Both are wins.

Steve these are tight love to see work from you!

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I was looking at your ARAH customs and got amazed. And now I found these ones I got amazed again.

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Thanks for the comments: I had a great time making these two, so it's nice to know that they're working for other people, too.



Great call; I'm working on an AT decal for his jacket as well as several of the other figures. And, as for the Man of Evil...I've got plans for that, too; I'm pretty excited about working on the figure, and I'm just waiting on some parts to arrive to get started. Thanks for the kind words!



Oddly enough, so was I! I was reorganizing a closet and came across the hardware drawer that I keep them in; it made me very nostalgic for the ease and fun of working with the ARAH-style figures. Thanks for the compliments, and I'm glad there are customizers like you out there who are keeping the ARAH flame alive: that line is and will always be my favorite.

What method did you use to remove the paint from the Dusty body?

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Top notch , both figures are great.

In this case, I didn't have to: I actually used an unpainted prototype 25th Dusty that I got a few years back. I've used that chest for other customs, though, and for them I used the least-efficient and most labor-intensive method possible: very, very carefully sanding it off. I've tried every non-destructive chemical I could think of and none of them worked; damn Hasbro's relatively high quality of paint! I've got a couple of other figures pieced together that use either the 25th or RoC Dusty, and I'm procrastinating on them because the paint-removal process is such a pain in the butt.

Not to hijack or anything, but that's why I asked. I've used acetone and fine grain sandpaper to remove the camo pattern from one of the ROC desert pack figures, but I can't get the paint out of the crevices. And I'm not sure which one it was, but one of those two items used knocked off the factory shine making the figure look dull.

These figures look great btw.

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Sanding dulls the surface somewhat, but I'm betting it was the acetone that really did the damage. Sanded plastic can usually be polished back to something resembling the factory shine (although it's never quite the same, it's close enough that you won't notice unless you're really staring at it).

Sanding the paint out of the folds in the clothing is by far the most frustrating part of the process: I use a combination of folded sandpaper (I usually go through about a sheet per attempt) to work into the corners and a gentle scraping with an X-Acto knife (followed by a light sanding) to get into those impossible-to-reach areas. It takes forever, so I try to do it while watching a game or something.

What would you use to buff some shine back in?

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I really like both of these but Hannibal is wow.

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After I've sanded the surface smooth, I usually use a piece of really well-worn 600-grit sandpaper (I keep a few pieces that are used to the point of being floppy and almost cloth-like) to buff the surface, followed by a polishing with a piece of t-shirt. It's low-tech, but it's always worked for me. If you really need to get aggressive, there are polishing wheels for the Dremel that I've used in the past. They work great, but you have to be gentle with them; they can eat more surface than you want if you aren't careful.

Thanks for the help.

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