Help needed! Broken plastic stuck in leg joint!

Hi all,

My DDII is in some trouble. To make a long story short, I (foolishly) used a brittle pen cylinder to hold her legs in place while her internal frame's spine was being repaired. (It was a good fit and held her together for a while, but I should have seen this coming).

Well, the piece snapped and now she has pieces of plastic left inside her joints, which makes her actual frame unable to stick inside. I attempted to break some pieces off with a screwdriver but it was beginning to damage the holes around, and though the frame can be removed I can't "open" this section as you can with the bust frame. 

(She's many years old & I'm very inexperienced in repair so pls forgive the condition of the insides)

Any help would be greatly appreciated, if there's perhaps something I'm missing or an alternate route to take. I doubt I could put the real frame in now without completely breaking these sections.

Many thanks in advance,

Cam & Kiyomi

Can you get something inside like a bent paperclip and use it as a hook to pull it out? A paperclip might bend back too easily if the friction is high, but anything small enough to fit and with a bend you can hook onto the other end with should work.

In case a more extreme method than the above paperclip suggestion is necessary, you can try the following. Hopefully, you'll find something I say to be remotely useful.

Get a pin vise and a drill bit. I don't have measurements so you'll have to get them on your own but that shouldn't be too hard. I assume you have ways to measure the diameter of the brittle pen cylinder. That's the size of the drill bit you'll need. The pin vise needs to be capable of accepting that size drill bit.

(Under no circumstances are you to use an actual power dill for this project unless your intent is to cause irreparable damage.)

Once you have the pin vise and drill bit of the appropriate sizes, assemble them, insert the drill bit, and then turn the pin vise at a straight down angle so you don't hit the walls of the actual frame. The idea is to carve out what remains of the pen cylinder without hitting the actual frame. Once you drill down to a certain point, most of what remains of the pen cylinder will be gone and you can shake out whatever is left.

Once you bore out the remaining bits of the pen cylinder, your work *probably* isn't done. Since you went at the pieces with a screwdriver, there's still some damage to the frame itself. If the tightness of the thighs remained perfect despite everything they went through, then you're done. If the thighs are loose and you want to fix that, then read on.

Before going through with the following, remove the frames from the vinyl skin with the aid of a blow dryer.

Get either epoxy glue or super glue. Apply a very thin layer of the glue on the inside of the frame. The ideas here are to fill in the gaps of the scratches left behind by the screwdriver (and possibly the drill bit) and to restore the original diameter of the frame's hole. Once the thin layer of glue is applied on the frame hole's inner walls, make sure nothing else touches the wet glue. Let it dry for at least several days even though the packaging tells you the curing time is a lot faster than that. Once the glue is completely dry, reattach the thighs to check for tightness. If the thighs are still too loose, disassemble and then repeat applying another layer of glue on the inner walls of the frame's hole. Repeat until the tightness is just right for what you want. If you used too much glue and the fit is too tight, use a round metal file or the same drill bit mentioned above to carve away at the excess glue buildup.

From the pictures it also looks like one of the thigh joint sockets is cracked.

4 minutes ago, cfx said:

From the pictures it also looks like one of the thigh joint sockets is cracked.

Indeed it does.

Unsolicited comment: I would fix this by cutting a brass tube which fits over the socket. I would cut the tube just long enough to provide strength but short enough to not restrict movement.

Image taken from here:

http://doloraco.blog37.fc2.com/blog-entry-130.html

48 minutes ago, growcian said:

(Under no circumstances are you to use an actual power dill for this project unless your intent is to cause irreparable damage.)

I did that to open a dead bolt once, popped it right open. XD.

The pin vise idea seems pretty solid, and the brass tube seems like it is better than the coolcats leg fix bit. What I don't like about the coolcats leg bits is they act like a spacer and make the thigh sit farther out from the body.

12 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

I did that to open a dead bolt once, popped it right open. XD.

I noticed I made a typo. I wrote "power dill". So you used a power dill to open a dead bolt? Yeah, um... Never mind. 😅😂🤣

1 hour ago, growcian said:

I noticed I made a typo. I wrote "power dill". So you used a power dill to open a dead bolt? Yeah, um... Never mind. 😅😂🤣

You'd amazed at what a pickle can do sometimes.

Maybe you could try screwing in a Screw just far enough so that it "grabs" into the Pen Cylinder and once locked in, then you can pull the screw straight out, using your fingers to grasp the head of the screw. If the screw is hard to pull out, then try using pliers to pull it out. Obviously, don't use a screw that's too big or long which could dig into and damage the socket of the leg joint. Also, like Growcian mentioned in his method, don't use a power drill in this method.

 

Success!

The journey was long, but in the absence of a pin vice I used a drill bit with pliers and chipped away at the plastic cylinders, using the drill bit to hook onto the plastic. (Essentially a combination of Grow & Sord's suggestions).

Many thanks for the suggestions, especially to Grow's detailed piece. I'm about to re-epoxy her spine and foot so I'll include the hip joint crack with that and she'll hopefully be put together for a while.

A powerdrill is going nowhere near my doll 😂

The joints don't appear to be in any worse condition from doing this, but they weren't perfect before so I'm not sure I'd recommend going this route. I sorta made do with what there was.

Thanks for the help and may all your dolls be long lasting!