Loose feet joints

Two of my DD girls have one loose foot each and I'm not sure how to fix them.  The entire long foot joint piece is really loose when I try to put it back into the leg, then it just flops back out.  I have to always use stockings and shoes to keep the feet from falling out.  I have a feeling I need to get some suction but I dunno really how to do it.  Anyone have tips??  Thank you!

Disassemble the shins. Remove the frame from the vinyl. Apply super glue onto the shin frame (the rods, basically). Use an accelerator* on the areas you applied the super glue. (Using a kind which comes in a spray bottle might be easiest to use.) DO NOT LET THE SUPER GLUE TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL IT DRIES COMPLETELY.

Once the glue dries, what you applied should act like hard plastic and should not be tacky. If the glue doesn't dry after a few hours, there might have been too much glue/too little accelerator. Reapply as needed. The glue must dry and be solid before you reassemble your doll's leg pieces. If the glue is soft or not dry, reassembling your doll at that point will mean you'll end up with pieces getting stuck in ways you don't want.

The idea here is to make the rods thicker on the areas where they come into contact with other pieces. This will increase the friction between the pieces so they will no longer fall out by themselves  after they are assembled.

If you ended up making the rods too thick, use sandpaper to sand down the rods to the appropriate thickness.

* = Look for "super glue accelerator" on Amazon or wherever you buy supplies from and you'll see you have a variety of choices.

Edited August 21, 2019 by growcian

12 hours ago, growcian said:

Disassemble the shins. Remove the frame from the vinyl. Apply super glue onto the shin frame (the rods, basically). Use an accelerator* on the areas you applied the super glue. (Using a kind which comes in a spray bottle might be easiest to use.) DO NOT LET THE SUPER GLUE TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL IT DRIES COMPLETELY.

Once the glue dries, what you applied should act like hard plastic and should not be tacky. If the glue doesn't dry after a few hours, there might have been too much glue/too little accelerator. Reapply as needed. The glue must dry and be solid before you reassemble your doll's leg pieces. If the glue is soft or not dry, reassembling your doll at that point will mean you'll end up with pieces getting stuck in ways you don't want.

The idea here is to make the rods thicker on the areas where they come into contact with other pieces. This will increase the friction between the pieces so they will no longer fall out by themselves  after they are assembled.

If you ended up making the rods too thick, use sandpaper to sand down the rods to the appropriate thickness.

* = Look for "super glue accelerator" on Amazon or wherever you buy supplies from and you'll see you have a variety of choices.

Baking soda also works as a super glue accelerator!

Thank you for the tips guys!! 

Look at the picture on this Volks page where they take the foot off: https://www.dollfiedream.tokyo/dd_en/support/howto_dd/

Are yours coming off like that, or is the shin rod coming out of the shin with the foot? I have one body where that rod always comes out when I take the feet off.

When that happens, and I realize this is in a "duh!" category, but it can be difficult to make sure the rod actually goes back into the socket at the knee, instead of beside it; the shin is small enough overall it can feel like it is tight this way but of course isn't. I only thought of this since you mentioned the ones you have are just falling out. While there is enough variance in these parts that some will be tight and some loose, that sounds especially loose, more than I've seen at least, unless something else is wrong such as something being broken, and it's also a real possibility if the rod is coming out that way, that the socket at the knee is cracked so that it's not holding the rod, which would make it very loose. It can of course be cracked at the foot end as well but if so you'd have already seen that.

I think it's just the long foot rod... I'll take a picture the next time I go to change one of their outfits.

I've never actually taken apart any of my dolls but I bought them all secondhand so it's possible there is some internal damage, although all of them were fine when they first arrived and I'm not rough on them at all.  I don't even remember why I removed the feet now, but it happened on both of them when I removed feet and tried to reattach them... the foot just became super loose ever since.  I do remember hearing a suction pop when I first removed it, which doesn't happen when I try to reattach it.

I'll try to make sure I have the rod going back in the socket properly, and if that fails I'll try sueding it a bit with some super glue. 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Riesz

If there was originally a suction pop sound when the feet were removed, but now they are freely falling out, they are likely just not put back together quite right. When the joints line up you will need to push a bit to get the feet all the way back into the bottom of the shin parts. If it was really easy to insert with no pushing, then the parts just aren't connected. 

On 8/20/2019 at 8:31 PM, growcian said:

Disassemble the shins. Remove the frame from the vinyl. Apply super glue onto the shin frame (the rods, basically). Use an accelerator* on the areas you applied the super glue. (Using a kind which comes in a spray bottle might be easiest to use.) DO NOT LET THE SUPER GLUE TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL IT DRIES COMPLETELY.

Once the glue dries, what you applied should act like hard plastic and should not be tacky. If the glue doesn't dry after a few hours, there might have been too much glue/too little accelerator. Reapply as needed. The glue must dry and be solid before you reassemble your doll's leg pieces. If the glue is soft or not dry, reassembling your doll at that point will mean you'll end up with pieces getting stuck in ways you don't want.

The idea here is to make the rods thicker on the areas where they come into contact with other pieces. This will increase the friction between the pieces so they will no longer fall out by themselves  after they are assembled.

If you ended up making the rods too thick, use sandpaper to sand down the rods to the appropriate thickness.

* = Look for "super glue accelerator" on Amazon or wherever you buy supplies from and you'll see you have a variety of choices.

Great suggestion! It reminds me of when I was an Action Figure collector. Besides using Super Glue to coat joints in order to create friction, coating the joints with Floor Polish was another good method.

I meant to make an update post here but I kept forgetting!  Anyway, it turns out there is nothing wrong with the foot joints, I was just being silly.  I was scared to apply much force on putting the foot back in and it wasn't lining up with the slot in her leg.  I just pushed kinda hard and they all went back in very snugly.  Sorry for the false alarm, but I appreciate everyone's advice!