Tips for Restringing or Retightening Action Figures

Over the years, we have purchased many collections with action figures in pieces because the elastics broke. We have also had parents come in asking if we repair action figures or if we can show/tell someone how to fix one.

Rob can show you. It is fairly easy if you are patient and have a steady hand.  But because Rob is pretty busy and hard to nail down, he found an article that should help you out with some great tips, references and steps.

The following is taken from that article and there is a link at the bottom of this post so you can go see what else you can do to fix up those figures.

Before you read the article, here's a few things you may want to have on hand for when you're ready to fix your action figures.

1. a various selection of small 'O' rings or elastics
2. a sectioned container to sort the 'O' rings
3. a couple sizes of crotchet hooks (they come in metal, plastic & wood and can be found at craft stores)
4. fine tip craft scissors or sprue cutters
5. set of hobby screwdrivers

Are you sitting comfortably?  Then let's learn something neat!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Idea 1
The best way to tighten your Action Figure involves a partial re-string. You need to shorten the single elastic (or you can use a new 'O' ring to reconnect the pieces) that connects the two legs and the neck. You need a long tool with a little hook on it like a crochet needle and a thin phillips screwdriver.

1. Holding Joe securely, pull his head away from the neck hole until you see the elastic that loops around the neck hook.
2. Push the screwdriver or crotchet hook through the loop to hold it securely above the neck hole.
3. This will allow you to easily unhook the neck from the elastic.
4. Set the head/neck aside.
5. Pull and separate the lower section away from the upper.
   Now you will have Joes two legs and abdomen section free to work on. 
6. You can shorten (tighten) the elastic by folding it an inch or so and then stitching it at that fold point. Make sure you stitch it securely.
   Now you can "re-string" Joe by putting the hook down through the neck hole past the arm elastics and out through the bottom of the chest hole. 
7. Hook your tool onto your tightened elastic and pull it up through the neck hole again. This will take alot of elbow grease. It will be very tight now..
8. Once you get it pulled just past the neck hole, stick in your screwdriver again to hold it above the neck hole.
9. Now, you can easily rehook the neck hook to the elastic.
10. Pull out the screwdriver, and you're done.

Joe is back to tight fighting shape! This process will also work for restringing or tightening the arm elastic as well. It sounds a little tough, but once you do it, it becomes really easy. -- John Medeiros


As for the floppy joints, I suggest the following (but only if you are brave): Grab some slide lock pliers, (you know, the big ones you use on the sink) and squeeze each pin and rivet gently until it begins to compress. Use the very edge of the plier face, and avoid contact with the plastic. I found this works better that tapping the joint with the hammer because you can watch the joint for stress cracks and stop at any time. You may experience a little paint flaking, but that is easily repainted. You also may want to wrap the pliers in a thin cloth. -- John

Idea 2:
I repaired a Cotswold Elite figure that had its arms come off. Anybody that has seen the cord inside these things should understand why. Here is how I fixed him:

1. Get a rubber band, the size that is used on newspapers and triple it up.
2. Take two bread twists and twist them together to form a piece about 4 or 5 inches long.
3. Tie one end of the bread tie to the rubber band, after attaching the rubber band to one of of the arms, and thread the bread ties along with the other end of the rubber band through the body.
4. Hook the other end of the rubber band on the other arm hook and then untie the bread ties. Your arms should snap right into place.

I don't know how long the rubber band will hold before it becomes brittle. It can't be any worse than that stupid cord that is in the figure though. This actually is a pretty easy fix as far as the arms are concerned. Give it a try if you ever have a figure do this to you. -- Jem


Other Ideas
Restringing arms and legs is easy except for the hip pins. They can be tricky to remove with out breaking them. Try a small awl or leather needle to pop them out. Then use some rubber cement to put them back in. To pull the rubber strings I use a coat hanger. The end makes a good hook and it is easy to pull the leg string out of the neck hole to attach the head. Do the same with the arm string . Hook one shoulder then pull the string through with the hanger and connect the other side. -- LordVader

When restringing arms and legs, I don't bother with the thigh pins myself. I leave them in if still serviceable. I bought a little bag of teeny tie wraps (the zip strip type) and just tie wrap the elastic loop to the still in there thigh pin. It works great with no noticable looseness for the extra .05 extra distance. -- Aaron


To read more of this article CLICK HERE

Please leave a comment about this post.

This blog post is opinion only and any damage/injury or loss to product or person is the responsibility of that person and Chinook & Hobby West and it's employees are not responsible.

Continue reading →

Tips For Scenery On Your Layout or Diorama

     Have you ever wondered how modellers of dioramas and railroad layouts get nice clean, carved lakes, water bodies and cool mountain scenery?  How its done without the heavy hassle of wood and plaster?
    
     The trick is to making your project lighter, easier and more fun to work with is the Insulating Styrofoam. You know the dense stuff that comes in Pink or Blue. Its easy to get from home improvement stores or somewhere that sells construction supplies. The foam usually comes in 4' x 8' sheets and doesn't flake away or create a huge mess like the pellet white Styrofoam can.

     Using a knife, hot wire foam cutter or other creative tools you can carve into it, cut it, and paint it (with acrylics). To create water bodies outline the area with a pencil line gently pressed into the foam (you can change or adjust it as needed). When you have the area lined out, carve it out with varying depths for realism. Make sure you seal the bottom with an acrylic sealer or a layer or two of white glue.

     The pink Styrofoam is very rigid and I have found it's also very easy to stack to make very realistic looking mountains, just stack, glue and carve. You can add small areas of hydrocal rock faces for extra effect and little added weight.

     So, the next time your stuck in a construction related traffic jam, don't get to frustrated you can spend the time looking around for bits of discarded foam and thinking of that new idea to add that extra fantastic look to your next project.

~ submitted by Jesse Millington

(This article is by one of our staff. He has had experience with model building, model railroading and collecting. This article is his opinion. There are many different ways to make and design water and if you have any tips you would like to share or an article you think our readers would enjoy, we invite you to share it in the comments on this blog, on our Facebook (www.facebook.com/ChinookAndHobbyWest) or on our website (www.chinookandhobbywest.com). Thank you for following our blog Chinook Hobby Talk.)

Continue reading →

Build or Buy

I work as a software engineer for a major pharmaceutical company; our group develops applications for chemists and research scientists of many disciplines. When we are approached by a research team or department to address a potential new challenge, one of the first questions we ask ourselves before lifting a finger is, do we build it, or buy it?

It's hard to know the right answer, because there is usually a long list of pros and cons for either approach. Generally speaking, buying has the potential of bringing a project to completion in weeks instead of months, but it requires a substantial capital outlay, and the project may still get bogged down with customizations required to get the application into a form suitable for the users. Building has the potential of providing an application that precisely suits the users' needs, but it might come at an expense of effort measured in man-years; we might also lack the internal talent required to deliver certain highly specialized solutions.

Perhaps not surprisingly, model railroaders face the same issues when it comes to creating our layouts. Do we build our models, or buy them?



Building a model is naturally very satisfying. And it results in something unique, something that will not be found on any other layout. Even before construction begins, though, a substantial time investment is necessary in order to research both the actual object as well as the model construction materials and techniques. It may also require skills that not everyone possesses, so it may not be an option for some of us.

Buying a model provides instant gratification and accelerates layout-building, allowing us to reach a satisfying level of completion earlier, leaving us more time to operate and enjoy our layouts. Also, being less emotionally attached to our models frees us to experiment more, to move or replace them in order to try different approaches.

Most modelers strike a balance and do both: it's impractical (or impossible) for many to scratchbuild locomotives and rolling stock. Indeed, it's safe to say that the vast majority of modelers buy their rolling stock: there would otherwise not be so much discussion (sometimes rather heated) at online forums over the accuracy of commercial locomotives and such.

Just as it is in the business world, though, time is every bit a commodity as materials. Scratchbuilding is of course more economical than buying kits or built-ups from a materials standpoint, but one must also factor in the time involved. These days, with time being a key factor in both my work and hobby budgets, I'm inclined to look at my modeling effort as an investment. That $20 kit might only represent $5 of materials if scratchbuilt, but it might take $100 of my time to scratchbuild it. Another business parallel is the Return on Investment (ROI) angle: will it be worth the effort to scratchbuild certain mundane detail items when perfectly adequate kits exist?



Lately, as I attempt to squeeze in a few precious minutes of modeling here and there in my crazy-busy schedule, I face the build or buy question almost continuously. As is the case for my work, I much prefer to build because it is far more satisfying, and I get exactly what I want (more or less, depending on skill and a bit of luck). But when my modeling progress can be measured in inches per year instead of feet, I must stop and think hard about striking a compromise in order to achieve my goals in a more realistic timeline. Yes, I realize that others will recognize nearly every building in my model town, and this will not accurately reflect my true desires or skills as a modeler. But at least I have a town, which would not be the case if I built everything from scratch.

For the time being, buying rather than building is a stop-gap measure, a means to cut to the chase and get up and running more quickly. I know that when I retire, all of the business-like time/cost factors will go away; I will be able to kick back and spend large blocks of time modeling at a leisurely pace, and I will almost always build before I buy, no question.

But I'd still like to be able to run a train through a landscape populated by buildings and scenery before I retire! So, out comes the plastic, and to the web stores I go a-shopping. (I like to further justify this approach by thinking that my relatively tiny contribution helps to support the growth of the industry...)

Thankfully, those of us who choose to buy—whatever our reasons—know that we are perhaps enjoying the "golden years" of model railroading right now. Never before has there been such a bountiful crop of quality goods. For some, it's the only way they will be able to enjoy a layout right now; for others, it's the only way to enjoy a layout at all.

Continue reading →

Pleasing the Crowd or Yourself That is the Question

As I go about the messy business of rebuilding a major portion of my model railroad, I'm beginning to struggle with the question of just exactly what I'd like my layout to be. The original design is a wonderful tangle of main line, yard, branch line and industrial operations. And even in its present confused state, it serves well the social interaction that model railroad operations can be.

At any given session, I can have 4 to 10 crew jammed into my layout room, and everyone (for the most part) has a job to do. In fact, without that formidable staff, sometimes it's difficult to justify even turning on the lights in there. I do go in and tinker, and will on occasion set the turnouts for a closed route and enjoy watching a train circulate. But I'm trying to come to terms with the idea of having all this stuff, and questioning whether I'm really enjoying the layout the way I want to.

My operations plan is, admittedly, heavily influenced by the fact that I live at least a couple of hours from most of my crew. They travel a good distance to run my layout, so I feel compelled to provide them with a solid "play value" for the time they have invested. Thus I have staging areas that can hold hundreds of cars, lots of money tied up in switch motors, DCC throttles, and let's not even get started on rolling stock. In between sessions, I'm faced with building the new this, or rewiring the faulty that... and of course, cleaning engine wheels.

Now don't get me wrong, I like running those hot freights from one staging track to another. I love sorting cars and assembling trains in the yard, then sending them on their way. I really like switching my big industries, and that drag of empty hoppers needs to get back to the tipples...

But am I biting off more than I really want to chew? It would probably help if one or two guys lived closer, and could come over on a Tuesday night to help take care of the tedium. Or if I was an hour away, instead of two plus, so I could expect to fire up the layout more than three or four times a year. Right now, it seems a to be a lot of buck for the bang.

So, what to do? Do I go ahead and blast the whole shootin' match and start fresh on a simple short line that I can get my head around? Do I revisit the master plan, and see if it can be made to work with fewer hands (and dollars?)

My fear is that by scaling back to a railroad that looks, fits and runs better for one guy in a relatively small space, that I'd be sacrificing the opportunity to have those great ops sessions where guys come from far and wide to have a good time at my house. (A bit narcissistic, but then aren't we all?)

I'd also miss the variety of operations that I enjoy. While I think I'd love to build a simple branch line serving a handful of customers with a heavily weathered geep, I might also get terribly bored with it after a few times of doing the same thing over and over and over...

I suppose the only real answer is to press on with the master plan, and when the urge hits to run that rusty switcher, I'll just turn on the branch line and let the rest of the layout sleep...

Continue reading →

Model Railroading Scope Or Im ok youre ok

In the professional services business in which I work, we have a term called "scope". It basically is used to refer to what work falls under a contract, and what doesn't, or what we're doing on a project, and what we're NOT doing on a project.

A recent thread on TheRailwire got me thinking about how different many modelers are. The old notion of "we each enjoy our trains differently, and that's ok" is often brought out whenever there's an ideological disagreement on various forums to extinguish flame wars.

http://therailwire.net/smf/index.php?topic=13656.0

This notion is an important one in the hobby, allowing "daisy pickers" to coexist along side "rivet counters" without igniting feuds. However, I've realized that there's something else at work here. Aside from how seriously modelers take all this stuff, there is also a spectrum of what type of "serious" modeler people are.


(Photo changed, Sorry Jerry!)

It's very possible to be serious about building a model of "a railroad". For years, Tony Koester championed this from the pages of RMC and Model Railroader. His Allegheny Midland was a wonderful model of a railroad (even though it was freelanced). He modeled the way a railroad works, but the rolling stock and structures were important in as much as they supported the model of the railroad itself. Structures should all be roughly uniform, as that's how a real railroad does things. Locomotives and rolling stock should all be accurate in as much as they represent an accurate "fleet". While Tony had many outstanding individual models, I believe that they still existed mostly to support "the railroad". In this mindset, the individual "work" is the layout itself and the railroad system that it represents.



On the other hand, it's very possible for a modeler to be very serious about building individual models. NMRA contest rooms are full of these models, and while some may exist in the context of a larger modeling endeavor, many were built to stand on their own as outstanding individual works. They may end up being part of a layout, but in this case, the layout serves as a place for these individual models. Howard Zane's outstanding layout, I believe, falls into this category. Howard has a basement (plus) of very well done models, of both rolling stock and structures, however, Howard's layout "functions" to serve as a display place for these models. In this view, the "work" is the individual models, and the supporting items (like track, for example) are not the focus of the modeling.

These schools of thought are not always conscious decisions, but often seem to stem from the smaller micro-decisions of what's "good enough" that take place in all model railroaders minds. For some "good enough" means that the mix of cars in a train are correct, even if they're riding on Kato's JDM spec Unitrack, while others won't care if the cars are of mixed eras, as long as they all have full brake rigging, while even others only care if they're all weathered, but look "wrong" unless they're all rolling along on hand laid code 25 rail with tie plates and joint bars.

Either of the mindsets can be representative of people who take their modeling seriously (like I do), and I believe there is a mutual respect between people in both camps, but I believe that the more people acknowledge the existence of these camps, and the many modelers who try and straddle them both, the better and happier we will all be (mostly because it will spell the end of the "you're not a real modeler if you don't..." threads on forums).

Continue reading →