Disassembling female figures

hello! think I have to ask a question like this too...can someone may tell me how to protect female (or all) dc direct-shoulders against paint rub? because the torso is one piece from shoulders to hips and I'm not really sure about trying to drill holes and crack it completely...but the joints are a little bit too tiny to really grab them while I tried to heat'n'pop it.the tutorials in here are good,but theres no for dcdirect-shoulders thanks for help!

ok,try to crack it seems to be big humbug^^ ...heat'n'pop works,but not without hard damage on the thin female shoulders

I worked with a few of the older DC female figure, and the arms could just pop out like the current Marvel Legends female figures. Just dunk them in very hot water and do your best to pop them out without breaking the shoulder ring.

The most recent DC female I worked on was New 52 Batgirl, and that was simply heat 'n pop.

http://www.figurerealm.com/topic?topicid=9101

Having owned several of these types of figures it took me a while before I realized the entire torso was made from the softer plastic and not the hard, rigid kind, you wouldn't be able to crack it open anyway, so no use trying that option. I have found that on certain figures the arms are more difficult to remove than on others, but usually that just means you have to heat them up for longer period of time. If you're still concerned about tearing the arm out of the shoulder joint (more heat will soften the plastic more and increase the likelihood of a tear) I've used a regular pair of pliers, just get a firm, tight grasp of the shoulder and pop the arm out, I've never had any issues with the pliers leaving teeth marks, you can continue to heat the top of the arm if you want and any marks that were there should disappear fairly quickly. Anyway, that's been my experience and I'm not guaranteeing it will be the same for everyone, but with those figures, heat and pop is your only option.

thanks guys! yeah,while drilling holes into the torso I had to realise that it's really one piece and this couldn't be the way^^ I boiled it in water really long (4 minutes) and the ring was still very stiff and been left in the torso while the shoulder itself tore out think I can fix it,but this has to be better next time btw it's a dcd brightest day jade and she's going to be a classic jill valentine

Check our tutorial section, you'll find lots of useful info there http://www.figurerealm.com/customtutorial

The forearm/elbow on female MLs is just a swivel-hinge, you can pop it off with basic heat-n-pop as if it were any normal swivel.

If you want to switch the legs at the thigh swivel, it's also a basic heat-n-pop, but if you want to swap the hip piece too then you have to crack the body.

You can also just crack the hip pieces instead of the lower torso, and swap them out that way, but I find that usually just makes a mess, and it's harder to patch/repair than if you just crack the torso.

Pretty much everything Dr. Nightmare said, only thing I have to add is that the legs may not swap out at the thigh swivel and to use the Mockingbird legs on the Capt. Marvel bod you may either have to do some modification to the joint, or have no option other than cracking open the lower torso. A couple months ago I decided I wanted to add a bit of height to an extra 3-pack Ms. Marvel figure and thought the best and easiest option would be to swap them out for the legs from an Allfather Scarlet Witch (plus giving a more "classic" late 70s/early 80s look with the heels), but no dice since the joint assemblies on the figures didn't match. You can try it first since it's the easiest option.

Ok so for the elbow I just pull on it until it pops off? 'Cause there isn't a pin to be removed as with the double hinged joint male figure have.

Also, I changed my base figure so I no longer have to to swap the whole legs, I can just swap the lower legs, so that's a problem solved (good thing too 'cause I'm really terrified of craking things open!).

Make sure you heat up the plastic with a hair dryer before you pull on it.

Also make sure you heat up the elbow joint long enough to where the plastic becomes relatively soft, it should not take TOO much effort to pull out.

Yeah I managed to do it. Looks like I needed to put a little bit more strength behind it, or I hadn't heated enough the first time I tried. Thanks guys.

After doing it a few times you should get a feel for how long the joint should be heated, the thicker the part, the longer it will take. Anyway, those elbow joint pegs are made out of a harder plastic and there's less of a chance of damaging them if you don't use quite enough heat, BUT figures that have a separate shoulder ball and upper arm assembly need to be heated up adequately because the peg on the shoulder piece is made of the same soft plastic and will tear/rip off if you use too much force to disassemble the joint, especially on female figures since the pegs are smaller.