Anatomy of a repair: Sagr's Tail, Part 1

I recently wrote up a post about repairing Breyer Horses, which motivated me to do some repairs on my own horses. Many of them have broken over the years - I was not very careful with them when I was a kid! They were not collectibles to me at that time, they were just my favorite toys.

I went digging through my storage boxes until I found this poor fellow. This is Sagr, from the Black Stallion Returns set. (I still have the Black Stallion, but I have long since lost the third horse from the set, Johar.)

As you can see, he has tragically suffered from a broken tail. Which is not very surprising, given the strange upheld stance of this particular model's tail. I would almost be surprised if it hadn't broken over the years.

Each kind of break presents its own problems. With a leg, the challenge is to find a way to balance the horse on the leg so that it can set properly, without taking too much weight and falling off. In this case, the challenge will be to find a way to prop up the tail while it sets. I can already tell that the tail will want to fall right off after it's set.

The first hurdle was to find a way to get rid of the Krazy Glue. Long ago, I attempted to fix Sagr's tail with Krazy Glue. As you may already have learned (either through research, or through personal experience), Krazy Glue will not hold a broken Breyer together.

Breyer Horses aren't actually made from plastic. They are made from cellulose acetate, which is a kind of resin made from plant fibers. This means that glue won't stick to it. However, it also means that you can melt the plastic slightly with nail polish remover, and squish the two parts back together.

For more detailed instructions on this process, click here to read my original post.

Either through age or because Krazy Glue won't stick to Breyers, I was able to pick off most of the glue residue with my fingernail. I removed the stubborn remnants by gently scraping the cut with a nail file.

Now that the break had been cleaned, I went looking for a bottle of nail polish. In my original post I cautioned you to use only fresh nail polish. I can now re-verify that you don't want to use old nail polish. I tried dabbing a bit from an old bottle onto the break, using a cotton swab, and it simply didn't do anything.

Poor Sagr will have to remain tail-less for a little while longer!