Is this a good tool to heat the vinyl parts?

Sometime you must heat some parts of your doll to make them fit, to operate the eye pocket, to let the skeleton into a shin etc etc.

 

Usually I use a simple hair phon, but it take a while and it's something that belong to the bathroom (And it's big).

 

I was wondering if a tool like a heat air gun like this is a viable sobstitute:

 

 

 

But the air emitted is at 200°C  /  390°F... too high for vinyl? It'll melt the doll? 😰

 

 

The more I write about this, the more I think is a bad idea XD...

 

Blow dryers typically only get up to 140 F or so... 390 F sounds like a really, really bad idea.

Why not get a compact, mini-dryer that you use exclusively for dolls?

Seems a better idea. 

I use a heat gun made by Black and Decker.  It's fully adjustable so you can go from just warm air to thermonuclear by hitting a switch.    Amazon has plenty of them at various price points so check there for one.

 

 

Billy

I also use a heat gun, but I use one for stamp embossing because it's not as loud as a hair drier. It also heats up a weeee bit faster IMO.
It takes some getting used to, because there is a real risk of accidentally roasting your doll's parts. I BURNT A WHITE SKIN HEAD ONCE and it looked like a lightly toasted marshmallow LOL

2 hours ago, Subaru said:

I also use a heat gun, but I use one for stamp embossing because it's not as loud as a hair drier.

That's a good reason, and reminded me of something I hadn't even thought about lately. In general, I find the particular noise from a hair dryer to be irritating, not just the volume but the frequency.

I haven't used a dryer on my hair in years, but I bought one a few years ago for some reason that I no longer remember. It's made by Andis but may be discontinued as I can't find it on their website. Here it is at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Andis-1600-Watt-Performance-ProStyle-40055/dp/B0009XH6UU/

I'm mentioning this specifically because I don't find the noise from this one to be irritating, to the extent of until I read the above comment I had actually forgotten how annoying most hair dryers sound. This one gets quite hot enough that on the low air flow + high heat setting it too might overheat vinyl.

YMMV of course, but if anyone is looking for a hair dryer to use on DD and wants one that isn't an assault on the ears, I suggest this is one to consider. On the higher air setting where I usually use it, it's still not quiet, but it's not got that really high-pitched whine most hair dryers I've heard have.

It gets hot enough that I once used to heat and adjust glasses frames lol. Though that did take a while.

I have an adjustable heat gun too, that I use for shrink tubing. The dial on it has arbitrary numbers though so I really don't have a clue what temperatures each setting produce, and so I feel safer using the hair dryer on DD.

Edited February 8, 2020 by cfx