Béatrice arrived yesterday in dire need of help.
First off, her stringing was wretched. She came loosely strung with a flimsy elastic more appropriate for a doll half her size.
Second, she had all sorts of scuzz inside and outside her head. Her wig was stuck on tightly with some colorless gummy stuff that I've never seen before. It was even more adhesive than hot glue, but I managed to wrest her wig from her head. Fortunately, the stuff holding her wig on peeled easily from her skull.
I had much more difficulty with the two types of scuzz inside her head. There was some red putty holding her headcap to the rest of her head, as well as some blue putty holding her eyes in her eyewells. I ended up using an Xacto to pry her headcap off and scrape the red stuff from the notches in the base of her head.
The eye putty gave me the most trouble. It was hard and dry and
really, really stuck to both her eyewells and her eyes. I hit her with a thick layer of Pebeo [universal paint remover, hereinafter called Pebeo], both from the inside and the outside of her head, hoping that the paint-stripping powers of the solvent would have the same removal effect on the encrusted putty. [Good thing I wasn't interested in keeping her default faceup, as the Pebeo whisked that right away.] The Pebeo helped, but I had the most success by just poking and scraping with an Xacto again.
Finally I removed 90% of the scuzz from her eyewells. Pebeo easily did away with the small, scattered particles of crud that were left over.
I ended up with a pair of battered acrylic eyes with scuzz everywhere on them except the fronts. I hoped to save them, as they were bright and light-catching. Therefore I soaked them in water in an attempt to loosen the aforementioned scuzz. Unfortunately, all the poking, scraping, Pebeoing and soaking had compromised the shape of the eyes and the clarity of the irises, so I had to trash them.
After entirely too much effort, Béatrice was finally clean. I then took a closer look at her and instantly detested how she was put together. I'm not talking about her sculpt, even though I find everything except her head rather simple and unexceptional. I'm talking about how her pieces were assembled into a whole. As I mentioned, she was strung with shitty elastic. Even more irritating, she had no S hooks in her hands and feet; instead, they were strung directly on the elastic. This method of attaching hands and feet may have been sufficient in 2006, when I got Zephque; however, with the advent of small S hooks and magnetized body parts, there is no excuse for such an outmoded, pain-in-the-ass method of stringing.
Also annoying was the socket in the base of Béatrice's head. With most BJDs, you put an S hook [or a ring] through the elastics at the top of the neck. You then drop the head onto the top of the neck by fitting the S hook through a slot in the bottom of the head long enough to accommodate the hook. To secure the head to the body, you pull up slightly on the S hook and turn it perpendicular to the slot, then let it go. The tension in the elastic and the placement of the S hook keep the head on, while also preventing the elastics from jumping back into the body.
Well, Béatrice is not constructed like most BJDs. She doesn't have a slot at the base of her neck; instead, she has a small hole much too narrow for the supplied S hook to fit through at any angle. To attach her head to her body, you have to pull all the elastics up through the hole in the base of her head and then thread the S hook through the elastic loops. You cannot remove her head with a simple twist of the S hook. Just like the way in which her hands and feet are strung, the way in which her head is attached to her body seems calculated to be as old-fashioned, difficult and user-unfriendly as possible.
I tried to salvage her current stringing arrangement by wiring her, but that didn't help her wimpy, flaccid elastics. Eventually I gave up, took the wires out and disassembled her, throwing her in a Ziploc and placing her in my project queue, where she is currently waiting behind Mellifer and Novella. She currently looks like this:
( Read more... )I surmise that Béatrice came to darthmissy [her previous owner and buyer of Nathaniel] with shitty elastic and head scuzz. darthmissy knew about the shitty elastic, as I saw that she tried wiring Béatrice's limbs to make her pose better. I bet, though, that she never tried removing Béatrice's wig, much less her headcap or eyeballs, and therefore remained ignorant of Béatrice's infestation of head scuzz. I get the feeling that darthmissy acquired Béatrice on the strength of her cuteness, but became frustrated by her outmoded construction and shitty stringing once she actually had Béatrice in hand. Thus she jumped at the chance to offload Béatrice in partial exchange for a doll she really wanted.
I have no complaints about darthmissy as a trade partner or buyer, though I would have liked an alert about Béatrice's shitty stringing. No, my grievances lie all with the maker and preparer of the dolls, Tinybear. Why didn't she put an S hook slot in the base of the head like everyone else does these days? Why did she use such weak, flaccid elastic? Why did she string the hands and feet directly on said elastic? Why did she think it was a good idea to use such horrible scuzz for eye putty and for attaching the headcap? [For that matter, would it have killed her to make a magnetic headcap?] I have never been so dissatisfied with a doll's initial condition before.
Fortunately, most of the problems in Béatrice's assembly can be corrected. I replaced her neck S hook with a piece of wire, which is flexible enough to allow easy removal of her head, but also stiff enough to keep her strings from popping back into her body. I plan to restring her with thicker elastic. I will also attach her hands and feet to the elastic with small wire loops. Of course, she's also getting a new faceup, eyes, hair and clothes [eventually].
I will fix Béatrice up; however, this begins and ends my association with anything made by Tinybear. Her dolls are just too sloppily put together and finished.
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