"Reaper Bones Ruined Temple" Topic

I bought the Reaper Bones Ruined Temple. Bones (in this case, at least) is a soft, flexible plastic. When it arrived, the statue part was bent at the base, and the temple part did not sit flat.
I stuck the statue in boiling water and then bent the base back into shape, and we are good to go.
I squished the main part of the temple under a rather heavy book for a couple days. That helped a little, but not enough. This weekend, I tried pouring boiling water on the base and bending it back flat. I let it sit for a few minutes, and it was back to having a slight ridge. After a couple tries, I decided I might be doing something wrong.

Any suggestions? I am considering putting it in boiling water for a while, and then straightening it, but I will have to find something flat bottomed and large enough for the ruins to fit in (they are 5.125 inches by 6 inches or 131 mm by 152 mm) that I can fill with boiling water. Any other ideas?

Grelber

Are you putting it in cold water after reshaping? I've never had any issues re-shaping reaper bones that way but they've never been large items I've had to do it with….

Bones Black is a harder plastic that's much better, not that it helps you right now!

After reshaping under hot water, put it in a bowl of very cold/ice water.

You can also press it flat (somehow), and leave it in its forced/corrected position, for a month+… I've done this with other plastic figures (54mm & 60mm injection molded HDPE Skeletons and Vikings). I leave them in their corrected positions for a month, or longer. Sometimes they slowly creep back to their malformed position, but a second treatment usually does the trick (another month+…).

This technique relies upon "plastic memory." It can work, but it takes time… The longer you leave them in their corrected position, the better.

The hot/cold method is much faster, but it can be more dangerous using boiling water/heat gun, both to yourself, and to the figure. A heat gun (keep it moving!) can be used to heat up the plastic, but be careful of melting the figure/item; also, be careful of creating tool marks in the plastic, as you need it a bit soft, for this to work. Once it is just soft enough to flex into position, submerge it in ice water, to direct the plastic to 'remember' its corrected position.

This works, but it is physically challenging to hold it in the proper position long enough to submerge it, and set its memory to the new position. The trick is to rapidly cool the hot plastic, otherwise it won't 'remember' its new position.

I've also done this heating figures within a Slow Cooker set to 175 F (Low Heat setting): heat the figure/item for 15-30 minutes, keeping an eye on it, then remove it, position it properly, and dunk it in ice water to 'set' it. Kitchen Gloves might work, but they can be very clumsy. Bare-handed you will burn yourself!

Make a couple of careful practice run-through's, before applying heat, to make certain you can do what you need to do, to hold the item in its new position while dunking it in ice water, without injury to yourself, or the item. Be careful! Cheers!

I've only worked with individual white figures. I concur with the comments about the importance of very cold water.

I tried the hot bath/cold bath approach. To my surprise, my wife helped, perhaps to make sure I didn't use her favorite baking dish for one of the baths.

At any rate, putting the temple in a hot bath as opposed to pouring hot water on one side, made the piece very flexible, I straightened it out, then plunged it into the ice water. The result was that the temple was flattened out!

So many thanks for the advice, which worked out very well.

Grelber