Restringing an SDgr Girl

Hi all! Here is a photo-tutorial for how to restring a Volks Sdgr girl. For this tutorial I strung her with the heeled leg parts, but it's the same basic restringing principle. Our helper is Roslin, a recast SDgr Lorina, face up by me.

Tools:

For this tutorial, I used elastic, a thin cord to help guide the elastic through string channels, a hemostat, and s-hooks.

If you are restringing a recast, I suggest you get another set of s-hooks, as the ones the recasters send are not suitable and can limit movement (thanks to some bad hooks and too-thick string, one my girl's wrist balls snapped). I recommend going through Cool Cat on Ebay (I used D-sized and C-sized hooks in my Lorina). They were affordable and arrived relatively quickly.

Step 1: Unstring the Body

Here you will want to keep track of the pieces, especially which are the left and right sides. Volks marks the inside of most of the pieces with either an L or an R. Some pieces, like wrists and elbows, don't have markings. I haven't noticed a difference, so I assume there is no specific left or right versions and will work on either side.






Step 2: The Arms

This is the same basic pattern for restringing most dolls' arms.

First, fold the elastic like so. Try to keep the knot in the center if you can. Note that if the arms are still not tight enough, you will have to unstring the arms and shorten the string, repeating the process until you get it as tight as you want. You can also try sueding the arms at the sockets for added support.



Put the elastic through the shoulder sockets, again keeping things as even as possible.



Next, you will want to assemble the arms in the following order: shoulder disc, upper arm, elbow, lower arm.







The wrists are tricky. Put the wrist ball over the string and attach the s-hook for the wrists. Pull the knot in the elastic to tighten the arm. The s-hook should slide up into the lower arm through the slot in the wrist ball. Attach the hook to the ring in the doll's hand. Repeat this process on the other side. Voila! The arms are done!


Step 3: The torso

I used the Volks restringing guide to help with this part. Thread the elastic through the neck, keeping the knot around the s-hook.



Add the torso.

Next, bend the string like so.



The bottom part of this bend will rest in the groove at the top of the pointy part of the pelvis. You will have two loops.





Thread the right loop through the right hip socket and the left loop through the left hip socket. It will look like this:

There is another hole at the bottom of the pelvis. You will take one loop and thread it through this hole so it hangs on the opposite side, repeating with the other loop like this:



The loops with cross over each other, the end result looking like this:





Pull the strings taught. Thread each loop through the appropriate upper leg piece.



The heeled leg pieces require s-hooks at the knee. I used Coolcat s-hooks, size D, here.




There you go, she's all together! Next you will want to tighten her up again. Take the string up from the neck and pull it as tight as you want (leave a little slack for the head to go on). Retie the knot (keep the s-hook or a string here so that you don't lose the knot inside the body and have to start over). Place one of the Volks neck pieces here if you want.



Put the head on, and you are good to go!



What's neat is that I couldn't get my girl to stand in her heeled feet until I strung her in this way. I can't quite balance her without heels, but I am going to work with her and do some posing shots later. In my opinion, her joints look much more flush when strung in this way as well.




Thanks for looking, and as always if you have questions or need help feel free to email or comment on the blog. Happy collecting!