Imagine a 1/35 scale figure of a soldier carrying two buckets of water. The arms are separate and after gluing them in place the seam has to be puttied. After the putty dries you have to remove excess putty and trust me, there is no sanding tool in the world that gets into such tight spaces. If anything, you’ll damage the areas you don’t want to touch.
I’m experimenting (with much success) with brushing the joints with a tootbrush and toothpaste! If done well, this should remove excess putty leaving only that deep inside the joint.
However, does anybody know some kind of abravise paste that’s even better than toothpaste? Toothpase is meant to be abrasive on the microscopic level but for the first pass I need something with more bite to it. Tootpaste could be used for polishing/finishing.
Just in-the revolutionary tool that does the trick is a “Sonicare” electric tootbrush. It will clean up all puttied joints with ordinary tootphaste. First-class results, try it.
Avoid the problem to begin with. If there’s going to be stress on the joint, drill a hole in the torso and in the arm and use a matching piece of wire to lock it in place. I’m doing some preliminary work on the front figure in the Michale Roberts picture below and did just that. There’s also a brass rod running thriugh his hand/wrist and up his tibia/fibia abouuuuut half way to the elbow, since this is where all the weight will be on this arm.
