Hi,
those are finger wires. Look a lot like thick strings from a bass guitar. It wasn't as bad a design as many people think and sometimes finger wires straight to the wrist actually last longer than palm plates. You just need to be careful how you move the wrists.
To fix, you open the hand, drill them out completely (a lot more heavy duty than you would imagine. Thought it was going to need a dremel. Ended up using a black and decker hammer drill).
I use Gorilla epoxy resin to put the hands back together. You then leave that open for 24 hours (even though the Epoxy is solid in minutes) and then use heat and or tpe glue to put the TPE back totgether.
Until they are fixed you need to keep them from flopping around or you may damage the TPE. I use six inch rulers, a tube bandage and a couple of normal wrap bandages to hold a hand steady until you are ready to operate.
Couple of hints. Your will probably use quite a bit of baby oil for the area to be heated. once everything is fixed and she's seemingly perfect again don't be fooled. Leave her hands submerged in cornflour to pull out excess oil or you can end up with TPE rot (it can go green and sticky. Had it with a couple of my girls (both fixed) before I sussed what the issue was).
Good luck with the operation. Many of us have done it. First time is always the worst as it feels as if you are hurting them. And don't try starting it until you feel that you have ammassed all of the equipment, consumables that you feel that you will need for the job.
If you have a spare peice of TPE practice on that in a well ventilated area with the heat gun before you work on her actual TPE.
Tommo has some excellent instruction posts on the site that will really help when you come to do the operation.
Good luck,
Shamus.
|