Silent Surfer Could you give a tutorial for how to do the ball joint canon mod for Wolf ?
It's all about that damn black connector at the base of the cannon. If you heat up the armor, you can easily bend the cannon connection point outward and slide the connector off the rod holding it there. The rod is 'usually' only glued on the outside edge, not both ends.
Once that is off, here comes the hard part. Test bend the other end of the connector where it goes into the end of the cannon. One side will not move at all, but the other side will have some sliding play (very little). Carefully take an X-Acto blade and cut the plastic rod that is holding the stationary side. You won't be able to see it, but you'll know when it is cut by the way the connector moves afterward.
The plastic the cannon is made of will not get soft with heat, so don't bother with the Blow Dryer on this one. Just wiggle and tug until the joiner releases. *insert joke here*
Focusing on the end that just got free, poke or grind out what's left of the rod inside the hoop. Use putty to turn the hoop into a ball with the same circumference the hoop has. I used Quick Steel two part putty found at Home Depot. It comes in a 4-5" blue/gray tube. 1 part is wrapped inside the 2nd part. All you do is pinch off a bit more than you need, and kneed it together to one solid color (the quick steel will start to feel warm when it is thuroughly mixed). Use as much of that as you need to create a ball shape out of the hoop, making sure to get the putty all the way through the hoop so the putty on both sides is basically one continuous piece. Don't worry about being overly neat about it right now, but don't make it bigger than the hoop already is. You can sand it to shape later.
Work quickly with this stuff. They don't call it
Quick Steel for nothing. You have about 5 minutes of good working time. Use Vaseline to keep your fingers and tools from sticking to the putty as you shape your balls. *insert joke here* This stuff sets pretty much in 5-10 minutes, but leave it alone for about 20 minutes before sanding so that the surface doesn't scrape off too easily.
Now comes the second hardest part. Getting the ball joints back into the cannon arms. You can grind a very slight curvature into the insertion point of the cannon arms to aid in the process, but it's not necessary. I mentioned before that this plastic doesn't get soft with heat like the armor does, but it will help just a bit to give you some flexibility in the cannon arms. DON'T OVER HEAT IT. ONCE YOU WARP OR BEND THIS KIND OF PLASTIC, YOU'RE SCREWED. IT WILL NOT FLEX BACK WITH MORE HEAT LIKE THE VINYL PLASTIC DOES.
Turning the ball connector you just created so that the original plastic of the hoop is in contact with insertion point of the cannon arm (it will be rotated 90 degrees from its original protruding postion) shove it back in. This may not be easy to do, but there is no other way that I came up with cause I didn't need to. Once it's popped in, you can rotate it back to its normal position and, heating up the armor again, bend out the part with the rod, slide the untampered with end of the connector back onto the rod, hit it with more heat to keep it soft, and push the rod and armor back into its original shape/position, holding it tightly against the connector until it cools. Blowing on it does help speed up the process. If your armor is not currently on your Wolf, run that spot under some cold water to set it fast.
The person I learned this mod from (can't find the link) had used a tiny piece of foam inside the cannon arm where the ball goes to give the ball some friction, but if you made the ball big enough (at least as large around as the original hoop) it will fit so tightly that that isn't necessary. I didn't need it.
Enjoy total, movie accurate poseability.
