"Reinforcing a staff?" Topic

I have this model headed to my painting table, once assembly is complete.

link

However, the staff is cracked. Just above the fist I can see it i hanging on by a mere thread of metal. I doubt it will even survive the painting process. So…

How do I reinforce the strength of the staff? Maybe just a bead of super glue?

Suggestions welcome….

Not being any type of craftsman, I'd hit it with some superglue gel.

I use the Zapagap superglue prep for things like that

Superglue won't hold for something like that. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything better, short of pinning it or replacing it.

I have to confirm what our Editor in Chief told you.

That's a very fragile piece and unless it is cast out of steel, it's going to break. Very easily. (and rereading your post, I see it has)

You could also, very carefully, place a drop of solder on the break and than take an exacto knife and, once again, carefully trim it down. I have done this many times in the past and it repairs the break to "like new" again and just as strong, or stronger, as it was originally. Many times a very intricate piece can be cracked when it is dismounted from the casting sprue. So, this is a good skill to master.

Green Stuff epoxy would likely be able to strengthen it. It should stick to the metal, without issue. Just make sure to keep it thin. Once it hardens, it should be quite strong enough for the task. Cheers!

Pin it. The knob just above the hand looks large enough to get a pin in it.

Cut it off flush, then drill'n pin. The only other option is to sculpt a power fist onto the mini to hold the staff… ;-)

I recently had an miscast Artizan figure that had the same problem.

The metal looked like it was torn off the figure and there was a large crack where the rifle meets the hand. There was only a small sliver of metal holding the two together.

I used two-part 5 minute epoxy glue and carefully set it in the crack.

The repair is very solid. So far the figure has survived a trip to Fernando and back. In fact I just went back and picked the based figure up from the rifle and held it horizontally. No problems.

Good Luck!

It's a shame, because it's such a nicely shaped thing and you don't want to distort it with repairs. There's no clearly best answer, especially since we can't see the damage, so you'll just have to choose the answer you like best from some imperfect choices. Here are some more…

Pin it. Worth a try.

Contact the manufacturer. Sometimes I find different copies of the same figure to be different hardnesses. This is probably due to a difference in mixture or how the piece cooled. But if you tell them you got a bad one they may be willing to replace it.

You could take some very fine wire and spiral it around the staff from bottom to top. That would change the look, but it might look cool. You could even do two winds, in opposite directions. Add some CA glue to fill in the space, prime, and paint.

Cut it off at his hand, drill the hand and put something else more sturdy or smaller in the hole. Flowers might look nice?

This looks like a pretty straight forward pinning job. The thicker part of the shaft, just above the hand, makes the pin drilling easier.