The bear's head fell off!

No, this is not a Teddy Bear.
It is another of my mother's antiques she wants me to repair. This is a carved wooden inkwell in the shape of a bear. The head is hinged to open and reveal an ink bottle. But this bear has broken where the head hinge was and a piece of his head is missing.

Here is a glimpse of one of my favorite products. It is a 2 part epoxy modelling compound. The bear had had his missing area filled in with it and tooled to match the surrounding area.

The repaired area gets painted to blend in with the rest of the bear.

And the head gets re-attached with 2 tiny screws.

He is completed and ready to go home.

A well-loved vintage baby doll

This is a vinyl and cloth doll made by Horsman who needs a new body, a few new eyelashes, a bath and something done with her hair.

Under the tape on the arms is torn fabric. Her arms are almost off.

Inside her body are the remnants of her voicebox. This style of voicebox, when new, looked much like a whooopie cushion. When the doll was squeezed, the red rubber bladder forced air through the little reed you can see in the picture. The sound was an indignant squawk.
The rubber bladder has stiffened with time and has broken into many pieces.

All dismantled, bathed and ready to get a new body sewn.

Ok.....now we have a new body.
But what about that squawker.....it would be nice to bring back her voice.

The old squawker gets dismantled more and analysed. It's reed that makes the actual sound is intact. The red rubber bulb that pushed air through the reed is disintegrated.
What can the bulb be replaced with?

Dog owners might know....how about doggie chew toys that squeak? Many of them contain a similar apparatus.
So, off to the local pet store to peruse the clearance section. Lo and behold is a doggie chew toy that contains 10 squeakers. It gets dragged home and one of it's squeakers gets harvested.
The doggie squeaker gets removed from it's bulb and the doll's squawker gets inserted in it's place so we get this....

One original doll squawking reed with a new functional bulb.
Sure enough, it produces an indignant squawk.

Here she is.
New body, a bath, repaired eyelashes, a new 'do and a functioning squawker.

An antique Schoenhut animal now....

Schoenhut is an American company who started making wooden musical instruments in the 1870's. They expanded to make wooden toys like circus animals and dolls. A bankruptcy stopped their doll and toy production in 1935.
The animals they produced were jointed with elastic unlike their dolls which were spring jointed.

This is a Schoenhut giraffe.
He looks like had had too much Jack Daniels?
But no....his elastic is shot and needs replacing.

He gets taken apart.
The elastic is held into each leg with tiny nails which need to be removed gently to preserve the original paint and to try to keep the nails re-usable.

He gets new elastic and now can stand upright and even pose in different positions.

Old squawk boxes can squawk again...

 This is an antique Gebruder Heubach doll with an oddly elongated torso.

 There are mesh covered holes on each side of the torso....what is inside?

 Inside is a long silent bellows-type squawker.

 No, wait....there are two squawkers in there!
They are both silent now but were set up in opposite directions to make the doll squawk no matter which way it was tilted.

Out comes the first squawker to show the source of it's silence. The bellows fabric is torn.
Various patches are tried but the squawker stays silent.

So....the next thing is to replace the bellows cloth....but what with?

Cuckoo clock bellows are almost identical construction.
So the old torn fabric is replaced with new cuckoo clock bellows fabric.

The old stiffened tape that held the reed (the piece that actually makes the sound) is replaced with bellows fabric too.

It works!!!

Both squawkers get repaired and re-installed and this is the result:

His clothes hide his odd torso......but any little movement sets those squawkers off now!

Hip repair for a Maplelea doll

This is a Maplelea doll who has come in to get her dislocated hip fixed.

Her left leg is dangling because the stitching that held her hip  socket into her body has disintegrated or come undone.

To resew the hip socket, I need to detach her leg from the hip socket, remove her head and unstuff her body.

She is now in pieces and ready to be reconstructed.

First her hip socket gets sewn back into the cloth of her body.

And then her leg gets reattached. This doll's limbs were attached to the joint sockets with knotted elastic. She needed new elastic for the one leg as the old elastic did not survive the unknotting.....that was one tough and stiff knot!!!

But, finally, she is back together.

A box of doll pieces arrives....

This is often how dolls arrive into my workshop.

















They get inspected for missing parts and damage.

Then it is cleaning, repairing and restringing.

Time to get packed up for their return journey.

A drink and wet doll

Here is a small composition doll who arrived in pieces for re-stringing. She has a feature that was a novelty for a while. Check out her mouth....

There is a tube going from her mouth....

and down into her body. The tube has stiffened and broken with time.

The other end of the tube ends in her bottom.

This was a 'drink and wet' doll. Children could feed their doll a bottle of fluid which would travel through the tube and wet the diaper.
But this is a composition doll. Composition does not like water! Many of these dolls did not survive their feedings.
I will re-plumb the doll as I re-string her but no feedings allowed!

Cloth body renewal

This little doll has arrived to get her body issues addressed.

Her arms and legs keep falling off.

There is sticky stuff  embedded in the cloth around the top of each limb.

Off with her head. Out with her stuffing.
And here is the source of the problem.
The limbs were attached to the cloth body by elastic bands that have long since lost their elasticity. Elastic deteriorates by getting stiff and brittle or melting into a gooey mess. Unfortunately for me this elastic went the gooey route and now I have to get the sticky mess out of the cloth body.

Once totally unstuffed and the limbs are extracted from the goo, the cloth body can be soaked in a variety of cleaning solutions. It takes days and several changes of soaking solutions but the goo is gone and the body seems to be cleaning up nicely.

Now she has a cleaned body and her limbs are attached with cotton cording. No more rotting elastic!

Ready to go home......

Re-assembling a German bisque doll

So, now we have a small German bisque headed doll.
It needs it's head re-attached and it's wig prettied up.

This type of doll does not have stringing hooks. The elastic was glued into the limbs with no thought to eventual elastic replacements.
But here, someone has already replaced the old elastic. They drilled out the old stuff and jury rigged elastic bands to replace the stringing.
Pretty inventive, but now the elastic bands are rotting and need replacing.

Here the elastic has been replaced with fresh stuff.

 The wire piece that arrived with the doll is part of it's original stringing system. One end hooks around the elastic between the legs and the other end hooks over the rim of the head.

Prettying up the wig will take some work. It is missing a chunk of mohair.

A few extensions added and she looks better.

This is another topknot wig. These wigs were made by stuffing a wad of mohair into the top of the head....in this case it was stuffed into a cardboard pate. Then it was glued to the head and styled. They were never meant to be combed out. If you try to comb out one of these wigs, half the mohair will fall out.
The topknot wig was typically seen on the lower priced dolls of the time. A hat was usually part of the doll's ensemble and disguised the sparseness of the wig.

How about this hat?