Ah, it arrived a little later than expected, but my 2nd box of dismembered ALIEN parts came today.  It’s difficult to see the value in this apparent pile of rubble, but in truth I’ll be able to use this selection of miscellaneous black body parts as foundations to construct and restore at least 2 more Aliens.  This will be a fun exercise if nothing else.

Let’s see what’s included in this pile of debris.  There are 2 incomplete figures here, both missing arms.  I’ll be using the arms that arrived in the earlier shipment to complete those empty spaces.  There’s an obviously damaged leg with the spindle snapped clean off.  I can repair that, no problem.  A pair of loose heads can be seen in the bottom of the image. The good one on the right, which is complete with all 4 mouth parts present will probably end up being fixed to the decapitated figure standing at the back.  It will then be well on its way to full rehabilitation.

That just leaves the damaged head on the bottom left.  It’s been snapped at the neck and fortunately, the broken stump is also included.  Snapped heads like this are all too common but they can be repaired very easily.

Below is another head that’s suffered the same problem but has since been fixed.  You can see 2 of the 4 screws used to hold the previously separated pieces together.  When the head is assembled to the figure, this repair will be completely concealed inside.  It’s strong, too!  Stronger than most glues which are often used to solve this problem.  Glues frequently perish resulting in the head coming free once again – and then leave you with the additional problem of removing unwanted glue residue.  Very few of my repair techniques involve glue.

This repair method is one of about 30 techniques covered in detail in the book.  It’s an extensive chapter consisting of almost 60 pages.  There’s enough information present in those pages to take a pile of debris like the image at top and transform it into this:

When this work in progress figure first came into my care, it was a mess.  You wouldn’t know it now. It even holds it’s pose without any problem.  All it needs to complete its transition from rubble to display worthy condition is the upper dentures and the head carapace.  I’ll have to use some reproduction pieces to fill those gaps but considering the state this figure was in when it arrived, that’s not an issue.

-Windebieste.