Plastic/vinyl repair

This is 'Strawberry'.

She has arrived to get some new fingers and to (maybe) get her hip fixed.

She is missing a few fingers.

Her hip has gone wonky at the top.

Unfortunately the problem is that the vinyl has partially torn and the torn section has warped out of it's usual spot.

Vinyl is a plastic. Aging plastics often stiffen and warp as part of their aging process. Trying to work this hip too much may well tear the hip right off.

So I start with the easier stuff and work on recreating fingers.

First a wire support gets epoxied into place.

Then finger number one gets built.

I do one finger at a time so it can harden and cure  before I start another one. Less chance of messing up a still maleable finger while I sculpt it's neighbour.

While the fingers are getting replaced I try a few things on the cracked and warped hip.

First I try heating the plastic and molding it back into shape. That seems to go well...... but within a couple hours the plastic has warped itself back to square one.

So, I repeat the process and clamp the plastic while it cools. So far so good? I even splint the leg. And keep things in place like this for a few days.

After removing the clamp and splint it looks like a normal hip.

1 hour later.....

The hip has returned itself to it's previously warped condition!

This is time to leave this hip alone. If the hip ever fully tears away and the leg detaches itself from the body, that would be the time to do more invasive work. For now, clothing will hide the odd contour.

But at least she has all 10 fingers now!

Who painted Sasha???

Here we have 'Sasha'.

She had been painted by a neighbouring child with nail polish. Lots of nail polish!

She has arrived for a clean-up.

Sasha is missing an iris. The artistic nail polish wielding child has managed to paint her empty socket too! 

Sasha starts her cleaning process.

Less nail polish is certainly an improvement.

Her unstuffed body has had a bath and is lying on the deck to dry.

Worried comments from the neighbours are anticipated!

Marks like this have not come off with her bath.

So all the remaining marks get coated with 10% benzoyl peroxide. It is sold as an acne treatment and is a good bleaching agent.

Sunlight helps the process so the basking on the deck continues......and the neighbours keep wondering.........

Then some new eyes are found.

She is cleaned, restuffed and ready to go home.

A Schoenhut doll with previous 'repairs'

This is 'Barbara'.

She was made by the Schoenhut company and is about 100 years old.

She has arrived for a complete renovation.

This is Schoenhut's 'Miss Dolly' model.

She is suffering from peeling/chipped paint. She has had a very thick repaint somewhere along the way. Both her original paint and the repaint are having issues.

UV light can show different details.

Here UV light shows the repainted areas as darker than the original paint and bare wood.

This is under UV light again and here some of the repaint has been removed from the middle of the torso.

Here are Barbara's legs after the overpaint has been removed. Happily that is a lot of her original paint that has been uncovered. The yellowish areas are patches where her original varnish has yellowed with age.

 Here is her face without the overpaint and wads of old wig glue. That is her original eye colour now and you can see remnants of her eyelashes and lip colour.

The nails in her head are the tacks that the factory used to tack on her wig. They can be re-used to secure her new wig. No more glue! Ever!

After all her repaint is removed she gets her bare wood parts sealed. I use a clear gesso for that.

Here Barbara is part way through getting her missing paint and gesso filled in.

I use a flesh toned epoxy putty for that.

Barbara has completed her paint job.

And here she is modelling an old human hair wig that suits her quite nicely.

She heads back to Arkansas like this.

Here is Barbara back in Arkansas with a lovely new dress and hair bow. 

The return of a Maplelea doll

This is 'Jenna'. She is a Maplelea doll who had her left hip repaired a couple years ago.

Now she has a total avulsion of her right hip.....ie the whole hip joint has torn off.

A painted bisque doll gets repairs

This doll has arrived to be restrung and to get some repairs.

Her first obvious issue is that she is missing her stringing hook from her right leg. Someone has drilled holes in the leg to tie it back on her body.

Her head is 'painted bisque'. This differs from traditional bisque in that the colour was not fired on.

You can see where the paint has been pulled off the bisque by the wig glue.

Her wig didn't look too bad from the front but the back looks a little deranged.

A jumble of old elastic and stuff was rattling around in her body. That is the missing hook from the right hip in there!

Her body is cardboard covered with a gesso and then painted. Here one foot is crumbling and there are weird stains running up the leg.

Her posterior is missing quite a bit of the gesso. This doll might have encountered some liquid at some point in her life? Traditional gesso does not tolerate getting moist.

To start, the bit with the hook that had fallen out is epoxied back into the leg and the crumbling foot bits get glued back together.

Once that all dries, the exposed bits of carboard and the deteriorated areas of gesso get painted with a sealer. 

An Ashton Drake doll with a wobbly head

This is a small doll named 'Josie' from the Ashton Drake Galleries.
She has come to get her wobbly head fixed.

Her head wobbles because the elastic holding her head to her body has disintegrated.
Elastic is often the first thing that fails in a doll.

Josie's head is attached via the elastic to a shoulderplate which is sewn on to her cloth body.
For the best results, her shoulderplate needs to be removed and her wig too.

Here we have all her bits dismantled. The elastic has been removed.

To restring her head some new elastic gets threaded through the loop that was inside her head.

Then the loop goes back into her head with the ends of elastic coming out of her neck.

The elastic goes through her shoulderplate and is tied off around the wire gizmo.

And then her head gets resewn to her body.

She is ready to get dressed and go home.

Antique Teddy bear repairs

This is an antique Teddy bear who has a few issues.

He is missing his eyes and parts of his nose and mouth.

Most of his felt paw pads are gone.

You can see what he is stuffed with here....this product is often called wood wool.

Because I can feel a voicebox inside his torso I want to get it out and see if I can get it working again.
That involves opening up his back seam and rummaging around in the wood wool.

Here it is. A rather petite voicebox.

The cloth that forms it's bellows has disintigrated which is why it no longer works.

Here are the parts of the voicebox and a strip of cuckoo clock bellows fabric that I will use to replace the bellows.

It takes some inventiveness to deal with that spring while waiting for glue to dry.

Success!
Many Teddy bears have growler voiceboxes.
I gather some had squeakers too as this is no growler......

And now I need thread to do some serious sewing on this teddy. But the one fabric store in town is closed due to COVID.

Canada is not well supplied by online businesses.....the shipping costs are nasty!

So I wait for a store to open that might have the thread I need.......

And finally the store opens.....only to find empty slots where my favorite thread sat!

So, back to online ordering. Thread found. Order done....wait, wait, wait. Poor old Canada Post takes 3 weeks to get me a packet from a location that is a 2 hour drive away. Things are still very abnormal out there....

But, finally, progress is made.

Teddy's squeaker is reinstalled and he is midway through getting his paw pads replaced.

And then poor Teddy is done!

He has new glass eyes, new wool felt paw pads and a filled in nose/mouth.