The elephant in the room!

 So, I was asked if I could fix an old bobble head elephant figure. I said 'probably'. I envisioned  being handed a medium sized cardboard box containing elephant bits.

Instead I was asked to come out to the car to inspect the elephant bits. In the back of an SUV was a very large elephant head, torso and a couple other bits.

It seems I like a challenge. The elephant parts were transferred to my SUV and home it all went for inspection.

Here he is.

He is an antique figure made of felt covered papier mache. He was probably a store display.

This is his main problem. The piece that has hooks to hang his head from has come out.

Fortunately that piece was one of the bits that was handed over to me.

It gets glued securely in place.

Then it is on to repairing the raggedy areas where felt is coming away and the papier mache is shredding.

While I figure out how to repair this type of damage I amuse myself by contemplating this pachyderm's head movement.

This big guy has another problem in that his whole left ear is missing. There is a hole in his head near the missing ear too.

It may be hard to make out but here I have glued cardboard under the hole. This will support the new papier mache. Just south of that is some new paper mache that I applied to repair a raggety area.

After some experimenting, I am making progress on a new ear. This is made with a wire mesh base covered in paper mache. Then wool felt is glued onto the paper mache.

It needs lots of antiquing still, but this could work!

Getting there.....

Finally Big Guy is done!

He shows off his new left ear.

And then....he leaves.