MDD hand is stuck

I received a brandnew MDD body from Volks today and I'm having trouble removing one of the hands. It seems to be stuck on the peg. No matter how much I wiggle it, it wouldn't move far enough to come off. It's almost as if the opening is too tight or too small to come off.

 

Anyone have any tips on what I can do? I'm really worried about putting too much pressure on it and snapping it off ;__;

The vinyl hand isn't coming off the tab that it fits on, or the wrist pin isn't coming out of the arm?

 

If it's the first, I've been using a hair dryer to heat the vinyl to soften it to make the hands go on and off easier.

 

If it's the second, I've had issues where there's a little stub left on the end of the pin where it was on the casting sprue so I have to carefully pull it out that first time, but after trimming or filing that excess plastic off it works like it's supposed to.

It's the first case. I'll try the hair dryer trick again. I tried it once but it didn't have much effect. I think the hole on the hand might be too small

Hopefully it's not too small. Volks had to get it on somehow after all.

 

I've had to heat some stuff longer than I would've expected. I don't have a MDD but I'm assuming the hands are pretty small compared to DD so there's less room to give which might require more heating.

 

The closest thing I've dealt with I suspect is Obitsu hands which don't wiggle at all unless you heat them and they seem to take a lot of heating to get them soft enough to get off.

 

Maybe there's extra flash or plastic on the tab making it larger than it should be as well which would make it tighter. I don't know I'm just guessing now.

:'D I have similar issues with my mdd hands... I think the hand holes are a tad too small-- but I'm also too chicken to shave off some inner vinyl/try shaving off some of the hand tab... So my poor girl just sticks to her default hands until I absolutely need to change her hands

 

edited to add: When I eventually do change her hands I remove the wrist peg from the arm & heat up the hand with a hair dryer. Sometimes the hands won't fit 100% perfectly back onto the wrist ( the fist hands ) unless you use a lot of force-- and then it's a pain to remove again :'D

 

 

This is how the hand looked. I managed to get it off eventually after heating it with a hair dryer for a long time. But eventho it took some serious pulling. I'm still paranoid about snapping the wrist joint >____<

I see. From the pictures it looks like the perpendicular part (not the flat tab that goes into the hand) is larger than the hole in the hand, at least compared to full-sized DD.

 

Is there also something going on with the forearm? The ball of the wrist joint doesn't look centered in the arm like it normally would.

 

(I haven't seen a MDD in person.)

Yeah, I've heard that some people have sanded the sides of the hand to make it bigger. I might try that once I gain the courage.

 

I think the forearm might look weird due to the way I was holding it to take a photo.

Another thing you might want to try if you exhaust other options is using hobby grease on the frame to make sliding the hand on and off easier. What I have on hand is Tamiya Ceramic Grease. (I can't post links yet but try doing a search for that in your favorite search engine.) While I don't know if that specific brand of grease is available in Belgium, it's basically grease used on remote control cars' gears to prevent wear.

 

My paranoia: I don't know of any instances of this type of grease reacting with vinyl. Danny Choo uses grease for his Smart Dolls when inserting frame parts into vinyl parts with a tight fit (such as the feet). While I don't know which brand of grease he buys and uses in bulk, applying ceramic/hobby grease *should* be safe. I'm typing this out just in case because I don't want to get complaints 6 months from now telling me the hands turned green or something because of the grease. (Yeah, I just know I'll get those complaints from someone anyway. )

 

If you do go with the hobby grease route, don't go overboard with it. Be conservative when applying onto the frame because you don't want to make an oily mess.