An elephant's trunk rehabilitation

 

This is an old toy elephant who has a droopy trunk. He is made of mohair that has become quite sparse. The stuffing in his trunk has shifted over the years and his owner does not like its droopy look.

Under his trunk is a seam. The seam has a gap that looks as if someone has opened it up before. Some sawdust or wood chips are peeking out from the gap. This is the natural place to access his trunk to err.....make it more erect.

The seam is easy to open up as the old thread is suffering from a bit of dry rot and it pops open easily. I find a variety of stuffing in the area.....kapok, sawdust and wood wool. Mostly wood wool. That is most likely what his original stuffing was. It will fill out his trunk and hold it more erect without putting undue stress on his aged mohair and the remaining old thread in the seams. Wood wool is usually called excelsior in North America.

Here I am gently stuffing some wood wool into his trunk, one or two strands at a time until I think he has enough to fill out the trunk but not too much as to stress his old fabric and thread. Then I sew up the opened seam.

It works!

He is a happier elephant now.

Let's count paint layers again.

 We are now counting how many paint layers go on a Schoenhut doll during a restoration.

I sometimes wonder why it takes me so long to do a restoration. I have always assumed that I am slow or, that I get distracted by another project etc. But sometimes, mid restoration in the painting phase, I start wondering how many coats of paint I actually put on. So, I decided to count them!

Here is my test case. A nice model 308 Schoenhut doll. Before I start counting the layers of paint I put on I have to take off all the lingering repaint and the filler from her previous restorations. Then I have to stabilize her remaining original paint and put new filler into the areas where the original paint has gone missing.

Here she is after several days getting all that done. She is ready for paint. I try to keep my repainted areas confined to the filled areas so that as much as possible of her original paint is left exposed. The process is simple. Paint a layer of paint, let it dry at least a day, sand the dried paint and then apply another coat.

Here she is after 5 coats of paint. Sometimes I can sneak 2 coats in one day with no sanding in between but still, 5 coats often takes 4-5 days to put on.

Here she is after 10 coats. The filled areas are starting to fade away put are still visible.

Here she is after 15 coats of paint. I have also been able to get in a few touchups to her eyes. She is getting there!

After a few more coats to her skin to tweak her colour and of course all her facial features and a bit of blush, I declare her done.

Final count for just the skin tone layers.....19

This is one of the easier restorations as she did not need many contour corrections. Those will totally erase any paint I have applied and so the layers all have to start again.

A slow process!