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Ceramics: dolls head repair
A sequence of images showing my repair of a doll, dating from the early nineties, with a broken ceramic head.
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Firstly, the original attempted repair had to be rebroken and the head reset as accurately as possible. Then epoxy impreganted fabric was applied behind the hole left by missing pieces.
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Once dry, epoxy putty was applied over the hole and smoothed to match the original surfaces. Once this had cured it was polished and then spray painted to match the other side of the face.
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Finally, my eldest daughter gave her a 'hair do' and she - the doll that is - was ready for collection.
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This model steam locomotive was part of a large collection of trains brought in by a customer who hoped to get them all running again, for the first time in some decades.
I was able to identify this locomotive - the internet is a wonderful thing - as a model by German company, Gebruder Bing (the Bing brothers) of Nuremburg, dating to about 1906. The crazed paintwork is diagnostic for date.
It is a 'live steam' model meaning it must be filled with water and heated up by a small spirit burner which runs on methylated spirits, rather like the much more recent 'Mamod' engines.
The engineering on this model is superb but the drive cylinders were seized up with a sort of calcium residue, as one might find in a kettle. That's the reason one is only supposed to use distilled water in models like this. Anyhow, this required gently working free then a thorough cleaning and lubrication - especially the safety valve! - plus a bit of tightening up here and there, to get working again.
I also wrote a series of instructions so it can be safely used again.
Models and toys: Live steam engine by Gebruder Bing of Nuremburg
Ceramics: fox with broken leg
This ceramic fox had met with a misfortune. Luckily for him (or her?), and indeed me, it was a very clean break. I packed the hollow, revealed by the break at the body, with epoxy putty and embedded a stainless steel reinforcing rod.
When the putty had hardened I added more to the inside of the detached leg and fitted it back carefully with additional glue.
Once cured, I painted the join to match the existing finishes.
Models and Toys: Kingsbury Golden Arrow, 1929
This impressive looking model, made around 1929 in America, was given to the owner's grandfather while he grew up as an expat child in Argentina.
He seems to have played with a certain degree of enthusiasm as, in addition to many 'dings' and bent axles, it was missing a side radiator (?) and its tail. Moroever, the rubber on the wheels had hardened over the decades and fallen off in chunks and in one case completely.
The main problem for me, as a restorer, was that, fine looking though this art-deco style car undoubtedly was, it had been made using pressed tin plate and assembled by a kind of spot welding technique I didn't know they had back then. Full-size ships, for example, were still made using rivets. Anyhow, this meant there was no - non-destructive - way of dismantling it.
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However, luckily, one can solder this material and I was able to firm up the attachment of the surviving side radiator this way.
To make the new one, I formed a hardwood plug shaped to the correct internal measurements and then shaped and folded annealed brass sheet around this to mimic the original. I then soldered in the internal reinforcement beam. Because I could get access here, I was able to use tiny screws to attach this assembly to the car, giving a durable but concealed attachment.
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I also removed the clockwork drive mechanism and cleared the congealed oil residue and 90 years worth of dust.
The tail was a real challenge. To get the shape I studied lots of online pictures, mostly from auction sales catalogues, to establish its dimensions with respect to the rest of the vehicle.
There was no practical means of making a stamped metal copy so I settled on the traditional model-maker's technique of making a wooden 'plug' to test the fit and design - and then casting this in white metal. The casting worked well and, with a bit of epoxy filler here and there on the remaining casting imperfections, looked convincing when finally attached.
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This left the wheel tyres, of course, which were slowly built up using epoxy putty, in an iterative process of filling, smoothing and filling.
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In order to respect the car - and in line with my original quote - I was then going to 'weather' my new parts to match the worn and corroded surfaces of the rest, using various paint techniques.
But it occurred to me that the resulting very worthy - but rather dowdy - model would never likely be displayed or viewed much again. The condition was just too poor.
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As it happened, I had some gold enamel paint that was, by experiment, a strikingly precise match for the original finish. So I called the owner and suggested a full repaint, pointing out that this was unlikely to affect the value of an example in this rather sorry state of repair.
He agreed, so I treated the rust, rubbed it down and primed it, followed by resprays of paint, then varnish. The result is a fairly spectaclar display piece - it's about 20 inches long - and will hopefully be noticed and admired for some while to come.
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Woodwork and furniture: Monkey gong
At first I was not quite sure what to make of this. The customer was sure it was incomplete: it had also certainly been over polished over the years and the wooden base was looking tired. But I could not see what it was missing. On to the internet again where quite a few showed up. These gongs were manufactured sometime betwen the 1920s and 30s and were likely to intended to summon staff or children.
It became apparent that it was missing was something that, on a boat, we would call a 'spreader', something to hold the gong strings apart. I made this out of brass in four parts on the lathe and with a threaded connection so it could be simply screwed together in place. It is more or less identical in form and size to those on the images available.
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Then it was time to clean the monkey itself of all the accumulated polish. After that I gave it a light lacquer spray so it would not need polishing again and also polished the gong itself. The base received a new application of French polish and it was ready to go home.
