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Thread
: Discussion
Retro Figure (Vietnam Mold) Swaps and Breakdowns
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07-03-2021, 11:17 AM
Zap Rowsdower
A Makeupless Clown
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Ohio
Posts: 5,271
So here is a Stalker after the waist was cracked open and he's just placed back together (no glue):
As you can see, the hip piece has deformed slightly. The front and back have arched out further than they used to and they are now slightly proud of the lower torso section. This was my first "crack" at it (rimshot!) so with practice it might be possible to avoid this deformation. Still, if I squeeze the waist section back together, the cracks on the sides disappear completely. Gluing and clamping would eliminate those side cracks without a doubt, so it's really just a small bit of arching at the front and rear that you're left with to show that you've ever opened up the waist.
Here it what we have after the cracking is done:
It's all pretty familiar stuff in there. The t-bar is very similar to other modern-era Joes in basic form. I didn't happen to have a spare loose metal t-bar or I would have tried a swap, but my gut tells me you could make one work really, really easily. Probably not native compatibility, but I would guess worst-case, you have to dremel out some material from the mushroom plug of the lower torso to make room for the top end of a metal t-bar then you can probably just drop one in after that. If anyone tries that at home, please share your attempt.
The top end of this t-bar is a square that is visible from above in an un-cracked waist:
Note the absence in this shot:
And here you can see the t-bar a bit better, free from other parts blocking your view:
So, process-wise, I first thought some snap ring pliers would make quick and insanely easy work of this since the hole was so large, but after looking a bit closer I realized that the entire top surface is just a relatively thin and somewhat flimsy layer. It's really just a rim of material. You can really see this once you have it open:
So I resorted to a bench vise (my usual favorite) and a bit of cardboard for surface protection (couldn't find my shop rag). I only put the waistband part in the jaws of the vise and squeezed it so I wouldn't crunch the t-bar. The telltale cracking sound never actually happened with this waist piece, so you're probably going to have to make sure you can view the top end of the waist to see when it gives. This cracking process left some pretty nasty stress marks on the waist piece which was unpleasant to see but from previous experience I have found that a boiling water bath can reduce stress marks. I did that here (microwaved water until thoroughly boiling, then dropped the waist pieces in for about 45 seconds and scooped them out with a fork). This worked really, really well on this waist piece. The stress marks are totally gone from what I can see. It's possible that I could undo some of the front/back arching with another boiling water bath, but I haven't tried. So far I'm happy enough with where things ended up.
The other bright news (for me at least) is that I think I can make a BFS torso adapter to put BFS torsos onto these figures and I will only have to make an actual
torso
adapter without having to mess with recreating the t-bar. If I can come up with a way to make the adapter snap into place I can totally avoid the need to even crack the waists for that. But that's a challenge I'm not sure I can meet with my available materials. Time will tell.
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