Teddy bear repairs

 This is Teddy.

He has some issues with his.....well his crotch?

One of his paw pads needs work.

One ear has tears.

And his nose needs a bit of work.

So, Teddy gets dismantled for his repairs.

He has a simple twisted wire joint between his legs.

Progress?

Yes!

Back together.

He just needs some antiquing of his new paw pad and some embroidery of his nose and claws now.

Time to go home.

A carved hair Schoenhut girl

 

This 16" doll has arrived to try and restore her original beauty.

She has had a lot of previous 'work' done.

It might be hard to tell from this picture but her body has been totally repainted and then varnished or shellacked. 

So I start removing overpaint. 

The pinkish paint getting exposed is original paint.

Here is her head with the first layer of overpaint removed on her left.

The pink is a gesso type material. The white is a filler. There are a few areas with other coloured fillers too.

She has had quite the repair history it seems!

I cannot identify any original paint on her head.

The layers of paint and gesso have hidden alot of the carved detail.

Eventually all the overpaint and deteriorated gesso get removed.

One of this doll's problems was a floppy, loose head.

Contributing to this was a chunk of wood missing from the neck socket in the body.

There was also a chunk of wood missing from the bottom of the head.

These missing areas will get filled in with epoxy.

She arrived with a crooked and crudely modeled replacement thumb. That is being redone.

Her head is looking good even though it needs more contouring and fussing......

Her thumb is done and painted to match the other digits.

Another Schoenhut doll!

 

This lovely doll is one of Schoenhut's bigger models at 21".

She has arrived to get her floppy arms fixed and to get a few facial touchups.

If you look closely at about 2 o'clock you can see a speck of blue.

This doll once had blue eyes!

Once her head comes off, the cause of her floppy arms becomes clear.

She is missing the compression springs and hooks from both her shoulders.

Someone has rigged up a different spring system to replace the missing bits. When you look int the neck of these dolls you are supposed to see interlaced hooks. You are not supposed to see a shiny expansion spring like this.

Here is the spring someone used.

It probably would have worked OK if it was shorter/tighter?

Here I have made my best approximation of the original factory hardware.

It is a compression spring around a wire/hook. 

This will be duplicated in the other arm and then the 2 hooks meet inside the body to hold the arms in place.

With a simple cleaning, the doll's original blue eyes emerge!

And then she gets a wee bit of filler followed by some paint.

A 3 octave Schoenhut piano

 

This 2 ft high piano has 3 octaves worth of keys. Many Schoenhut pianos have only white keys functioning and the black keys are just painted on. But this piano has actual working black keys!

Well, they once worked.....

It likely dates from 1900-1920

Inside we see how this piano gets both it's white and black keys functioning.

It has 2 levels of chimes.

The bottom level is worked by the white keys and the top level is worked by the black keys.

This is a back view.

Of course, this piano only has a few functioning keys now. All the rest are broken or askew.

And so, I start dismantling the poor thing.

First the top layer of chimes is removed in a cloud of dust and 100yo grime.

Most of the keys are loose and have had a previous odd repair with a pin. So the keys get removed too. This reveals ancient dust bunnies!

The hammers are made of cardboard coated with cloth. The cloth forms the hinge.

Many of the cardboard bits are bent and much of the cloth is deteriorating.

So the cardboard and cloth bits will be replaced.

The chimes are supported by twine. The red twine is original and has mostly deteriorated. The beige twine got added at some point during a previous repair.

Both bits of twine will be replaced and the filthy chimes will be cleaned.

The keys are hinged with a piece of cloth that goes from a grooved piece of wood on the body of the piano to a groove on the underside of each key.

Only 2 keys still have their original cloth hinges and they are not in great shape. So all the hinges will be replaced by stiffened duck cloth.

That involves digging out old glue and mangled cloth from every groove.

Vinegar painted on the offending glue blob will soften it and aid in removal. 

Here is one key with it's new duck cloth hinge about to get inserted into it's place. 

Now to do this a few dozen more times...

Here is one of the hammer set-ups getting dismantled.

Ok...maybe I should have taken more pictures.

But here is the refreshed piano.

It even has a matching stool.

Still another Schoenhut doll....

 

This is a 14" Schoenhut doll who has some obvious paint issues.

Much of the paint in the facial area has dried out and is crumbling off the wood.

Removing the failing paint leaves her looking like this.

And then, putting back some paint and giving her a wig leaves her looking like this.