Re-stringing an antique ball-jointed doll.

This is a Gebruder Heubach doll whose head has come off during shipping.

The head is not damaged....why did it come off?

The head was attached by a wire gizmo that looks homemade. The prongs on this gizmo are too short and slip out of the head too easily.
She needs a new stringing attachment for her head that will not let her head come off so easily.

Another issue with this body is that there are no stringing hooks anywhere.
This is not an uncommon finding in old dolls. The original makers did not think about future elastic replacement when they put together some bodies.

Here is what the person who restrung the doll previously did.
The new elastic was tied to the original elastic remnants.

I could do the same and tie new elastic to the original but the original is fragile and may not stand up to being messed with again.
Also, the new elastic I install will disintegrate with time (as all elastic does) and someday this doll will have to be restrung yet again.

So I am going to install stringing hooks in the least invasive way possible.

First, I remove as much of the old elastic as possible so I can install new hooks into the knee and elbow areas.

Sometimes when you do this you see a horizontal nail down inside the limb. This nail was put through the factory elastic to hold it inside the leg when the doll was originally constructed.
If you find a nail like that you can sometimes just maneuver a new hook to catch on to the nail.

But, in this case, there are no nails reachable with a new hook inside these legs or arms.

So, on to the next plan...
Using the smallest drill bit possible in a twist drill, a hole gets drilled though one side of each lower limb.

The drill hole goes through the center of the limb and a bit into the other side.
Now I have horizontal wires to attach hooks to.

Now all the lower limbs have stringing hooks. The small drill holes will get filled and painted to match the finish of the limbs. The holes will be invisible when done.

Here is her old head hook on the left....the one that slipped out of her head way too easily.
I am replacing it with a 'screwgle'....seen on the right. It will provide a more secure attachment. And, since I am not fond of wire on bisque, a felt circle will go inside the head between the wire and the bisque.

All back together :-)

Re-stringing an English plastic/compo baby

This is "Dorothy".
She has arrived to be re-strung.
She is a vintage British doll with a hard plastic head and a composition body.

Her arms have their original stringing hooks.....a cool looking metal gizmo that lodges inside the arm.

But, alas, her legs have lost their stringing hooks.
Now I have to invent something as I cannot duplicate those metal gizmos and I do not have a metal fabrication shop down the street.

So this is my creation made from a sawed off nail and some wire. It will get secured across the leg opening with a couple dabs of glue.

The  new leg hooks work and Dorothy is back together.

She has also has had some dental work for her loose teeth and got her sparse eyelashes plumped up.

She is ready to go home.

Tedums needs new paws

This is "Tedums".
He is a well-loved vintage teddy bear. He is made of mohair and has glass eyes.

He has arrived with a request for new paw pads.

Now one could go to the local fabric store and buy new fabric to make him some paw pads.
But brand new fabric paws would look out of place on an old bear.
So it is better to use old fabric that blends in with his time-worn mohair.
If you do not have old fabric you can tea stain new fabric to give it an aged look.

Here is Tedums with his 'new' paws.
They are made from scraps of antique fabric that, with a bit of tea staining, suited him nicely.

A reborn doll gets her arm fixed

This is 'Crystal', a reborn doll who has come to get her arm fixed.
What is wrong with her arm?

Well, there is a wire sticking out of it!

Wire is not typical inside a reborn's body......this could be interesting......

Here is the usual start to a doll repair.
Off with the head!

Only to find the wire twisted up inside the body.
Was this wire twisted like that originally? Or did it get like that with lots of play?


Further dissection (ie stuffing removal and poking around) reveals that the wire originally stretched from arm to arm and had broken where it was sticking out of the arm.
I still don't know the purpose for all those twists inside the body but once I extracted the broken wire remnant from the lower arm, straightened out the wire,  bent over the broken end and wrapped it.....I got this:

Enough wire to stretch from arm to arm again but without twists in the body.
That should work?

Wire re-positioned down the arm, Stuffing re-stuffed and head attached again.
Many reborn dolls have their head and limbs attached with plastic zip ties and this one was no different.
She is ready to go home.

The dark blotches on her are from leached dye from her owners clothing. She will go home to try applications of Benzoyl Peroxide to remove them. This is an ingredient in some acne creams and it is quite useful to remove unwanted color..... but beware, it will remove color from your clothes and towel so be careful what it comes in contact with!

Ella gets a new body

Ella has arrived with a request for a new body....she does have some noticeable body problems!

Her cloth body will be replaced and she will get a bath too.

Here is Ella taken apart.
She has had a bath and her old cloth body is ready to pattern a new one.

Well, here is a new body partly made.
But then I found our local fabric store had some peach fabric.....closer to Ella's original body color.
So it will get washed and used instead.

Ella now sports a new peach coloured body.
She is ready to go home.

But, uh oh....she does not fit into the box she arrived in now. With her reconstruction and a bit of plumping, the Oh Henry shipping box is too small for her.
Time to look for a new travelling box!

And more modern bisque repairs....

This is a modern bisque doll who fell off his perch and sustained a nasty arm fracture.

There are many pieces of arm in a bag.
It is unknown if all the pieces are present and accounted for.

A 2 part epoxy glue is used to piece his arm back together.
This side looks good.

But this side shows that several of the shards were chipped and not all his arm pieces were found.

There are different ways to deal with a missing piece of ceramic.
Here I have already placed a metal mesh underneath the missing area.

Here, the metal mesh has been secured with an epoxy putty.
Once it hardens it becomes a good base for modeling clay to finish off contouring the repairs.

Here he is after his arm has been filled, sanded and painted.

And his clothes got put back on!

Ready to back on his shelf.....hopefully no more falls.....

Modern bisque repair

This poor little doll is a modern all-bisque doll. Her injuries include a broken left arm, a broken stringing hook in her right leg and a previously repaired left leg.

A closer look at some of her issues.

The first steps are to extract the broken hook from the right leg and to glue the broken arm together.

Holes filled in, new hook set into right leg, a bit of paint to disguise the repairs and he is ready to be strung.

Done!

A miniature BJD gets restrung

Thanks a lot Merle for giving me this challenge ;-)

Well here we have the smallest doll I have ever been asked to restring.
It is a modern artist's BJD (Ball Jointed Doll). The elastic has disintegrated and it is in pieces.
But there are no hooks in the limbs to attach new elastic to....argh.

The doll's original elastic seemed to have been installed before the knee and elbow parts were glued in. So, I could either break apart the lower limbs and install new elastic the same way it was originally or I could install new stringing hooks in the lower limbs.





I opt for new stringing hooks. The elastic I install will disintegrate with time and some day this doll will need restringing again.
Stringing hooks will make future elastic replacement easier.

Here is the body showing a stringing hook installed in one lower leg. And one of the S hooks I made out of sewing pins.
2 hooks slipped into the lower limbs easily but the other two were trickier. In maneuvering the hooks in, the knee/elbow parts separated from the lower limb and had to be re-glued with the hook in place.

Note the measuring tape and the size of all these pieces.....my eyes hurt now!

 I have used 3 loops of elastic. One goes from arm to arm. The other 2 run from the lower legs up through the torso and are held inside the head by the big S hook.
The 2 sides of the head now snap on to the lower part. The silver dots are strong magnets that hils the head together....a very cool system!

All back together now.

And dressed.

This is "Lena"......created by doll artist Charles Grimberg-Stephan cerca 2008-2009.

A 1920's composition doll with potential

 Here we have a doll from the 1920's.
She has a lovely organdy outfit and wears her original mohair wig.
However, typical of 1920's compo, her paint is peeling and her compo top layer is cracked and lifting.
Also her eyes are stuck in the closed position!

Nice vintage shoes too ?!?

 Here she is decapitated and scalped.
Also, a first look at her tin eyes!

Inside her head I find an unusual eye mount. Lots of old glue holds it in place :-P

With some work with a grinding wheel on the Dremel, she is dismantled.
This old glue did not smell good when it was getting ground away!!!
This would be hide glue. Commonly used until the modern synthetic glues took over. Some furniture makers still swear by it.

'Progress' .
All the cracked and lifted skim composition has been removed.




And again, a doll gets put on pause while we relocate.
This one will stay in Florida in this condition.....it is time to head north.

A return to Effanbee Lovums

This is the 'before' picture of an Effanbee Lovums doll who I started renovating in Florida. She got put on pause a few times and now is finally nearing completion.

These were her eyes  before.

And these are her eyes now......

Unfortunately Lovums' lambskin wig was in poor shape and missing some chunks. Under the wig is molded/painted hair. Many Lovums were sold wig-less. It was easiest for the factory to churn out a line of molded/painted hair heads and then just plunk some wigs on a few of them.

Here is Lovums now.

Her body has been washed, patched at one shoulder and her voice-box squawks again.

A nice vintage baby dress.

And then a vintage baby sweater set completes her.