Celluloid doll issues

This doll is made from celluloid and needs restringing.

Her face is grimy but quite beautiful.

She has a skull fracture that needs repairing.

She has a foot fracture that was taped up quite a while ago. The tape is hardened and yellow.

Her stringing is a bit complicated in that the ends of the elastics are buried inside the fragile limbs.
When these dolls were originally strung, a toggle was attached to the ends of the elastic and just pushed into the hole in the limbs. There is no way to retrieve the toggles without risking damaging the fragile celluloid.

So I start by removing the tape from the broken foot.
This reveals the original fracture.....and that fracture is big enough to retrieve the elastic toggle from that limb.

Here is the toggle that the factory used.

Using this type of toggle now is not workable.

Celluloid stiffens and gets brittle with time. There is no flexibility anymore and this toggle will not fit into the teeny holes in the limbs.

This is a very simple type of toggle but it at least will fit into that tiny hole.

The skull fracture gets welded together. Acetone melts celluloid so with careful applications, it will weld the broken celluloid by melting it across the breaks.

The foot fractures are also welded.

Ready to go home.....

Hard plastic repair

This poor doll has some obvious problems with her lower leg.
Typical of many plastic dolls, her head, limbs and torso seem to be made from different types of plastic. This might be the result of different batches of plastic being used at the factory to make the parts. Perhaps the different parts were made at different factories and they all had their own recipe for mixing plastic.

Anyhow, this doll's head is a softer plastic and her limbs are a hard plastic.

The first thing I do is stabilize the remaining plastic bits by spreading an epoxy paste inside over all the cracks.

And then the missing bits get slowly reconstructed with layers of epoxy paste over a mesh base.

It is a really slow process.
Each new layer has to dry 24+ hours.

Well, she looks better?

Vintage doll eye issues....again!

Well, after a run of stuffed animals to repair I am back to dolls. And so, we have again, eye issues of 1950's and '60's dolls.

Here is a vinyl/hard plastic doll that has arrived for her cloudy eyes.

Here is a look at her eyes.
They are definitely not the healthiest looking eyes.

So, off with her head and out with her eyes.

Here is one of her eyes.
Yikes!
There is rust everywhere. The canister of these eyes are metal. perhaps she had a bath or two in her life to account for the rust?

Here is one eyeball opened up.
I will remove rust and do some deep cleaning and see if I can salvage these eyes.

This is the inside of the eye. It is supposed to be clear to let light through. That white stuff may be leached plasticizer. Whatever it is, it needs to be cleaned off if these eyes can be salvaged.

Isopropyl alcohol is one of the best cleaners for plastic,
So with lots of that and some scrubbing, the eye  is translucent again.

Here, the white part (conjunctiva) of the one eye has been repainted. The rust has been removed from the shell and the whole eyeball has been reassembled.

A bit of a contrast to the other eye that is still in it's original state.

Looking better?

Her big sister also needs an eye refreshment.

Her eyes are constructed a bit differently but are equally rusted. At least there is no plasticizer to clean off.

With the same sort of cleaning and painting....she looks better too.
She also got her mouth repainted.

Stuffed monkey repairs.

This is 'George Bananas'.
He has arrived for repairs and refreshing.

He has had so much loving his fur is worn away in large spots and he has a good sized hole.
He will need some fur grafts to cover the worn areas.

First, George gets unstuffed.
His stuffing has been compacted and wadded up quite a bit over the years. It will get washed, re-fluffed and put back.
The bag contains plastic pellets that were in his paws to weight them. They will get put back when George completes his repairs.

George gets a bath and then stretches out to dry.
He seems to have made a new monkey friend?

Then George takes a few road trips to look for a suitable piece of fur for his needed fur grafts.
George is about 15 years old and his fur has seen lots of loving.
A perfect match is next to impossible but hopefully some fur will be found that will suit his lovable persona.

How about this one?
It is not the same texture or sheen but it is in the same shades of brown.

Or how about this fur? It's texture is closer to George's but the colour is a bit lighter.

He has had eye transplants already. No more chipped eyes.

George shows off his new fur grafts.
His stuffing has been plumped up and topped up so he looks perkier.

If George doesn't want to show off his fur grafts he can always wear a sweater.....

George is getting ready for his journey back home.