A broken baby

 

This doll has arrived.

She is a vintage bisque head doll who has met with a grievous injury.

Most of her bits have arrived. Apparently some were in smithereens and were not saved.

Step one is to glue the pieces together.

That reveals where the missing pieces came from.

With bigger defects I like to put a in a base to support the sculpting epoxy. This is a small piece of automotive mesh that I have glued under the hole.

A detailed Schoenhut doll's restoration

 

This doll has arrived to be restored.

She did not always look like this. She had a total head repaint when her owner bought her. 

She once looked like this.

This is Schoenhut's model 105.

She had been repainted but did not look like she should.

So, off came the repaint!

Here she is part way through the repaint removal.

Sometimes, when removing repaint, you find nice original paint underneath.

Unfortunately this was not the case here.

There is little original paint left.

A celluloid doll with eye issues

 

This doll has arrived to address her missing eye. It hopefully is not missing. Something is rattling around inside her head. We shall hope it is her eye and it is not broken. The eyes are glass.

There are glue remnants around the remaining eye. According to her history, her eyes were repaired before.

She was made by the German company Schildkrot. She is made of celluloid.

On further inspection I find some cracks in her legs. Someone already has had a go at the cracks as there is lots of glue residue along them.

Happiness!

Once the doll's head is removed, out pops the missing eye......intact!

The curved widget is the piece that sits inside her head to string it to the body.

Here is a view inside her head. I have to re-glue the loose eyeball into the socket. But, my fingers are not long enough to position the eyeball.

I need an eye holding tool.

A bit of wire gets bent into an odd shape.

This shape will hold the eyeball as I insert it into the socket.

I use a few dabs of tacky glue on the socket. It is water soluable so, if I mess up, I can reverse the installation with water.

Success!

As the old glue holding the eyes is aging and weakening I added a layer of epoxy around each eyeball inside the head to hold them in more securely.

Her legs were more troublesome.

Normally broken bits of celluloid can be fused together with acetone. But, the previous repair and the old glue remnants were not letting that happen. So, I elected to use tinted epoxy to fill in the cracks. She has scars which could be filled/sanded/painted to disguise them. But she has clothes that will hide the scars. They will remain as is.

Ready to go home.