Custom Ball joints

[promethuem5]

Hi guys,

I am currently working on a crappy 1/44 Strike Gundam from Bandai to get back into the swing of things after being away. The set is the single most dissapointing figure I have ever bought. Almost all of the Gundam kits come with crazy articulation, but this one lacks hand, waist, elbow, and knee joints. I decided that if nothing else, I was going to add posability to the wrists. The kit comes with one piece arms, so the hand is already sculpted onto the arm, but is a bit larger that the grey soft plastic ball wristed ones most kits come with. Using my Dremel, i cut off the hands after assembling the two halfs of the arms. the two pieces of the hand, fingers and thumb, and back of hand armor plate then reseperated, not having any snap pegs. I hollowed out most of the platic in the hands, and removed the thumbs the trim down the profile of a pair of gray soft plastic hands i had lying around. I can now use some putty and buld up the larger hard plastic hand around the soft gray one, with the ball joint at the wrist and batter durability and holding accessories when ready.

I also hollowed out a round cavity in the arms at the wrists with a ball shaped Dremel tool. There is a peg and socket right at the wrist, so there is alot of plastic to make a cavity in. I the filled the cavity level with JB Quik Weld and inserted the ball of the gray plastic hands into it most of the way, and let dry. The quik weld dont make a real bond with the soft plastic, so when it is dry, you can pop the ball right out. I then trimmed the excess glue away, and had a perfectly functioning socket due to the slightly rubbery smooth finish of JB Weld. All I have to do now is finish rebuilding the hands and viola!

Ben

PS. Sorry for the crappy quality of the pics. I think you can get the idea tho....the wearther has been sucky where I live and these were the best I could do in poor lite. Also, I the model finished and can thro up a few pics of the finished assembly.

also, i think that excessive removal of the ball from the socket starts to deform the cavity, because one seems to be loosening up a tad....