Toy piano repair

This is a cute little Schoenhut toy piano from the 1890's or so. The Schoenhut company made piano's from the 1870's to the present day.
This style of piano works with a xylophone type mechanism.
This particular piano was fully operational before it got mailed.
It was not properly wrapped for shipping and the postal system was not gentle to it's box.

The innards flapped around during shipping and were in quite the state on arrival.

One chime had lost its nail and was askew.
One hammer had torn from its mount. Several other hammers had partially torn.

With a few nails gently pulled out, the whole glockenspiel type mechanism can be removed for repairs.

The hammers are simply made with pieces of cardboard covered with cloth and stapled to the underside  of the chime board. The hinges then are just cloth. Wooden knobs are glued to the one side of each flapper to strike the chimes.

 Here is the detached hammer. The top cloth tab had ripped off at the hinge area.

 Here is the hammer repaired. I have used an antique cotton of a similar weave to recreate the top tab.

Many other hammers have partially ripped at the hinge area so I will replace all the damaged hinges in the same way.

Here all of the damaged hammers have been replaced.
The hammer on the right was not damaged but it had an old repair where someone replaced the wooden knob with a square chunk of wood and then glued the tab back instead of stapling it.
I might as well revise this before I put the piano back together.

Here is the previously repaired hammer. It worked but doesn't look like the original.

Here it is with a knob carved from a vintage wooded clothes peg and a rebuilt cloth tab.

Success!
All the hammers have been repaired.

While I was at the repairs to the hammers, I decided the torn harp and leaf logo should be repaired too.

And then, why not replace the cloth inserts on either side? The piano arrived with bright red synthetic cloth inserts. Those were not original.

So they got replaced with antique velvet inserts. A bit more suited to the age of the piano.....

Celluloid doll repair

This is a very large celluloid doll who has arrived to get it's arm fixed.

The inside of the arm that holds the elastic has broken out.

This is the other arm showing how the broken area used to look.
Recreating this in the broken arm will take some inventiveness!

After plan #1 with a metal washer was not working out, I have arrived at plan #2.
This involves using the bottom cut out of a plastic bottle with a hole drilled into it, a plastic washer from the hardware store and the toggle that the previous handy-person had used on the doll.

The altered bottle bottom gets epoxied into the arm.

Once the epoxy adhesive is cured, epoxy sculpting clay can reshape the socket.

The toggle and washer get put back on to the end of the elastic and then, with breath held, The elastic knot and toggle get stuffed into the new socket.

It worked!

Restringing a Gotz doll

This is a Gotz doll who has arrived for re-stringing.

Her elastic has lost it's sprung and she is very floppy.

Here is the elastic as it goes into her head.

And here is the elastic as it goes into one of her limbs.

Once you heat the area with a hairdryer to soften the plastic it is easier to extract the bits.
The limb insert looks like this once extracted.

And the head bits look like this.

Here she is deconstructed.
She has new elastic in place ready to attach her head and legs.

All done and hair combed.

An unusual early composition doll

This doll arrived in a ziplock bag.
He is leaking sawdust from many areas.

He has an interesting composition head on a cloth body with composition lower arms.

He is likely from the early 1900's.

He has a sheepskin wig glued over molded and painted hair. The wig looks original to him.

His head is split up both sides.

I don't want to remove the wig as it is solidly glued and old sheepskin is fragile.  So I shall have to fix his head while working around the wig.

Wood glue gets injected into the cracked head seam and he gets clamped.

Then epoxy putty is used to fill in crevices and mold a replacement corner of his shoulderplate that was missing.

The repaired seams get painted to blend in with the existing finish.

It is hard to see in the photos but he has original black features painted around his mouth and nose. Were they meant to depict facial hair?

The cloth of his original body was shredding so he has a new body covering. His original sawdust was saved and put back.

Then he gets an outfit made of antique and vintage fabrics.

1950's walking doll

This is 'Sweet Sue'. She is a walking doll from the 1950's.
She has some issues.

She has lost her walking action and part of the problem is a split in her plastic body.

She has other splits in her plastic too. All the splits are along seam lines.

Her wig is a mess and is falling off her head. Her head is coated with old dark glue.

Wig off.....lots of icky glue left behind.

Admittedly an undignified pose but the splits in her torso are now fixed with epoxy and are starting to get painted.

Now she is multi-tasking by trying on a potential outfit while having her hair done.

And then she is done.
Splits fixed. Walking mechanism works.
And, she is suitably coiffed and garbed.

Little Miss No-Name

Here is a doll from the 1960's made by Hasboro.
She was called Little Miss No-name and was not a great seller at the time.

She has arrived to be spruced up.

Someone, at some point, had decided she needed more eyeliner and applied DIY makeup.
She originally had a removable acrylic teardrop under her left, eye. You can see the hole that it was inserted into.

Her dress is not original but does suit her.

A good scrubbing and a new teardrop leaves her looking like this.

A Schoenhut doll's chipped paint

This doll has been well played with. She is missing her wig and has many dents and dings.

How much to fix her dents is always a debatable  question.
I like an old toy to show it's age and history.

But, in my opinion, this doll's face can benefit from some plastic surgery.
I am not going to touch the dents on her body.

Plastic surgery is complete.