Nakajima: Wrestler beauty farm
Here’s my little christmas holidays restoration project.
I bought two Nakajima standard size sofubis from the Tiger Mask
(タイガーマスク) series few weeks ago. A Miracle 3 and a Mr. No that looked
pretty “loved” on the auction photos, but I was confident that I could bring
them back to old glory. Well, I’m a pro-wrestler-restorer ;-)
When the two guys arrived I wasn’t really surprised. Mr. No had lots of paint
rubs all over his body, but thank god he wasn’t painted with a magic marker
or something like that. Miracle 3 also had a few paint rubs and the usual wrestle
injuries, paint loss on his face and fingers.
Here are the two heroes before their wellness program began.
Mr.No overall condition wasn’t that bad, but Miracle 3’s missing paint
on face & fingers really didn’t look that good.
Step 1: Extensive cleaning
Lots of Q-Tips with car-paint-polish/cleaner to get rid of the paint rubs.
I don’t have Magic wheel eraser pads that work pretty well too I heard.
Some paint rubs on Mr.No’s body had been pretty resistant. With some very fine
sandpaper I “cleaned” them up easy. Because Mr.No’s overall paintwork isn’t supper
glossy I could use the “sandpaper method”, but you have to be super careful.
Mr.No looked pretty good after the deep clean and was ready to meet his wrestle
colleagues in the glas display. But Miracle 3 needed more thai cosmetics.
Step 2: Painting nose, lips & fingers
This is a premiere for me. I usually won’t do that…don’t need to that, because the
toys I buy are in good condition and there is no necessity for that kind of restoration.
In this special case I think that this figure will look 100% better with a “intact” face
and this is no “high end” toy I could destroy, if my “restoration” gonna fail.
Step 2.1: Mixing the perfect skin tone
This is the most challenging part of the “paint restoration”. Finding the exact
skin tone of Miracle 3’s nose and fingers, because I only want to paint the
parts where the original color is missing. Painting the whole nose would be
too easy and I want to keep as much of original paintwork as possible.
I use water based-based acrylic colors and mix the skin tone from white,
yellow and red. Here are a few photos of the paint process, I needed a few
layers until Miracle looked nice again.
Step 3: Enjoy
The two Luchas came put pretty cool. I’m happy with the result.
Step 4: Ready to Rumble!
So, that was my last DIY Brog for this year.
More pics etc in the BBS.
