Celluloid doll repair

This is a very large celluloid doll who has arrived to get it's arm fixed.

The inside of the arm that holds the elastic has broken out.

This is the other arm showing how the broken area used to look.
Recreating this in the broken arm will take some inventiveness!

After plan #1 with a metal washer was not working out, I have arrived at plan #2.
This involves using the bottom cut out of a plastic bottle with a hole drilled into it, a plastic washer from the hardware store and the toggle that the previous handy-person had used on the doll.

The altered bottle bottom gets epoxied into the arm.

Once the epoxy adhesive is cured, epoxy sculpting clay can reshape the socket.

The toggle and washer get put back on to the end of the elastic and then, with breath held, The elastic knot and toggle get stuffed into the new socket.

It worked!

Restringing a Gotz doll

This is a Gotz doll who has arrived for re-stringing.

Her elastic has lost it's sprung and she is very floppy.

Here is the elastic as it goes into her head.

And here is the elastic as it goes into one of her limbs.

Once you heat the area with a hairdryer to soften the plastic it is easier to extract the bits.
The limb insert looks like this once extracted.

And the head bits look like this.

Here she is deconstructed.
She has new elastic in place ready to attach her head and legs.

All done and hair combed.

An unusual early composition doll

This doll arrived in a ziplock bag.
He is leaking sawdust from many areas.

He has an interesting composition head on a cloth body with composition lower arms.

He is likely from the early 1900's.

He has a sheepskin wig glued over molded and painted hair. The wig looks original to him.

His head is split up both sides.

I don't want to remove the wig as it is solidly glued and old sheepskin is fragile.  So I shall have to fix his head while working around the wig.

Wood glue gets injected into the cracked head seam and he gets clamped.

Then epoxy putty is used to fill in crevices and mold a replacement corner of his shoulderplate that was missing.

The repaired seams get painted to blend in with the existing finish.

It is hard to see in the photos but he has original black features painted around his mouth and nose. Were they meant to depict facial hair?

The cloth of his original body was shredding so he has a new body covering. His original sawdust was saved and put back.

Then he gets an outfit made of antique and vintage fabrics.

1950's walking doll

This is 'Sweet Sue'. She is a walking doll from the 1950's.
She has some issues.

She has lost her walking action and part of the problem is a split in her plastic body.

She has other splits in her plastic too. All the splits are along seam lines.

Her wig is a mess and is falling off her head. Her head is coated with old dark glue.

Wig off.....lots of icky glue left behind.

Admittedly an undignified pose but the splits in her torso are now fixed with epoxy and are starting to get painted.

Now she is multi-tasking by trying on a potential outfit while having her hair done.

And then she is done.
Splits fixed. Walking mechanism works.
And, she is suitably coiffed and garbed.

Little Miss No-Name

Here is a doll from the 1960's made by Hasboro.
She was called Little Miss No-name and was not a great seller at the time.

She has arrived to be spruced up.

Someone, at some point, had decided she needed more eyeliner and applied DIY makeup.
She originally had a removable acrylic teardrop under her left, eye. You can see the hole that it was inserted into.

Her dress is not original but does suit her.

A good scrubbing and a new teardrop leaves her looking like this.

A Schoenhut doll's chipped paint

This doll has been well played with. She is missing her wig and has many dents and dings.

How much to fix her dents is always a debatable  question.
I like an old toy to show it's age and history.

But, in my opinion, this doll's face can benefit from some plastic surgery.
I am not going to touch the dents on her body.

Plastic surgery is complete.

Vintage vinyl problems again

This doll has arrived for a clean up and a hairdo.

She has a vinyl head and vinyl arms attached to a magic skin body.
Her vinyl is showing some signs of aging in that it is sticky with leaching plasticizer.

Here she is with one side of her face cleaned of the plasticizer and dirt.

One foot cleaned.

After a bath and a comb out.

Into the curlers now......

While she is waiting for her 'do to set, I can repair a rip in her magic skin.

Ready to go home.

Old glue-laden wigs

Here is another German bisque headed doll who has arrived for a spruce-up.
She needs something done to improve her wig and her right shoulder needs to be secured....it is hanging by just a few threads.

The mohair that makes her wig is very sparse. It is rock-hard on the top of her head. Someone used a very liberal amount of glue on this wig!
When you try to remove a glued on wig you moisten the edges with water and wait a bit and hope that the glue used was water soluble.
Patience and little dabs of water.....

and this was the result.
A glue-crusted creation that is not a traditional wefted wig.

This is the remnants of a top-knot wig where a clump of mohair was stuffed into a hole on top of the head and then glued down and styled. This particular wig had some DIY repairs that involved lots more glue and some interesting cotton lattice across the inside.
Once the glue gets soaked out and the mohair gets combed out there only a few small clumps of mohair to salvage.

This is the inside of a different top-knot wig.

It is almost identical to what this doll's original wig started as....but it is a bit too big for her and it does need some styling.

And, being a top-knot wig it is also laden with glue.
It really cannot be worked on without getting rid of the glue. So, into the bowl of water it goes.....
And out of the bowl of water comes several clumps of mohair that can be remade into a topknot wig that fits.

Here is her 'new' wig getting curled.
The mohair from her original wig was incorporated into this one and her original cardboard pate was used again.