Broken peg!

Toys got their secret life. You surely came home one day to find out some of your action figures had a brawl while you were out at work. Some well intentioned heroes threw your favorite abomination off the shelf. Any toy collector knows these things happen. Most of the times no one is hurt and you can simply rearrange them and make sure you don’t mix the good guys and the bad guys. But once in a while the worst happens. A peg in an articulation joint breaks.

The easy fix would be to superglue everything back in place but you might lose the poseability of the joint. Here’s how I improvised a quick repair good enough for display or photoshoot purpose.

There are some tools like an hand pin drill that can come handy in those situation, but I managed to do it with my good ol’ Bosch. All I needed was pliers, my drill, a tiny drill bit and a finishing nail. The nail must have the same diameter as the drill bit or a little larger and they need to have a smaller diameter than the peg.

Next steps were :

-Drill a hole (5mm deep approx.) in one of the broken peg part.

-Une the pliers to cut a 10mm length of finishing nail (again this ain’t no rocket science).

-Insert the mini rod in the hole. If you chose wisely the bit and the nail, it should be a tight fit.

-Drill another 5mm deep hole in the other part of the broken peg.

-Fit the arm in place.

-Be proud and brag about it.

I’ll agree that this is not an actual toy repair, not anywhere close to being child proof, but again good enough for display or photoshoot purpose.

Try things! Have fun! It’s better to ruin a figure and gain some experience than to let it sit broken in a drawer. And if it don’t turn out the way you wanted you’ll have plenty new spare parts fo free!