Monkey Reberdeen gets some major renovations!

 

This is 'Monkey Reberdeen'.

He dates from the late 1960's.

He has arrived to get a new furcoat.

 

His current coat shows many signs of wear and has been mended many times.

He has lots of holes that reveal some interesting stuffing.

One shoe has a hole.

And even his mouth has a hole.

Monkey Reberdeen has been very well loved!

Monkey gets unstuffed....that is most of his stuffing in the box.

Then his coat gets taken apart so it can be a pattern for his new coat.

His broken shoe starts getting repaired with tinted epoxy.

While his shoe gets mended, Monkey goes shopping for fur to make his new coat.

How about this fur?

Or this one?

While Monkey mulls over his fur coat choices, his shoe repair gets done. 

His mouth tears have been fixed with that same epoxy that his shoe got. With a different tint of course.

Making a pattern for monkey's new coat takes a bit of inventiveness and knowledge of typical pattern shapes as there are large pieces of his original coat that are missing.

This is what is left of his chest piece.

And this is the original shape of that piece.

Monkey Reberdeen's new fur coat is done......he seems to be showing it off to a new friend?

Vinyl doll body and eye issues

 

This is 'Cathy'. She has arrived to get a new cloth body and some eye repairs.

Her body once had a voicebox which has been long lost. She is also stuffed with foam.

The plan is to delete the opening in her back and replace her foam with polyester fibrefill. Foam degenerated with time and Cathy's foam already has developed hard crusty areas.

There is a lot of glue residue along the top of her forehead.

One eye does not open and close well. The other eye is missing it's lashes.

Out come her eyes......lots of rust!

Inside the one eyeball are the missing eyelashes :-)

The rusty bits will soak in vinegar for a while and then get a good scrub.

Fortunately this rust is just on the surface and has not weakened the metal.

She is starting to look better once her eyes are fixed and replaced. She has also had the forehead glue removed and a hairbrushing.

Her body gets dismantled to use as a pattern for her new body.

Oh the fun of sewing vinyl to cloth!

It needed two tries to sew the body with a big enough opening to fit Cathy's huge head inside :-)

But finally her head is sewn into the body. Now her head has to be extracted from the body and then the limbs get sewn in.

Limbs are in. New stuffing is in.

Cathy is ready to go home.

A bag of plastic dolls

 

A bag of sad dolls has arrived to see if they are salvagable.

They are a variety of 1950's dolls.

First out of the bag is Betsy Wetsy.

She has a hard plastic head on a vinyl body.

This doll was made so you could put a bottle of water in her mouth. The water came out of holes near her eyes and near her bottom making her look like she was crying and wetting.

Her main issue is her eyes. That white stuff is reaching plasticizer.

Off comes her head....this is the head's inside view.

There is rust everywhere.

This is not too surprising given the doll was made to have water flowing around inside her now and then.

Besty Wetsy ads often show the doll getting bathed.....another water source to start rust formation.

Rust weakens metal. The spring that holds the eyes steady has already weakened and is non-functional. If I pry the metal clamp off it's mount to fix the eye mechanism I could cause more damage.

So let's leave the eyes in and see what can be done without removing them.

Here is Betsy with a new set of eyelashes.

The eylashes help hold her eyes in a better position and she looks much better.

Next out of the bag is this doll.

Her body is shaped like the magic skin bodies of the 1950's but this one is vinyl.

She needs some eye work too.

Off with her head. It is stuffed.

The inside of her head after the stuffing is removed.

To get her eyes out, I fill her head with boiling water to heat the vinyl, pour out the water and then push the eyeballs out of their sockets by pushing on those blobs in the picture. 

One eye is missing it's lashes and both need tweaks in their pivots but they are in decent shape. No leached plasticizer!

She looks better once her eyes are back in and she is reheaded.