|
|
Post by luclin999 on Sept 21, 2012 14:19:02 GMT -5
I picked this up a little over a week ago when I saw that it was a 1st gen Mattel Dragun (with an intact cape) and thought that it might be worth restoring.  As you can see, when it arrived it was not in the best shape. Ruined decals, paint loss, dirt and water stains, rusted screws, numerous scuffs and scratches. So yesterday I decided to take the time to work on it. The first thing I did was take Dragun apart and subject it to "ancient Jumbo cleaning technique".. Also known as tossing it in the dishwasher. Everything except the head and screws. While that was going on I cleaned up and repainted the head and buffed the rust off of the hardware. Once the pieces were out of the dishwasher I let them dry and then buffed out the worst of the scratches and scuffs with the soft polishing head on my rotary tool (which I DO NOT recommend trying unless you have a very steady hand and a LOT of experience with doing this type of thing as one slip can permanently scar the toy.) I then went back over it gently with a red scotchbrite pad and followed that up with soap and water. Finally, I printed out a new set of vinyl decals for it and applied them. In all, about four hours work total and while he will never be "minty fresh" again I think that Dragun is at least back up to display quality now. |
|
|
|
Post by admin1 aka Ed on Sept 21, 2012 14:23:51 GMT -5
Awesome job man! I really appreciate seeing how drastic the transformation can be.
|
|
|
|
Post by Gettershadow on Sept 21, 2012 14:25:29 GMT -5
wonderful results.. did you use a large air tool or a dremel?
|
|
|
|
Post by luclin999 on Sept 21, 2012 14:29:50 GMT -5
wonderful results.. did you use a large air tool or a dremel? Dremel with a flex shaft. Mind you, I have a few years experience using my rotary tool for sculpting and also practiced for a while on some scrap Shogun parts before touching Dragun with it which is why I added the cautionary warning above. |
|
|
|
Post by wakeupheavy on Sept 21, 2012 14:58:32 GMT -5
Wow! Dramatic before and after.
|
|
|
|
Post by rodman75 on Sept 21, 2012 15:14:44 GMT -5
Great job Luclin......now the question becomes are you keeping this dragun for your own display or are you going to sell him?
|
|
|
|
Post by luclin999 on Sept 21, 2012 15:38:41 GMT -5
He'll be sticking around for a while.
|
|
|
|
Post by Gettershadow on Sept 21, 2012 18:56:15 GMT -5
wonderful results.. did you use a large air tool or a dremel? Dremel with a flex shaft. Mind you, I have a few years experience using my rotary tool for sculpting and also practiced for a while on some scrap Shogun parts before touching Dragun with it which is why I added the cautionary warning above. I got alot of exp using dremel on firearms.. what head did you use ? |
|
|
|
Post by Gettershadow on Sept 21, 2012 19:17:46 GMT -5
OK... I think I see what you did. I just busted out the Dremel and and tried it out. I used the hard cloth wheel and that kinda burns down the scratches a bit but leaves a high gloss swirl pattern so then I used the plastic bristle brush to rough it back up, then touched it up some more with red scotchbrite.. that worked pretty well but like you said, its time consuming.
|
|
|
|
Post by bourno on Sept 21, 2012 21:49:41 GMT -5
Nice work !!! Thanks for the tips on how you cleaned it up more.
|
|
|
|
Post by thatbatmanguy on Sept 21, 2012 23:03:03 GMT -5
What an improvement!
Bob
|
|
|
|
Post by luclin999 on Sept 21, 2012 23:47:27 GMT -5
OK... I think I see what you did. I just busted out the Dremel and and tried it out. I used the hard cloth wheel and that kinda burns down the scratches a bit but leaves a high gloss swirl pattern so then I used the plastic bristle brush to rough it back up, then touched it up some more with red scotchbrite.. that worked pretty well but like you said, its time consuming. Nice work !!! Thanks for the tips on how you cleaned it up more. That's the basic idea however I do want to point out that one slip can dig a very noticeable gouge into the figure so to anyone who wants to try this.. proceed at your own risk. Again, I practiced for a while on some scrap parts in order to get the technique down before I (cautiously) began to work on Dragun. |
|
|
|
Post by zman on Sept 22, 2012 0:46:25 GMT -5
Superb job!
What did you use to paint the head? Will a sharpie work?
|
|
|
|
Post by 1oldrobot on Sept 22, 2012 2:50:38 GMT -5
i dont see that the head was refinished. the heads are not PE, but vinyl. unless youre touching up something like the black dot or the outline around the mouth, id avoid using sharpies on jumbo vinyl parts as the sharpie can distort the surface of the plastic. it wont affect anything if you use sharpie on top of a painted surface in this case. try to stick to a small area using sharpies because sharpies also streak on hard surfaces.
also, i know a way to "remove" scratches. id never suggest doing it unless you have a lot of experience. ive used a heat gun on two of my jumbos to flatten the peaks of scratches. this is very tricky and again, i dont suggest doing it unless youve done a lot of custom work on plastics using one.
PE does not have as good elastic memory in its molecular chain as some other shape memory polymers, meaning you cant just boil it for a few seconds and reshape it to its original form if its been exposed to a lot of heat. PE is a linear block polymer and the elastic memory chain is disrupted once the shape has been significantly changed.
once you distort the shape of PE, be prepared to be forced to accept the results.
a heat gun can also distort the surface ,as well as burn it.
last but not least, if youre not familiar with a heat gun, know that it can easily kill you.
how to do-
cover all unaffected areas with tin foil. use a few layers. it doesnt have to sit tightly against the area as long as the edges of the foil remain close to the surface. wait a few seconds for the coil in the heat gun to get fully heated, dont try to look at the coil, or else your zombie halloween costume will be permanent and totally awesome.
once its on, wait 30 seconds and from one foot away do two QUICK swipes across the area. you may have to do that a few times.
turn off the heat gun!!!!!!!! hurry and rub your fingers across the ridges of the scratches and flatten or push them over if they are deep. any white scuff areas will clear up from the heat. if you dont want to use your finger, use a soft surface to make contact. hard surfaces will cause more ridges when the plastic is soft.
dont treat the whole part or the whole jumbo this way to get a uniform look. this method took down some rough areas in my goldorak and cleaned up a lot of scuffs about 80%. because it takes away the white patches from scuffs, from a few feet away i cant tell he isnt new other than the repaint i did of the head to match him when he was scuffed.
this way is really fast, but if you havent done it elsewhere before, dont buy a heat gun to start on jumbos. you could get a PE or PP 5 gallon bucket, scratch it up with car keys and rough sand paper and experiment. play with tin foil, too, in tests if you go this route.
the "proper" way to do this would actually require the piece to be filled with water and plugged, then the heat gun treatment. you can get a little more aggressive that way, but thats approaching $150 per hour level custom work.
the reason why is the water cools from the inside, of course, so heat can be applied a little longer (i do not suggest on a display piece!!!). the water also maintains the shape of the piece with the water pushing out from the inside, using it like a custom plug.
ive seen posts where people have mentioned putting jumbo parts in the oven. dont ever do that.
boiling water can relax (and destroy) any jumbo part. obviously, boiling water is hot enough to make the material workable. you may be able to take down white scuff marks a little using boiling water. the washing machine treatment will do that to some degree.
that aside, congrats on your work on dragun, he looks great. im jealous.
|
|
|
|
Post by luclin999 on Sept 22, 2012 3:52:15 GMT -5
Superb job! What did you use to paint the head? Will a sharpie work? I used acrylic enamels to fix the dot, the outlines and to brighten up the silver area in the mouth as it had gone a bit dark with age. I may still go back and touch up the eyes.. I haven't decided yet. I didn't try a sharpie and would hesitate to unless I had experimented with one on a junker head and even then I'd want to let the results sit for several months to see if there ended up being any bleeding fading or other color interaction with the plastic before I'd chance it on one I wanted to keep. |
|
|
|
Post by luclin999 on Sept 22, 2012 4:00:29 GMT -5
boiling water can relax (and destroy) any jumbo part. obviously, boiling water is hot enough to make the material workable. you may be able to take down white scuff marks a little using boiling water. the washing machine treatment will do that to some degree. When I put ran the pieces through the dishwasher I made certain to keep it on the lower temp settings and to set it to "Air dry" so as to avoid having the heating element come on while the parts were in there. I just wanted to give everything a thorough cleaning. (also, no rinse aid) |
|
|
|
Post by 1oldrobot on Sept 22, 2012 4:30:35 GMT -5
awesome info. all of us should collectively start a thread about repair methods, rather than novels like mine hijacking posts and steering away from the focus. did the dishwasher hide any scuffs or was the temp too low? low temp is probably the way to stay, id think, and deal w scuffs after.
|
|
|
|
Post by luclin999 on Sept 22, 2012 14:01:58 GMT -5
The wash was just for cleaning. working with the scratches and scuffs was something to deal with individually by hand.
I wouldn't trust the figure in the DW on too high a heat for the reasons that you already mentioned in that I'd be afraid it would sag or otherwise distort the plastic when it was sealed up inside of the machine for over an hour.
|
|
|
|
Post by 1oldrobot on Sept 22, 2012 14:43:29 GMT -5
good thinking. i dont think i read your post closely enough the first time and thought you had some heat on it. great way to clean jumbos. thanks for sharing.
|
|
|
|
Post by Gettershadow on Sept 22, 2012 18:06:15 GMT -5
good thinking. i dont think i read your post closely enough the first time and thought you had some heat on it. great way to clean jumbos. thanks for sharing. Heat guns had crossed my mind when I was looking at those scratches..the water trick you describe is awesome, had I known about it, I may have gone with heat guns.. propane torch also crossed my mind but I quickly discarded the idea as being too risky. Your warnings about heat guns are 100% spot on... we used to use them to de-badge Police cars prior to painting.... A Heat Gun will cause a huge deal to almost just DROP OFF car door in a few seconds.... BAD sh*t! |
|
