The Ashtaron was always one of my favorite 1/144 scale kits, but the kits Atomic Scissors the two large claws that serve as his weapons) had problems from the beginning. First of all the joints were plastic on plastic, which meant that after a few foldings, the joints became loose. Second, they could only turn along one axis which severely limited their range motion; the scissors could move only up or down. So I set out to fix both of these problems.
The first thing I did was remove the ends of the scissors arms where the joints were. Then using some sheet plastic, I made replacements for the pieces I had just removed, however, I made the pieces to accommodate a small polycap. I placed a polycap on each side of each arm where the old plastic joint was, so that now, instead of one plastic "elbow", the arms had two polycaps it its place. I then joined the two polycaps on both elbows of each arm with a small segment of the parts tree. Now the arms could rotate at each joint as well as fold together.
Next,
I made extensions for the half-sized top links of the arms to
make them as long as the other two sections. After this was done,
I then had to reposition the peg inside the black pods that held
the scissor arms, to accommodate the longer extension. When
folded, the scissors now stick out a millimeter or so, but that's
acceptable for the new articulation. Finally, just because I was
working on him anyway, and because I had a spare set of small
ball-in-socket joints, I gave Ashtaron's front skirt armor better
joints as well, allowing the armor to move like the 1/100 scale
kits.
