HOW TO SERIES vol 1 Shortening a McFarlane Figure Neck Pig

First in what will be an ongoing series of HOW-TO videos, this one, a brief description and demo of how I reduced the length/height of a fairly standard McFarlane figure neck pig/post/peg, dumbbell looking part! Please click "more" for a more detailed explanation of the operation below!

I did not have a spare figure with the unaltered neck piece intact that I had not reworked yet, so forgive the lack of live demo of drilling out that specific part, but the dremeling of the neck post pieces themselves are a straightforward affair. And, unless you have a small vice, to hold the small, plastic pieces, you have to hold them in your fingers, and dremel. That sounds scary, but it is easy if you understand a couple of things before you start.

One: This is important, the plastic of the head ball will heat and can melt as you dremel, so if you use a regular drill bit, a straight shaft with only the front end for drilling, then the small parts might stick to the shaft as they melt and grab the whole operation out of your hand. Sort of yank it suddenly and with the drill bit lodged into the very small, now compromised part. SO, what I do is use a small diameter (matching the diameter of wire being used to reinforce the piece) grinding bit, with only a small section of grinding surface, on a small ball shaped tip, to drill with.
This allows for the bit of melting, and if you take your time, and push it in small increments at a time, you can make a hole as deep as you need, and hold it by hand without need of a vice. The only thing you do between presses is take the now melt covered bit tip out, trim it clean with a razor knife, and reinsert and go deeper. Remove, trim tip, reinsert, etc., until you get the depth you need.
You then superglue gel the segment of trimmed paperclip wire into the newly made hole, as far as it will go, leaving a little extra wire to go into the other part of the pig. Also, Insta Set the glue so it sets faster, and lets you move on.

Two: ALWAYS dremel and add wire to the removed head ball part first, so you can handle it better, and so you can set it into the now shortened pig neck piece that you also dremel.
The middle "neck" of the pig is as hard or harder to dremel due to it's narrower diameter, so take your time, use the technique described above in Tip 1, and dremel as deep as you think you need for proper reinforcement. In the ball step, if you leave a bit of extra wire sticking out, for adjustment, you can always snip off some to properly fit the hole made in the pig neck. Always allow yourself extra wire sticking out of the ball for this purpose. It keeps you in control.

Three: Once fitted, superglue gel the remaining wire into the neck, and InstaSet. Once that sets and dries off, you can apply some extra superglue to the edges of your join, so as to help support and reinforce the join.

And that's it! Reinsert the larger neck ball into the open neck, (using hot water to heat the open receptical part of the neck) then reheat and pop the heated head back down onto the upper, smaller, now re-positioned head ball, and VOILA! You are done!

Hope this helps those in need!
Les