changing hands or arms: likely to crack?

[Cloveapple]

I've seen people mention that taking off a minifigure's hands or arms and putting on new hands or arms can cause cracking. Is that common? And which is more likely to do damage, changing hands or changing arms? Or is it just luck of the draw?

[K-Nut]

All depends on the part. Changing hands don't usually cause cracking for me, though some figures like my 2014 Robin, Batgirl, M.O.D.O.K, and Falcon have all cracked arms without changing out their hands. Arms can crack the torso, but for me it's never been an immediate effect. My main problem with torso's cracking these days is changing out the legs. My Green Arrow, Thorin Oakenshield, Aragorn, and Power Man/Luke Cage figures have all cracked from trying to swap out legs and give them different designs.

Safest thing is to not change anything, but otherwise (by my own personal experience), changing hands works pretty well.

[AmperZand]

It seems that not all the hands are made to exactly the same tolerance. I don't know if it's because they are made in China, but I do have some that are too large to use on some arms. If a hand is too big, I never force it. That's just asking for it to crack the forearm.

I don't have a problem swapping arms. I just rotate the arm back and then gently lever it out using the forearm, not the hand for purchase. I then ease the replacement arm in. The trick is to slowly ease arms in/out, not snap them in place. There's a thread on this forum, I think, with more advice on replacing arms.

[Nightstalker]

I've found that a lot of the CMF parts or battle pack (example being the recent Castle line) parts are more prone to crack. As for all the other parts, I rarely run into that problem.

[Slegengr]

If you had asked this question pre-2000, I would say that the swaps are not likely to cause cracking, though it does cause increased stress on the parts. I have very few arms cracked from my childhood collection from the 90's, which suffered considerable play. Some torsos cracked, but not very many.

Now, though, the plastic that LEGO uses seems to be of much cheaper quality and cracks develop even when not expected. My younger brother had a minifigure that obtained cracked arms, torso, and even head just from carrying it in his pocket while wrapped in tissue paper inside a small mint tin! Much more care seems to be needed now than before, but I have changed arms and hands on some newer minifigures without many issues. As long as you are careful, there may not be issues. I would recommend not swapping arms or hands on any particularly valuable minifigures, though.

[Krikkit]

I have only had stress marks on one hand swap. There have been times where some arms were looser, but i put them back.

The hand swap, the pegs were very slightly bigger than the wrists, i found sometimes the flesh ones can be smaller than the non flesh counterparts, but like I said, only once.

If you are concerned, I would personally grab the knock off versions so you don't have to worry... But that is just my preference.

[Living Rave]

I agree with grand duke . Changing hands seems to not be an issue. I do change arms all the time too but once in a while they crack. I think having waaaaay more figures than you need lowers the chance of needing to swap parts. LOL!