should be no more than 11mm in length, but no less than 10mm.

That doesn't leave very much room for unchecked merciless sandpapering error.

Once again, I will stress that the 11mm length refers to the SHANK ONLY! It does not include the head of the screw!
(For the purposes of this project, I couldn't give a rat's arse how deep the screw-head is.)

OK! Done!

The shiny new replacement peg can now fit down the shaft (along with the tiny washer), rotate freely within the shaft, AND it's 11mm long!

AT LAST. AT LONG LAST, we are finished modifying the screw!

Now, on to ––

Part 2: Modifying The Shoulder Joint

yay

The broken plastic shoulder joint is made up of several fiddly pieces.

In this section, we will be dealing with what I'm going to call the Arm Part and the Fiddly Plastic Washer.

The arm part. This one looks particularly bad because I once tried to replace the crumbled plastic with yellow epoxy putty.

The Arm Part is probably attached to the rest of the arm in your case, and it contains the thing which is actually broken. As far as I can tell, where this ugly mushy break now sits, there once used to be a cone-shaped protrusion into which the shoulder-peg was inserted. This is, of course, now completely obliterated.

The Fiddly Plastic Washer. Note that it is different on each side. One side is concave (left), the other is flat (right).

The Fiddly Plastic Washer fits over the round depression in the Arm Part, with the concave side facing down:

Just like this. Note how it makes a little sort of cave.

In this section, I'm going to be filling up the little sort of cave made between the correctly placed Fiddly Plastic Washer and the Arm Part with hot glue from a glue gun. (You could also use epoxy putty, if you like putty.)

After the cave is filled, I'm going to drill a hole through the centre so that the new shoulder peg can be inserted.

Step 1:

FOR GLUE-USERS

Fill the empty space with hot glue.

This is pretty simple. Just squeeze the glue in gently until the hole is full. If you accidentally use too much glue, scrape/wipe off the excess until the surface is relatively flat (I used the big-arse sewing needle to smooth off my excess glue).

When you're done, it should look more or less like this:

FOR PUTTY-LOVERS

If you're using epoxy putty, knead it up as per the instructions, then press it onto the broken surface of the Arm Part in a small lump.

Next, push the Fiddly Plastic Washer (concave side down) firmly over the putty-lump. This will mould the putty into the desired cone-shape.

Smooth off the top surface and remove any excess putty from around the edges of the washer with a craft knife or other scrapey tool of your choice.

Step 2:

This one's nice and relaxing: set your work aside until the glue/putty has set.

If you used putty, read the instructions to see how long you should wait, then add a few more hours to be safe.

If you used hot glue, then you just have to wait for it to cool down to room temperature.

In my case, this took long enough to have tea and crumpets and purchase some new laboratory glassware online.

I don't know what all the "popular" kids are doing with their lab glassware
these days, but I like to culture primitive land plants in mine.

Step 3:

In the Arm Part, there is a screw which runs perpendicular to the direction of the vague hole where the shoulder peg once was.

Before you do anything else, remove that screw.

It may be covered by a plastic blocker, but you can easily prise that out, as described earlier in this article.

Note that the screw is quite small, and you will probably need a small Phillips Head Screwdriver to remove it.

Once you remove the screw, you will be able to separate the shoulder part (which contains the break) from the rest of the arm (which in my case is dismembered).

This will reveal a brand new narrow shaft in the broken part.

It shall henceforth be affectionately named "The Second Narrow Shaft".

I just love narrow shafts, don't you?

Step 4:

Using a pin vice and a drill bit the same width as the screw-shank (in my case this is 2mm), drill a hole straight down through the middle of the glue/putty filling the Fiddly Plastic Washer.

The screw shank (not including the thread) and the drill bit are the same width (2mm).

Friendly neighbourhood pin vice, with the 2mm bit installed.
You can buy these at hobby stores, some hardware stores, and on eBay.

The above photo is an attempt to show (more or less) the angle you should be drilling at. At the bottom of the plastic part is the glue/putty filled washer.

Please note that the screw is shown in place in this image -- this was a MISTAKE! TAKE THE SCREW OUT BEFORE DRILLING!

This photo (directly above) shows the hole drilled through the middle of the fiddly plastic washer. Mine is a little off-centre, but it still worked.

Once again, note that the arm is still attached in this photo. This was a mistake on my part. When you drill the hole, remove the arm first.

Drilling can be a little tedious, because the bit will most likely keep getting jammed with plastic debris. Every time this happens, just pull the bit out of the hole, clear it off and press on.

Keep going until the drill bit comes out through the wall of the "Second Narrow Shaft".

NOTE: Drilling half-way is no good. I've been there, and I can tell you that neither hot-glue nor epoxy putty is strong enough to hold the replacement peg (or the original peg) on its own. You must drill through the plastic as well. The glue/putty is just there to add a bit of much-needed extra friction.

AND THE SHOULDER IS DONE!

Part 3: Assembly

This is the last and thankfully easiest part of the whole saga.

First of all, make sure the tiny metal washer is fitted onto the modified screw like so:

And then insert the screw and washer into that annoying narrow shaft I talked about so much back in Part 1.

This again.

Now get your trusty normal-sized screwdriver and screw the modified-screw-cum-replacement-shoulder-peg into the hole you just drilled, reattaching the repaired shoulder to the torso.
Make it tight enough that you can work the previously-broken shoulder joint. The joint should feel reasonably firm, but not stiff. Remember, you want the figure's arm to move easily, but be firm enough that it doesn't fall down under its own weight.

Now some double-checking:
Looking through the drilled hole in the wall of "The Second Narrow Shaft", you should just be able to make out the tip of the replacement peg.

In most cases, these parts would still be attached to the torso.

If the peg protrudes into the shaft, take it out and sandpaper it until it doesn't.
If the peg is allowed to stick out into the shaft AT ALL, then the shoulder won't work properly. If you measured carefully earlier, then you probably won't have this issue.

Note that the less times you insert and remove the screw, the better, because each time you do, the joint becomes a little looser and more fragile.

Once the replacement peg is safely in place, all you have to do is slot the shoulder joint back together, do up that little screw you removed earlier et voila!

THE SHOULDER IS FINALLY REPAIRED!

Yaaaay! The dismembered torso is slightly less dismembered than before!

At last! At along last!

Okay, now that it's fixed, a note on maintenance:
The replacement peg is fairly likely to come loose with time and shoulder-use. For this reason I recommend treating the shoulder extra carefully. However, if the joint does come loose, tightening the peg with a screwdriver should fix it.

*dusts hands*
That was the most complicated article I have ever written!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask me down in the comments section!

As always,
Good luck with your repairs!

     Cheers!
          Sparkey

Writing to the Manufacturer: The ins and outs.

Yo. (Wait... does anybody even say that anymore?)

Toy collecting readers,
Sometimes a break is so horrible, so ugly, so mushy, so fiddly, that it is pretty much impossible to repair without acquiring... a new part!
In the following paragraphs I will be talking about the most pathetically pathetic figure repair method:
Writing to the manufacturer! :D

I've resorted to this twice and both times it ended well. I got new parts and my toys were repaired in the best possible way.
It is a little awkward and sometimes expensive, but it's also *Arny voice* The Ultimate repair method.

I shall relate my experiences with two Japanese figure companies (most of my figures are Japanese), so you can get a feel for what to expect.

By the way, most contact email addresses can be found buried deep in the bowels of the manufacturer's website. If the website is not in English or anything else you understand, try using Google's built-in translator function to make it easier to find your way around. This can be accessed by searching the page's address on Google.

Episode 1: KAITO's Ice-cream
Writing to GSC.
International contact: support@goodsmile.jp

Goodsmile Company is one of the high end figure manufacturers/distributors. They make Nendoroids and lovely scale figures, plus they seem to do a lot of work in tandem with other companies, such as Max Factory (the Figma company) and Phat!... they also have Amaaaaazing customer service. Seriously, they are the nicest company EVER.

So, this is the story...
It was Christmas eve last year and I was mucking around with Nendoroid KAITO.
You've probably seen him before. He's the popular ice-cream loving big brother of Hatsune Miku.
I had posed him with his ice-cream in his hand, but I wanted to put a plain hand on instead, so I went to take the ice-cream out of the hand part, but OH! It was stuck.

"Ha ha," thinks stupid me, "I'll just twist it out."

BUT, it was a hot day (in Australia, December is the first month of summer) and some interesting things had happened to the plastic... instead of twisting out of the hand part, it twisted OFF!

The ice-cream stick is stuck in the hand and the top is broken off!
KAITO is understandably upset. (By the way, this face is from Nendoroid Ika Musume.)

Here's a closeup:

*hysterical screaming*

It's mushy, it's ugly, it's visible and no matter what I do, that stick just isn't coming out. It seems to be somehow fused to the hand! D:

Because the plastic is warped and the paint is torn and broken, even if I glued the ice-cream back on, that fracture would be disgustingly obvious and oh-so-ugly.

... So I spent the next few weeks feeling sad about it, but after that I got up the courage to email GSC and beg them for help.

I mentioned before that they are the nicest company ever?

THEY ARE THE NICEST COMPANY EVER!

They apologised to me for the trouble KAITO had caused (I would have thought it was me causing them trouble!) and, after I showed them a photo of the broken part, they sent me a replacement hand and ice-cream for free. 

Wow!
Does it get any better?

They are not only nice, but they have the friendliest looking letters...!

I was quite lucky with this, though.

When I broke my KAITO, a new version had just been released; KAITO Cheerful ver. which comes with exactly the same ice-cream parts.

GSC say that they generally only stock spare parts for about a year after the figure (whatever that may be) is released, so if your figure is a few years old, you might not be so lucky.

Still, I suppose it's worth a try. The worst they can say is "Sorry we don't have any".

Episode 2: RAH Roy Mustang

Contacting Medicom Toy.

International contact: overseas@medicomtoy.co.jp

Yes. You heard, er, read right.

RAH Roy Mustang broke again. *facepalm* And this time it was really bad.

I was posing his arm when suddenly his shoulder felt loose.

"Oh crap," I thought.

Oh crap indeed. Roy's left arm had broken off at the shoulder. Due to age and stress, the plastic had crumbled and the metal peg which holds the shoulder joint together had pulled out completely. Worse, there wasn't anywhere to put it back into because the plastic had broken into tiny crumbs.

Look:

*more hysterical screaming*

After several unsuccessful attempts at fixing it (including hot glue, epoxy putty and a method which somehow ended up with Roy's shoulder still broken and two small holes accidentally drilled in my desk)...

...  I ratted out that international email address and called for help.

(Of course, it was easy to get his arm to stick back on, but the thing about action figures is that they have actual moving parts, so I wasn't happy with my attempts. At best the arm could be moved, but would slowly fall back down under its own weight.)

Medicom were similar in their approach to GSC. They asked for photos and then offered to help me.

They said that installing the new parts was difficult, and that, if I sent Roy to them, they would repair him and install the new parts for me for free!

Woot!

One catch, though. I had to pay the postage.

Well, seriously, that's more than fair. Roy has been discontinued for years and they still offered to fix him for me free of charge.

I did what they told me, they did what they promised, and it was all extremely cool!

They replaced a bunch of Roy's parts, including the broken shoulder, some parts they thought were at risk of breaking in the future and Roy's previously broken and glued neck.

How awesome is Medicom Toy? I am seriously impressed with the amount of responsibility they take for their figures.

I also asked them to send back the old broken parts so that I could experiment on them, and they obliged.

True, they did forget to include the stand when they sent him back, but after I emailed them, they sent me a new stand for free, so I'm happy.

The only, ONLY beef I have with the whole thing was that they sent Roy back to me via FedEx which cost me JP¥5500 (which at the time was the same as US$70). AHHHH! MY PRECIOUS MONEY! What's wrong with EMS? EMS is great! I love EMS! (and money!)

But Roy is, like, the best figure ever so I'm okay with the costs.

Here's a shot of Roy now (and KAITO)...

Roy demonstrates that his left arm is now fixed.
KAITO is on an ice-cream induced high.

I have only tried this with two companies, but doubtless there are other toy companies out there who would be just as good. It's always worth sending an email, even if they do end up saying no.

That's not to say you should heckle them about every little thing that goes wrong, though. I would always advocate doing your best to fix the problem by yourself first!

It's guaranteed to be cheap and it's pretty satisfying too! ;D

Just note:

When I contacted both of these companies, I wasn't all like,

you a**wipe My damn figure broke an sh*t you suk fix it or you totaly gon to hell yellow moneky a**hols,,1

   ... OK, so it's unlikely that a person with grammar liek dis would know an ugly 1940's style racist slur, but I've seen everything else in that 'sentence' repeated over and over by a lot of people who make themselves look like idiots.

I'm guessing that most toy collectors aren't like that (come on, we're a good breed), but I'm often surprised by people's lack of tact~~

Rule No.1 of wanting someone to help you with something: Don't be an arse.

In fact, be as respectful as possible. Nobody has any obligation to help any of us. They just do it because they're awesome! :D

I sent both messages asking for advice on how I could fix the figure myself, because I wasn't really expecting the kind of service I got.

With KAITO, I asked how I could remove the ice-cream from the hand or if I could purchase a replacement. With Roy, I wanted to know whether parts from a Medicom RAH Naked2 figure could be used to replace the broken shoulder.

I also began both emails by complimenting the figures of the respective companies and saying how beautiful they are, how much I love collecting them and expressing my dismay that I was unable to repair them myself. This is of course, an effective suck up the truth.

No, really. It is the truth and it doesn't hurt to say the nice things you think about people ^__^

Honestly, I don't know if this really makes a difference at the end of the day, but it certainly can't hurt. At one point I actually had a bit of a conversation with the chatty GSC staff member, and if I had sent an email with a negative tone to start with, it would have been a much less pleasant experience.

Well, I guess that's my stock of information on this topic exhausted, so as always, Good Luck!
Cheers!
Sparkey.

Fixing the Central Torso Joint of a 12 Inch action Figure

Hello, all!
Gees, it's been ages since I posted here!
But that is for the simple reason that I have miraculously not broken any of my figures for that entire time (not even Roy)!
... until a couple of weeks ago...

I was playing around with RAH Captain Harlock (the more recent version, not the super old one) when suddenly something went "crack". It's the kind of sound you never want to hear any kind of action figure making, let alone your pricey discontinued 12-incher.
Captain Harlock is now fixed, but I spent, like, an hour getting him into a really cool pose (you know how it is) so for the duration of this blog, I will be using a different model.
Meet RAH Ginko.
He looks a bit apathetic, but he's actually a really helpful chap, and today he's kindly agreed to be an example RAH body for us.

Although the captain didn't seem visibly broken at first, as I continued trying to pose him, the joint in the middle of his torso became mysteriously limp, meaning he was unable to stand straight and, on further inspection, his entire top half could now be removed from his legs (which really isn't normal).

The problem joint, circled in blue.

A normal, upright pose.

When broken, Captain Harlock could
only slump forward like this.

One of the few photos I took during the
captain's operation.

Ouch.
Now, RAHs are complicated things, and I have to admit that what actually broke is still a mystery to me. I couldn't see any obvious breaks, and if anything fell out without me noticing, it must have been practically microscopic, because I searched all around the floor afterwards and I couldn't find anything.
Still, based on a theory I developed after several blunders, I managed to fix the cap'n.
So, the first thing I did after I broke Harlock was take him apart to see if that would shed any light on the matter.
First thing's first, the screws needed to come out.
RAH screws are nicely hidden under little round bits of plastic, but these can (usually) be easily removed with a pointy thing like a very small screwdriver or a knife.

Observe the five covered screws in Ginko's back.

I decided to undo the upper torso part first, since that was where I thought the break had occurred, but after fiddling around with several confusing pieces I realised that, in fact, it was the lower torso which had broken (the tipoff was when I realised that the body was no longer connected at the waist).
I then went to unscrew the screws in the lower torso, but Medicom has for no apparent reason filled the screw-heads in with some sort of paste which is extremely hard and resistant to several very good solvents, so I couldn't take apart the lower torso and had to peer in the hole at the bottom of it instead.
What I saw was a... spring.
A spring?
It seems to be part of a suspension system which gives RAHs their solid feeling whilst also having that awesomely flexible mid-torso joint... I think.
To explain better, here is a diagram of what roughly I think is inside the lower torso of a RAH body, based on what I could see:

The yellow thing at the top is part of the mid-torso joint.
It runs along tracks in the upper-torso part, allowing the torso to bend
back and forth. The yellow thing is held down by the spring (green),
which is, in turn, held down by the central peg attached to the legs (black).
The red thing can move up and down in the central shaft (blue). When the spring
is not held down, the red thing can move more freely, the yellow thing becomes
lax, and the torso becomes loose and slumps forward.
I hope you could follow that... it's hurting my brain trying to think back.
The grey blob is where I couldn't see. Sorry for the crappy drawing.

The spring seems to regulate the stiffness of the central torso joint.
The tension on the spring, in turn, is regulated by the vertical position of the sticky-outy bit on the central peg (black) within the spring coils.
When the tension on the spring is wrong, the figure slumps.
I think it is the theoretically existent sticky-outy bit which broke off, because there was no such thing visible by the time I took Captain Harlock apart and such a thing would be needed to make sense of the mechanism I could see inside the lower torso.
It would also have to be extremely small, which could explain why I couldn't find anything which could have broken.

A closeup of the broken peg (and the top of the captain's trousers);
if you look carefully, there's a smudgy area on the front of the peg
where something could have broken off.
Click on the image to enlarge it.

So to fix it: I drilled a hole into the central peg on the smudge and pushed a tiny itty bitty short piece of wire into the hole, making a new sticky-outy bit.

I drilled the hole using a pin vice, which
I finally got around to buying.
Use a drill bit the same width as your wire,
or as close as possible.
The wire I use has a 1.25mm diameter.

I then put the torso on backwards (you have to put it on backwards because that's the only place there's a gap for the sticky-outy thing to fit through) and turned it around fully several times as if I was screwing on the lid of a jar. Something made a satisfying noise and suddenly, miraculously, Captain Harlock was back to normal.
I didn't even glue the bit of wire in, because I was just testing a theory, but once fixed, he didn't want to come apart again, so I just left him that way. (That's why there are no photos of the fixed part or the underneath of the torso.)
Anyway, so yeah. Captain Harlock is fixed and I hope that made some kind of sense and wasn't too confusing. Even I am still a little confused.
If you have the same problem as I had and something here doesn't make sense, please feel free to email me for clarification: sparkeydavis@yahoo.com

well! My post is at an end!
As always, 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.