Again, credit here goes to
GrownNerd - I once again followed his
write-up for his shoulder fix
for ML's with the shoulder hinge articulation. To summarize the
technique, you cut out the shoulder hinge, enlarge the socket for the
shoulder ball, fill with epoxy putty, and jam in the arm, twisting once
in a while before the compound cures.
One thing I've done after enlarging the sockets is to fill the chest
cavity partways with Super Sculpey, almost to the point where the
shoulder peg is touching it when the arm is inserted. I don't
bother heating it to
cure it - it's just filler so I have an easier time estimating how much
Oatey's I need to mix.
With the shoulders fixed, I decided to modify some more of the
figure. First I lengthened his neck - the neck on the original
figure is a bit short. I first enlarged the socket for the neck
peg in the head, so the peg could be easily inserted and removed.
I then added a layer of Oatey's to the bottom of the head and attached
it to the figure's neck.
After a day, I cleaned up the Oateys using a mini-dremel - a nail
filing tool that you can buy at a drug store for about $10. Less
powerful than a dremel, this tool allowed me to smooth out the Oateys
with more control and fewer dremel scars on the plastic I didn't want
to hit. After using the mini-dremel, I added a layer of Super
Sculpey to smooth it out.
I also added some hair and extended the mask lower on the nose. I
felt these minor changes would get the figure closer to how I wanted
him to look, back in the Uncanny X-Men days after Jean Grey had died
(for the first time).
I matched the paint with Delta Ceramcoat Barn Red - ok, my wife matched
it, since I have a very poor eye for color. It runs just a tiny
bit darker than the factory red, but it's close enough for me.
The hair was painted with a base coat of brown, followed up with a
heavy dry brush of yellow and a lighter one of white. I
considered going completely comic accurate by painting the gloves and
boots yellow, but I decided I like the way it looks now.
