I'm not dead, just lazy.

Please forgive my absence and accept this photograph of the new lower leg I was working on.

I'm still working on my paper babies, I've just been working on other non-paper projects too. I'll get back to paper soon.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program.

For this part I'm going to cover the knee joints, beware that for this part you're going to need some very advanced tools, and some very specific techniques, for this part of the figure you'll need to "Eyeball" it.

That's right the guaranteed way to make sure things kinda-sorta match.... When you squint.

So let's begin.

First, you're going to need the thigh that we just made... Or more specifically, you're going to need the paper tube that we rolled up and put inside the thigh.

This tube provides support for the leg exterior and also acts as a point of insertion and rotation for the knee joints.... And it minimizes the amount of work you'll be doing on the next steps a little.

Next you need to draw out the individual pieces for the joint. I'm going with a double joint because I like my action figures to be able to do action poses.

As you can see, one looks like a jelly Bean and the other one looks like the head of a blow dryer. Now cut them out and trace them... After you poke a hole through those nice little black dots.

Like this.

Then this.

Now, from here you have a few options. The jelly Bean piece is the center part of the joint. You can either trace them all individually, scan it into Photoshop and copy/paste, or you can trace it on to a large enough scrap, fold it and cut it that way. 

I went with the fold and cut. It'd take time to boot up the computer, scan it, and copy paste. That's too much time wasted. Gimme my pencil and my scissors, and don't forget that needle tool.

(Don't forget to poke the holes)

Once you've done this an ungodly amount of times and have a satisfactory number of parts, get the glue.

My method for the joints has always been 3-6-3, meaning; the outside parts, the dryer heads, are half the number of the jelly Bean piece. I tried making them even all the way through ONCE and it ended with the joint splitting. 

So this is how it works, look at the pipe in the thigh and in the calve, if you have one... Which you should. This is where the eyeballing comes in because you need to figure out how many layers will fit. In this case the "measurements" are 3 outside-6 inside-3 outside.

So take the parts and glue them with their matches. I like to test them once they dry to see how they fit.

Like this.

Also, you're not done.

In order for the finished joint to fit together and function properly, you need 6 little wedges (or however many layers you have for the jelly Bean, the wedge has to be equal to it). The wedge goes at the bottom of the dryer heads and helps support them, because it won't work otherwise... I've tried.  

Oh, and you're going to need.... About 21 more dryer heads. It takes six to make ONE HALF of ONE knee joint. So once that's done, and you've cut and glued together the wedges, glue the wedge to one half of the dryer head and let it dry. And repeat with the other piece.

It should look like this. Now repeat this three more times for the lower leg, and the other leg. You only need two of the jelly beans in total. 

This is what one joint setup should look like. Parts in total: 12 dryer heads, 12 wedges, and 6 jelly beans. At least for this particular figure, it always changes depending on scale of the figure and the thickness of the knee. 

Here it is all smooshed together for a test fit. Also notice, the dryer heads are too big at the point of connection. I had to trim the down so they didn't hit each other on a rotation.. eyeballing, sometimes it works, sometimes it almost works.

All the parts for leg two......

And we're going to move onto how to connect them. I've considered many things. Railroad screws like those used on model trains, wire, paperclips, etc. 

But there's a problem with using metal. Metal rusts. And when metal rusts, it tends to rub off on it's fellow surfaces. Now I personally would prefer that my figures not develop a rust orange tan. So what do we use? The amazing, non-staining, never rusting: 

Toothpick. 

Yep, this little bad boy is my pin of choice on a paper action figure joint. 

Personally I don't recommend dollar store toothpicks, as one container has a varying range of quality and stability. Go big on this and buy your toothpicks somewhere fancy, like Walmart.

(I also like to take a ten minute break to build a cat. It's very soothing)

Back to business, you want the toothpick to pass through twelve (or so) layers of paper, this is hard and it takes a little bit of finessing sometimes. But remember that hole in the piece? Take your needle tool and push it GENTLY through again. It'll take some finessing for that too, and if the toothpick still won't fit take and x-acto blade and thin it out CAREFULLY (if you are under the age of 18, ask a parent for help, and don't sue me). You don't have to carve it, just give it a little shave. 

If it works, trim the toothpick to fit (wear protective goggles, toothpick trimmings can fly) and glue around the outside where you cut it.

It should look something like this.

And function like this.

Thank you all for sticking around and waiting for the next post so patiently. I really appreciate it, and I'm sorry it took so long to get it up here. Next post might be on ankles.... Or feet... Maybe calves..... You'll see when I figure it out. 

Happy (late) New Year everyone!