Dollieh Sanctuary

Pardon if this was disscussed somewhere recently, I couldn't find it.

I've been playing around with my 55cm boy and I'm not positive I like his arm movement. He has limited movement range in his wrists and limited strength in his elbows. His shoulders are fine. However, I don't want to switch his entire arms to a model with slide joint elbows because I like the more masculine shape of his vinyl coverings as is.

Is there a way to remedy this if I'm willing to trim vinyl? I'm pretty sure the wrists at least can be fixed by just trimming some of the vinyl back that covers his wrist joint, except I can't get it out of his arm, even with a hair dryer!

His elbows worry me more. I would have to trim quite a lot off to put in a slide joint elbow (will this even fit then?) But as is he frequently dropped a light weight amigurumi I gave him to hold...

Yes! You can trim the vinyl around his wrists, which will open up the mobility a lot. If you aren't able to get the wrists apart with your hair dryer, try it longer or on higher heat.

Now, about the elbow - the 55 elbow is the same as the 60cm ball joint elbow and there are a few things you might not know about them. If the elbow isn't holding a pose he might need to have the inner elbow screws tightened. Yes, there are tiny little screws in there. If you look at the joint, you will see that the half ball pieces can be removed. They use pegs. Take them off and you will find the screw in the center of the joint. DO NOT tighten it too much. You want to be able to shift that center section for posing. Tighten the screw just enough so that the arm stays up. If you tighten it too much, you can damage the part. For increased range of motion, From a previous post, here is Raenef with some blurry photos. You can see that center section sliding out.

zirconmermaid wrote:Ah, but you can! Raenef has volunteered to show you how. The ball jointed elbow has a center section that slides out to provide additional mobility, the knee joints work that way too.

Aha, thanks so much for the help on his elbows. I had no idea the outsides were caps that pop off.

I heated his arm pretty well to get his wrist out, it was quite squishy and his hand popped right off. Maybe I'll get my husband to try...

Jezrah wrote: I'm pretty sure the wrists at least can be fixed by just trimming some of the vinyl back that covers his wrist joint, except I can't get it out of his arm, even with a hair dryer!

You can trim the vinyl covering the wrist joint ball without removing the wrist joint, but it would be easier to trim it evenly when the wrist joint is removed.
As Zirconmermaid said, MORE HEAT! The parts can take more heat than you'd think, so put on some gloves and go for it. Just don't touch the dryer to the vinyl. That could melt/burn it. Look at some pictures of 60cm wrists to get an idea of how much vinyl you can trim. The 55cm and the 60cm use the same wrist joint part.

Ok, so today I attacked the arms with heat for 5 mins before trying to pop them out, and this time it worked. I was able to trim the vinyl by 2mm, and while he still couldn't do something like a handstand, it improved enough to make more natural poses so I'm happy. Hiroki is laid back so he wouldn't do a handstand anyway.

I also tightened up his left elbow just fine, but his right is still giving me issues. On the left I was able to easily gently turn the screw a bit and it's now fine. The right one though doesn't seem to want to turn anymore but is still slightly looser than the other. It's puzzling.