Fixed! Broken Black Series Boba Fett elbow

[mmhnc]

Ok I picked up this black series Boba Fett with his right arm broken at the elbow. I want to repair him so he still had articulation. I was thinking of drilling out the post that is in his upper arm and epoxying in a metal pin but I can't stop the pin that is in his upper arm from spinning. Has anyone taken one of these guys apart? I wondered if it would be easier to take the arm off and get the pin out from the inside but I didn't want to brake anything else. Any help here would be appreciated.

 

[mmhnc]

Re: Help! Broken Black Series Boba Fett

Bump, going to work on this again tonight so any help would be appreciated.

 

[mmhnc]

Re: Help! Broken Black Series Boba Fett

Ok so by using a coned Dremel bit and a small drill bit I was able to remove the existing broken pin. I then made a replacement pin using a left over aluminum rivet stem. (I have no idea what the left over part of a rivet is called so we are going with stem). I then epoxied the pin into the lower arm. It is taped in place and drying right now so I will see how well it worked tomorrow. As a note, in the picture Fett is missing his head, I removed it to prevent any damage while I was dremeling out the pin.

 

[CB2001]

Re: Help! Broken Black Series Boba Fett

I had that happen to me with a BSG action figure. I used some water heated up in the microwave to often the plastic, and removed the broken peg from the socket with a pair of pliers. After that, I used Gorilla Glue to glue the peg back into place, waited a day to make sure it set and then reattached the arm.

 

[mmhnc]

Re: Help! Broken Black Series Boba Fett

Thanks for the tip, the metal pin and epoxy didn't work. I used a piece of styrene rod and ca glue and it held but the rod cracked exactly like the original pin. I have a couple of more materials I can try when I figure it out I will post a step by step for anyone else who has this problem.

 

[CB2001]

Re: Help! Broken Black Series Boba Fett

Thanks for the tip, the metal pin and epoxy didn't work. I used a piece of styrene rod and ca glue and it held but the rod cracked exactly like the original pin. I have a couple of more materials I can try when I figure it out I will post a step by step for anyone else who has this problem.

Well, you could try to find a screw that's a similar size to the peg, drill a little bit of a hole in the part where the peg was, and then screw the screw into place and use regular superglue to make sure the screw doesn't come out of the piece. And then, warm up the plastic and then pop it back into place. Of course, I recommend this only as a last resort if anything else doesn't work.

 

[mmhnc]

Re: Help! Broken Black Series Boba Fett

So I made a new pin from polycarbonate and it held in place and was nice and strong but I glued it into the upper arms lower arm, this didn't allow for proper movment.

So I cleared it all out and made a pocket in the upper arm, at this point I realized I needed a pin with a head on it, I now understand what CB2001 was talking about with the crew and heating up the part to pop back in. At this point I attempted to turn down a piece of plastic on my drill with a file (I really need a lathe) but that didn't work, so I started to look around my basement for something with 2 diffrent diameters with the smaller one being the proper size for the lower arm.

What I found tone the perfect size was a spare Lego antenna.

I cliped the ball and the big end off

I then used some styrene and drilled a hole the size of the smaller diameter (actually made it just undersized so it would fit well) then added a tube on the inside to help stabilize the large diameter. Then glued the whole thing into the upper arm cavity, and trim to length.

 

[CB2001]

Re: Help! Broken Black Series Boba Fett

I'm glad that tip helped a little bit. It was actually a tip I picked up from the first issue of Wizard Magazine I ever picked up. They had a tutorial on how to make a custom Captain America figure, and they recommended in order to shave off any bits that you don't want, to microwave a coffee cup of water, set the figure in for about a few seconds, take it out and then carve, making it easy to cut through. In fact, nowadays, there's customizers that use this method to pop parts off (like a figure's head on a ball-joint). It's often referred to as "the boil and pop method"). XD

 

[mmhnc]

All done, I also just steamed his cape to get the creases out.