Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I recently bought a couple squads of Custodian Guard off ebay, and I am trying to break the hands and spears off to put on the conversion kits. Does anyone have a surefire way to achieve this they've found?

So far, I've been leaving them in the deep freezer over night, and snapping the hands off. This has resulted in rather, ugly results. Any advice is appreciated!

Sharp knife, careful hands. Sometimes you can pry the join apart. If not you can cut it.

The freezer is a good start but with smaller pieces it's quite risky. You could do it and then take a knife/scalpel to them when the bond is weak.

Do be careful though!

If you're discussing plastic models, there is no shortcut - particularly if you're going for a clean break.

Plastic glue or liquid cement creates a chemical action which melts plastic together...so it's unlikely to snap unless you find miniatures that were assembled with super glue (faster but a much weaker bond).

The freezer trick is aimed mainly at super glue, and will not aid in plastic components assembled with plastic glue. This is a major downside to rescuing plastic figures.

Do you want the hands? if not, just cut them off with cutters, snip snip.

Sometimes a good clipper will give a cleaner cut than hacking at it with exacto, especially if you don't gave steady hands..

You can "over clip" a larger chunk of the model and then file/cut down to the part you want. Its time consuming, bit wasteful but if you want results, achievable.

This is where a razor saw comes in super handy. They're generally not cheap (for a really good brand like a JLC), but the cut is so small that you generally don't have to do a bunch of gap filling. I bought mine for scale modeling where precision is often necessary, but for wargaming you could easily get away with a hobby saw. Bit less precise, larger cut, but cheaper and just as effective.

In these cases a saw is going to be much more useful than trying to cut with a scalpel or hobby knife blade.

With the poly cement, it also depends on how much was used to actually join the components, if a small amount was used you can just pull them apart ( like the garbage stuff Humbrol sells)