How to Snap an Action Figure Joint Back in

Action figures are cool, you can pose them whichever way you want, change the pose every once in a while, build great scenes for photo shooting sessions but... every once in a while a joint snaps and sadness ensues.

I'm sure that the subject has been tackled on MFC over a thousand times already but I know that techniques may vary from one figure surgeon to another so I thought I might as well share my own variant.
Apologies in advance if I write funny but I'm not a native English speaker :-p

Today I'll be working on

ITEM #56410

whose left shoulder joint unexpectedly snapped on her owner. Since I have some experience in that field, I agreed to fix it for her.

This is the figure out the mail with a broken peg on the left shoulder. It also came with her left Ogre Arm for later testing of the repair. The right arm is perfectly fine but was left at home for its own safety and for shipping optimization.
The broken peg had already been taken out of its slot when I got it so I won't elaborate on that step but you can see on the picture that it didn't go nicely. As a result my first step will be to work the surface of the peg with a scalpel and some light abrasives (240, 400 and 1000) so that it can be properly glued back to the joint.

I did not sand the peg perfectly smooth, having some irregularities will allow the glue to take root.
When the surface of the peg is ready I glue it back on its half of the joint ball.

If some of the glue seeps inside the joint and jams it, no sweat. I'll deal with it later.
Glue alone won't cut it, it poorly sticks to that plastic and is far too brittle to allow intense manipulation so I'm gonna run some steel into that peg to strengthen it. First I'm gonna drill a needle-wide sized hole through the peg along its axis and into the ball.

If you don't own a Dremel or equivalent, there also exist tiny hand drills that you could probably find for cheap.
I then take a sewing pin and cut it to the right length before coating it with glue and sticking it through the hole I just drilled.

Red pins are the absolute best, do not let anyone tell you otherwise!
The peg came off again while manipulating it but that can be expected and is no problem at all. I just peel off the old glue layer and glue it again.

At this step, what's most important is that the needle be properly glued inside the peg.
The reason why the peg came off is that the adherence of the glue on that kind of plastic is not the best. Although the needle will prevent the peg from breaking when tilting it, in case of pulling or twisting only the glue is holding it and that's not enough.
One solution to this is to drive a second length of needle into the peg but this time diagonally. That will serve as an anchor and absorb the forces in case of twisting and pulling.

Yup, this fugly little drawing actually explains the mechanics of the repair. Congrats if you can make it out ^^.
The repair is now almost complete, I put a bit more glue to fill some remaining gaps between the peg and the ball. If some of it jammed the joint I gently scratch it away with the tip of my scalpel or a needle until the joint is free again. Then I sand away any excess glue and the possible craters around where I drilled the holes.

If I wanted to go the extra mile, I could also repaint the broken area but in this case the rest of the arm hides it pretty well so it's not really necessary.
Well now that she's all fixed and I have this extra figure in my custody for a little while, might as well have some fun with it ^^

You've missed this arm, right?
And while I'm at it this also serves as a good stress test on the repair which is holding REALLY well.

The double needle technique really adds "Strength" to the repair *ba dum tss*

So there you have it, that was my joint fixing technique.
What do you think?
What's your technique?
See you in the comments.

How to Snap an Action Figure Joint Back in

Source: https://myfigurecollection.net/blog/30007

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