Primrose gets her head back on

 

This is Primrose.

She has arrived to get her head reattached.

Her head has glue bits around the neck.

Primrose's head is made of what is often called 'painted bisque'.

But it is not bisque. Bisque is a hard fired porceain.

This is an unfired clay material.

At some point it has been broken and the pieces glued back together.

From all the dried glue bits on the outside of the neck and the inside of the socket.....it looks like the repaired head was just glued into the socket?

Because the head material is thin and not too strong looking, I reinforce it inside the neck with an epoxy putty.

After the neck area gets some fill and touch up paint, Primrose gets restrung.

And redressed.

Tito....the well loved vinyl doll

 

This is Tito.

He is a well loved vinyl doll who has arrived to get a new body and to get some vinyl repairs done.

He has had many repairs done on his body which has included a couple recoverings.

The white stuff is acne cream.

Tito was being treated with that to get rid of stains on his vinyl and indeed, many of them have gone.

He has a wee tear under his right eye.

He has a large crack across his head that has had a previous glue job. But that glue did not hold and the crack is open again.

3 missing fingers on this hand.

A missing index finger.

And a previously glued crack on one foot. The glue is failing here too as part of the crack has opened again.

This is Tito after one layer of cloth body is removed. 

And this is Tito's original body.

There have been some impressive mending jobs done to this body!

This is his original body dismantled.

One way to duplicate a cloth body is to pattern the new body from the original pieces.

From the raggedy pieces comes patterns.

Tito's new body.

Tito's head split is fused and he has ten fingers again.

Tito gets dressed and gets to have a little fun before he heads home......

Peter Rabbit

 

Peter has arrived to get his feet fixed and to do something with the fraying of his lefts pants leg.

His pants.

His feet.

Peter's furry bits are made of real rabbit fur.

The problem with fur (and sheepkin too) is that it can dry out over time and start shredding.

Peter's feet are shredding.

Even one arm is starting to break down. This spot should be able to get glued back together.

Peter's fur is a creamy colour. Not pure white like new pelts. So matching colours with a new pelt for patching or re-making his feet will be next to impossible.

So, Peter gets new feet made of a cream coloured wool very similar to his torso.

And then he gets some furry anklets made from the shards of his old feet.

While his overalls were off, they got reinforced and resewn to hide most of the frayed area.

Peter is ready to go home.

Hard plastic mechanical doll

 

This is a small hard plastic doll made by the British company 'Roddy'.

This particular doll is a 'yes-no doll' which meant it had a button on the front that nodded it's head and a button on the back that shook it's head 'no'.

It has arrived in pieces.

The only way to access the internal mechanism is to split the torso.

And this is what is left of the mechanism.

The front push button is still present but the apparatus has broken off of it's mount.

The back push button is missing but a spring is floating around that was likely part of that mechanism.

The first step is to epoxy the front push button and it's mount back in place

Then I have to figure out how to recreate a push button that utilizes that spring to make the head say 'no'.

After a few attempts with various scavenged bits, I find a piece of Lego and 2 bits of wire that makes it work!

But, once I find my gizmo works, I don't want to take it apart for a picture.....

so you just get completed repair pictures :-D

And then a video of it working!

 

A Reliable Composition Doll

 

This is a composition and cloth doll made by Reliable, a Canadian doll maker.

She doesn't look too bad?

But, she has some significant paint lifting and cracking in the facial area.

The only way of repairing this is to remove the lifting paint and then repainting the bare areas.

She has lifting and missing paint on her limbs too. A couple of partial finger amputations.

Her cloth body is not in bad shape other than some repairs at the shoulder seams.

The first step is usually decapitation.

Followed by a total separation of all her parts.

Here we have her head after all the lifting and warped paint has been removed.

Not much left!

All her parts have now been stripped of lifting paint.

Next is filling in any defects and rebuilding a couple fingers.

While her composition bits get filled and primed, her wig gets styled.

First, a comb out.

Mohair gets quite fluffy after a comb out!

Filling and priming are done so she is ready to get her skin tone applied.

She has her skin tone applied and her newly curled wig attached. That is quite the hair!

These dolls would have been sold wearing a dress and bonnet. Only some of those curls would have been visible.

Hard plastic doll repairs

 

This is a little hard plastic doll who likely dates from the 1950's.

She has had some artwork done on her face and is missing her eyelashes.

She is missing one thumb and one finger.

To give support for the new digits, pins are epoxied in.

Then new digits get sculpted out of epoxy clay.

After a facial cleansing and new eyelashes, she tries out a new wig. This is actually a vintage Saran wig.

Then she is ready to go home.

She even foiund a 'new' pair of shoes.