Safely Removing Paint Blemishes from Bare Plastic

G'day, Readers!
(Do I actually have "readers"?)

I seem to have been writing on this blog a lot recently, but I'm not quite done yet.

This time, I will be addressing a truly fearsome, yet common blemish: THE PAINT BLEED.

You know the one; Your lovely new figure is all shiny and perfect except for that single spot where the paint from one part has been, for no obvious reason, liberally applied to the part next to it as well. 

If the erroneous colour lies on top of another painted surface then the perfect solution is just to blot over it with a dab of (you guessed it) more paint.
... but what if the splodge is on a bit of unpainted plastic?

In figures, skin (along with occasional other parts) is usually made from unpainted plastic, sometimes with a light gradient applied to it. Painting over blemishes on these bare plastic areas doesn't really end up looking all that nice, because, let's face it, the textures just don't match up.

So what do you do if you've got a figure where paint has bled onto bare plastic?

Surprisingly, I'm going to tell you in an extremely longwinded manner.

As in my last post, my subject today will be one of the Lucky Star Nendoroid Petits! This time, it's Tsukasa Hiiragi B!
Have a look:

Isn't she cute? I love all the colours in this set! ^__^

If you can't see any paint bleeds, that's probably because I took the picture after I had already fixed it... but if I had taken the picture before fixing the bleed you probably wouldn't have seen it anyway.

Luckily, none of my figures are suffering from any major bleeds or smudges at the moment, but I still wanted to write about this method, so I will be doing it on an itty bitty teeny weeny little bleed which I noticed on Tsukasa's hand.

Here it is:

The orange paint from the chocolate pastry thing she's
about to chow down on has bled onto her hand slightly.

This is an infinitesimal bleed.

It's about 1mm across – barely visible – and I usually wouldn't have bothered to fix something this small, but I wanted to write this vexatious post it was surprisingly eye-catching...

This method is just as applicable to larger blemishes, however.

So... The tools for this job: 

From left to right: A big needle, a regular needle,
super fine sandpaper. (It is so fine)

Yup. Pretty sophisticated machinery, this. Not like, some stuff I found lying around in my house or anything...

I mentioned in a previous post that you should not use regular sandpaper on figures and I stand by it. Regular sandpaper will make your figures look like they've been attacked by a platoon of small, angry porcupines, and, in many cases, this is not desirable.

"Super fine" or "polishing" sandpaper is usually safe. You could also use very fine files or other dooverlackeys which serve the same purpose, if that's how you roll. I myself have several miscellaneous sanding tools in my collection. You can usually buy them at hobby stores.

The sandpaper I will be using in this job is a sort of rough sponge which was given to me by a friend who collects ball jointed dolls (that's right, kiddo. When you get too far into this sort of hobby that's the kind of creepy, wacked-out thing you do... swapping sandpaper squares like hippie freaks...). I included it in the picture so you can get an idea of just how "fine" it really is. As you can see, it barely looks rough at all... YES. IT'S THAT FINE. (So very very fine.)

It even says "super fine" on the back!
(Just in case you'd forgotten that it's fine...)

Anyway,

I used the two needles to remove most of the excess paint.

It would have been better if I could've used the large needle by itself because, as needles go, it's fairly blunt and doesn't scratch figures very easily. Sadly, it just wasn't breaking up the paint, so I swapped to the smaller needle to scratch up the surface of the blemish (taking care not to go though the paint to the figure underneath). I then chipped off the bulk of the scratched paint with the large needle.

At this point, I would usually show a blurry picture of my purple hands, but I think in this case it would be more constructive to actually explain to you how to use the needle;

1. Hold it as you would hold a pencil (or a scalpel, if you fancy yourself as the surgeon-y type). You'll have maximum control this way.
2. Always start gently, applying minimal pressure, making very light scratches. Gradually increase the pressure until the paint starts breaking up. You don't need to go any harder than this. If you plough in at full speed, you'll probably just scratch your figure.
3. Be patient! Proceed slowly and carefully. It takes a bit of zen to remove paint cleanly.
4. If it's just not working, try a different sized needle.

This may be a good time to mention that the reason I am painstakingly using a needle to remove the paint instead of just sanding the whole lot off is because I want to make a nice sharp edge where Tsukasa's hand meets the pastry (I assume it's a pastry).
If I had a splodge in the middle of her face, away from other painted parts, I would probably get it off with sandpaper alone (much faster and easier), but it's hard to make clean edges that way.

If you have a large bleed, you may want to try removing the paint around the edge with a needle and then gently sanding the rest off with fine sandpaper.

In my case, though, the area is so small that the whole thing is edge.

Here's what it looks like after the needle treatment (that sounds so scary – I just noticed):

Most of the erroneous paint has been removed.

You can probably see that there's still a little bit of paint left.

Most of this can be sanded off.

Although the super fine sandpaper won't scratch the plastic, I still use it gently and with caution. I don't want to grind away actual plastic from Tsukasa's hand, and I also don't want to remove any of the paint from other parts of the figure (sandpaper is a gun at removing paint).

After sanding, the former blemish looks like this:

In the picture it doesn't look much better than before sanding, but
in person it's a noticeable improvement.

And... we're done!

Now Tsukasa is free to enjoy her pastry (or whatever it is) in peace!

Om nom nom!

Afterthoughts;
I use needles for this sort of job, but really you could use any small, sharp object. Triangular-bladed craft knives, pins, thumb tacks and extremely sharp cactus spines are all suitable candidates.
Just remember, you're trying to remove the paint without damaging the plastic underneath, so be gentle.

Well, that's all from me for the moment!

As per usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask! I usually reply within a day or so.

Good luck with your repairs!

     Cheers!
          Sparkey

Using Heat to Fix Warped Parts

Hello, everybody!
Now for another of my erratically timed and possibly helpful posts...

Today I will be looking at a problem exhibited by Nendoroid Petit Izumi Konata:

She's super cute!!!! ^__^ (I just got her.)

There's one little thing which bugs me, though... her ahoge (the bit of hair on top of her head) looks a bit too floppy.

The picture on the box has it sticking up a bit more, but on my figure it's flopped down so it's touching her head. Have a goosey:

The picture on the box – It's so cute!!!! ^__^ (Yeah, the novelty hasn't worn off yet...)

Hmmm. It kind of lacks impact. (But her face is so cute!!! ^__^ )

This is a really common problem, and sometimes it's much more serious.

Slight warping of parts is really common on new figures, even from the best of manufacturers. A lot of the time, the warping is unnoticeable, but sometimes it messes up the visual impact of the figure (as in this case) or, worse, it causes parts to be incapable of fitting together. I have this problem sometimes, particularly with Figma accessories – they're so small that even a couple of millimetres of bending means they just don't fit together at all! (Oh no!)

Another common issue (this one shows up most with Nendoroid Petit stands in my experience) is when a peg or ball joint is just too big for the hole it's meant to fit into!

Yet another issue is when parts are so stiff that you're afraid they might break when trying to put them together. For example, if a Figma's changeable hands are very hard to swap.

Luckily these problems can all be fixed with one simple method!

(Now for the unnecessary explanation, in case you're interested... if not, skip to the next section...) 

Nendoroids, Figmas and most other figures (and most toys in general) are primarily made from PVC, which is a thermoplastic – that just means it melts when you heat it up. If you heat PVC up to about 120ºC, it turns into a nasty burny liquid which sticks onto your skin and burns the shit out of you. It is this sticky lava of death hot liquid which is injected into moulds to make figures and toys.

I won't be melting Konata's ahoge until it becomes a liquid today (very messy), but I will be heating it.

PVC becomes soft and pliable long before it melts... so I'm going to warm up the plastic and reshape the ahoge so that it looks more like the pic on the box.

This method is great for reshaping slightly bent parts or pieces that don't fit together properly!

You do it like this:

1. Heat up the part a little bit with a WARM hairdryer. Remember, we don't want to melt our figures (unless you want to make them into some kind of halloween-themed diorama) so don't make it super hot. The part should feel nice and warm to touch.

Keep your hand in the air stream from the hairdryer when heating figures.
When you feel like the dryer is making your hand a bit too warm, switch it off.

You'd be amazed how fast little figure parts can heat up. I only need to use the hairdryer for a few seconds.

If you don't have a hairdryer, you can put the part in a basin of warm water for a couple of minutes.

Swapping Figma hands / Inserting a peg which is a little too large for its socket:
In these cases, gently heat the arm/socket but not the hand/peg itself. Do this by the method described above. Then just push the peg into the socket as normal. It should be much easier when the plastic is warm.
HYBRID LOVERS TAKE HEED! This method changes the shape of the socket (permanently in most cases) to fit the peg you are pushing into it. If you are hybridising parts from different figures by this method, be aware that the original peg that the socket was designed for may be loose afterwards.

Now, back to reshaping warped parts...

2. While the plastic is warm, bend it into the position/shape you want.

How hard this is will depend on what the part is. For Konata's super cute ahoge (So cute!!! ^__^ ), I could do it with gentle pressure of my thumb and forefinger, but for bigger parts you may need to use both hands. It depends a lot on the exact plastic used and the size of the part.

In general, I only do this with fairly small parts.

Remember to be careful! Don't force parts! If the plastic won't bend, then it may need to be heated more.

If it's uncomfortably hot to touch and it still won't bend (you shouldn't even make it that hot in the first place), chances are the part is too big or is not made of thermoplastic. In this case, you should stop before you damage your figure!

3. Hold the reshaped part in the new position until the plastic cools down again. If you're feeling impatient, you can run the part under cold water to cool it down faster, but PVC cools down fairly quickly by itself.

Why do my hands always look purple in photographs??? >:@

4. ....... just kidding. There is no step four.

The Ahoge is Fixed!

So cuuuuuuutteeeee!!!!!! ^__^

Just note: Sometimes parts like this bend back a little bit after cooling. If this happens, you may want to repeat the process of heating and reshaping 2–3 times, allowing the plastic to cool in between.

Though of course, sometimes near enough's good enough.

Anyway...

This is a broad method and the principles can be applied to many different problems!

When I bought my Figma Nanoha, the wing things on her feet (sorry, I haven't actually seen the anime, so I don't know the names of any of the things... or if the things even have names), didn't fit on at all. A little heat applied to the attachment parts and a bit of bending, however, and Nanoha flies again!

The background is a calendar of "Scenic New Zealand" which I bought cheap in March one year.
Cheap old calendars make great (and cheap! Did I mention cheap?) backdrops for figure photos.
... by the way, when I took the photo, Nanoha was hanging from a Figma stand which I blu-tacked
to the top of my desk, but I photoshopped it out. You can tell I had fun today, can't you?

Anyway, that brings this post to a close!

Happy Repairing!

Best of luck!

     Cheers!

          Sparkey

Misc. Figma Care – If a Figure Seems Disappointing

To my long un-updated blog,

This will be a landmark post, ladies and gentlemen!

That's right.

I am finally writing an article in which my subject will be A FIGMA! :O

Today I will be sprucing up Figma Araragi Koyomi, because he's a bit unappealing, and has been ever since I bought him.

Here he is:

Okay, so there are a couple of things you might notice right away.

Araragi had three main problems and because of them I had never really liked him, but it's really not his fault and all he ever needed was a bit of TLC.

Since I fixed these minor issues I've started to really like him! He's actually really cool!

So... The Actual Problems:

1. His paintwork is really dull and unappealing.

It looked cool on the prototype, but my figure looks kind of flat (it's a bit hard to tell from the picture, but he was really boring compared to my other Figmas).

2. He has a smear of ugly glue on the front of his shirt. :(

3. There's a slight chance that you've picked up on this already, but his arm keeps falling off.

The Actual Solutions To The Actual Problems:

1. The Dull Paintwork.

Many Figmas seem to suffer from a phenomenon I'm going to call "Factory Dust". It's not very noticeable, but they have it straight out of the box and it really dulls the paint, especially dark colours.

I think it's probably caused by a coating of fine dust or powder, but luckily, it's still easy to get rid of.

Just rinse the figure under running water. No soap required.

That's it. No tricks (apart from keeping the plug in so that small parts don't go down the drain if they accidentally fall off). Plain, cold, running water straight from the tap. 

It works on Nendoroids too, and doubtless many other types of figures which just don't seem as bright as they should. 

If your new figure looks a little dull, try giving it a cold bath!

(Somehow it took me about nine months to think of this...)

Araragi's colouring came up really nicely after cleaning. It's actually really surprising how much better he looks. I didn't realise he had that much "Factory Dust" on him!

    .... I have no idea what the stuff actually is, though... I'm guessing it's something to do with the packaging process, but I will probably never know.

An effective yet impractical method of washing figures.

OK, next!

2. The Ugly Smear of Glue.

First up, a photo:

When I got Araragi, there was more glue on his
shirt than shown here – I only remembered to take
 a picture half way through removing it.

Damn! So ugly!

Like so many of its smudgy conspecifics, this blemish is small but super visible and super annoying! (... it may even be super glue........... heh.)

I don't know how many figures come out of their shiny new boxes with horrible glue smears on them, but I figured I'd write this up in case anybody else is having this kind of problem.

To remove the ugly smear, I used a really big sewing needle to chip away at the glue:

An embroidery needle? It's fairly sharp but it's huge – nearly 10cm (4") long!

Very gently chip away at the glue, taking care not to damage the plastic underneath. In my case the glue was on one of the "flexible material" (AKA rubbery) parts of the Figma which meant it came off quite smoothly.

I say the glue came off smoothly, but there were still a few little bits left over which wouldn't come off with the needle.

Because I am a very obsessional person, I carefully filed these off with a fine grade emery board type file. It's meant for making PVC jewellery and I think it's officially a "polishing" file.

Seriously, some of these files are so fine that you can file the surface off paint without scraping through to whatever's underneath. It's fishsticking amazing!

I highly recommend getting some because they're also great for removing paint smudges (and they're cheap. I got a pack of three for ≈$6.00).

    ~ yeah, you know I didn't really mean "fishsticking".

An equally good alternative to a file would be fine grade polishing paper (like sandpaper but
super fine. Regular sandpaper isn't much good for figures because it leaves noticeable scratches).
On a side note, Araragi's colouring has heaps more impact now that he's clean!

Right. The glue is all fixed! On to the next problem...

3. His arm keeps falling off.

Yes... um... it does keep falling off.

Ever since I got him, it's been fairly loose. It stays on okay most of the time, but when I try to pose him it pops off with very little provocation. The socket in his shoulder just seems a bit too shallow.

To be honest, I haven't managed to fix it yet. I tried a few things and none of them worked, but if I manage to repair this loose joint, I'll write a post about it.

For now, Araragi's arm will have to stay loose, but he still looks WAY better than he did when I got him!

... and his arm isn't too bad anyway...

             ... at least, Mayoi doesn't think so.

^___^

Anyway, I hope this post was at least a little bit helpful, even if I didn't end up fixing Araragi's arm!

As always, best of luck with your figures!

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.

Small Paint Touch-ups ~made INVISIBLE!

Hello!

So, today I will be popping in briefly to my poor neglected blog to talk about minor paint touch-ups.

It happens so often...

You have a lovely shiny new figure. It's pristine and beautiful right out of its box... then, in an instant, lost in your excitement, your hand slips; that momentary, involuntary movement which sends your new treasure flying. For a few moments, your heart is in your mouth as the figure falls to the floor (or worse, onto the sharp edge of one of those Apple ergonomic keyboards)... Thunk. The sound rings coldly in your ears.

Next is the horrible sinking sensation as you realise that beautiful new shiny paint is chipped. The chip is small, but horribly obvious. You know the shining white fleck of raw plastic will catch your eye every time you look at your figure and the regret will live on inside you forever! You must do something!

BUT WHAT? (DUN DUN DUNNNNN!)

Well, you have two fairly obvious options. You could put the chipped figure on the shelf and feel sad, or, you could paint over the blemish and be happy.

Today I will be explaining the unthreatening task of covering up the all-too-common paint chip.

Meet Chogokin Aegis, who is beautiful:

Some people claim that Chogokin Aegis has trouble standing on her own but they are obviously just naysayers who lack creativity. She can stand just fine! ... you only need to adjust her center of gravity forward a little...

So anyway, Aegis had a relatively small blemish on the bow around her neck. I think she came out of the box with it.
Here it is, in all its shining glory:

Okay, so it's not THAT bad, but it's annoying. (Besides, I like painting.)

So... tools.
I will be using the following things:

A tiny paintbrush.
Paint.

I know it's a lot to remember, but try to stay focussed.

Now... This is the part where I explain with unnecessary detail tricky part.
It's time to choose the right colour.
The paint I use for this kind of thing is good old cheap and readily available acrylic. It doesn't matter what grade. Student or artist both seem to be fine.
If you want to do touch-ups, I suggest keeping a good range of colours so that mixing the right shade is easy.

Now, I need red. You'd think red is red, right? No. Wrong.
You see, paint manufacturers are not normal people, and to them "red" is anything which even kind of vaguely resembles what we, in the real world, would term "red". (Like "indian red"? Not even close. Sorry guys. It's brown no matter which way you look at it.)
I, personally, have three shades of "red" on hand for just this reason. Usually, at least one of them matches or can be mixed to a colour which will match:

From left to right (note that label colours are often wildly inaccurate and names vary a lot):
"Cool Red": this is a pinkish colour similar to the magenta used in CMYK printing and is good for making purple but not orange. When added to yellow it makes a colour I like to call "poo", but purples made with this shade have a lovely depth and clarity. Added to a spot of white it makes "hot pink".
"Warm Red / Brilliant Red": This is a bright, slightly orangey colour and cannot be used to make purple, but it does a very nice orange.
"Red": Miraculously, this artist's paint is actually a good medium red which can be mixed to purple or orange, though it doesn't make as good a purple as "cool red". I searched for many years to find this colour.

Unfortunately "cool red" and "warm red" seem to be the most common in shops, but if you keep both of them in stock you should be able to manage. Who knows? Maybe mixing them together will make a proper red (though for some reason I never felt like trying that...)

Please note that no other primary colours are this stupid.

So, to choose the right shade I opened the tubes and compared the colour of the actual paint inside with Aegis' ribbon and luckily the "red" on the right was very close, so I didn't have to mix colours.

Mixing colours really isn't that big of a deal if you have to do it. Just keep fiddling around with small amounts of paint until it's right.

On to the actual painting:
It's a very small area which I'm painting. Just get a tiny bit of paint on the end of your brush and gently paint over the blemish.
If the paint is a bit lumpy, wipe your brush and use it to smooth over the freshly painted surface (before it dries!) until it's nice and even, removing excess paint if necessary.

You don't need much. I dipped my brush once for this job.
This picture shows approximately how much paint I used.
(And how tiny the brush is!)

If the area to be painted was a bit larger, I might consider thinning the paint with a bit of ethanol or metholated spirits to make it spread more evenly (no, vodka probably isn't good enough). I wouldn't recommend thinning with water because it tends to stop the paint from sticking to the plastic.
When thinning, just add a teeny drop of ethanol/metho to your palate (which in my case is the lid of an old ice-cream tub – classy!) and thin the paint little by little, as you go – invariably some sections will want thicker paint than others.

Sometimes, the colour isn't as much of an exact match as you expected it to be! \(O.O)/
If this happens, don't panic. (o.o)
The human brain seems to be trained to notice sharp edges, so, using a very thin layer of paint, make a gradient (see below) over the edge of the touchup. This will make it extremely hard to notice the colour difference. Sometimes you have to paint quite far to make it work, but that's no problem.

If you really stuffed it up, then quickly wash your brush and then use the wet (but not dripping) brush to loosen the paint (this must be done before it dries), then dab off the mushy paint with a tissue.
I have done this plenty of times and I've never wrecked a figure.

If worst comes to worst, you can just paint over your touch-up once it's dry. (I end up doing that pretty often, actually...)

And... We're done!
I always write a lot, but once you actually get down to it, the job only takes about 40 seconds.

Aegis' Fixed Ribbon!
The "red" paint didn't quite match the original colour, so I made a gradient.
Can you see it? It even extends onto the left side of the bow at the top.
(I can't see it.)

More info on gradients:
Introducing Real Action Heroes Baoh Renewal ver!
Doesn't he have a pretty face?

These are not before and after shots. Unfortunately I forgot to take a before shot >__<
These pictures just show how he looks in different light. Left: Under a horrible desk lamp. Right: With a flash.

Can you see where I painted? It's more obvious in the picture on the left.
When I got Baoh, he had a little bit of a mark on his nose and I also didn't fancy how dark the lines/cracks around his mouth were.
That's totally personal taste, so I suppose you can consider this a mod and not a touch-up, but I thought those lines looked a bit messy and not true to the manga, so I PAINTED OVER THEM!
Naughty me. He was a collectable. Still, I love disgusting 1980's manga so I doubt I'll ever part with him.

I made a colour I like to call Baoh Blue by mixing the cool red from earlier with a colour called "cobalt".

I have included Baoh in this post because he shows a visible example of a home-made gradient.
You can see in the image on the left that there is a slight discrepancy between the colour of the middle of Baoh's face and the colour between the black lines on his cheeks.
This is because I couldn't get the colour exactly right (and I like the variety anyway) and I also couldn't extend my invisible blendy magic gradient as far as I would have liked without painting out details... but the point is, do you see how the new colour gets thinner and thinner until it's hard to see it? There's no "edge".
This is achieved by using less and less paint the further out you go.
That's what you have to try and do if you want your touch-ups to be relatively invisible.
Try it on a scrap of plastic like an ice-cream tub lid. It's not as hard as you think!

Happy Painting!
Cheers!
Sparkey

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.