Modding a neck so the head will fit right on it?

Personally I would go with the "open the neck-socket more"-option, although it might be easier to just sand the neck to make it thinner. This is according to my own logic, because the head is cheaper and often easier to replace if something goes wrong or if you need to resell the parts separately, any work you do that might have devalued the doll will be to the cheapest part only. Of course this is different for some of the more expensive heads, but works as a rule of thumb for me.

It does involve a fair bit of work, resin dust and potential for slipped tools causing scratches where you don't want them (or holes on you). Depending on how thick the resin is where you're taking it away, you might need to back fill with apoxie or something similar inside the head, if bevelling the neck socket makes it deeper.

For me, it's something that is easy and intuitive to do (but I do have a lot of tools handy), but hard to explain...

I see the SoulKid neck is 7cm in circumference, but I can't find any measurements for the Leeke-M bodies. The first thing you'd need to do is order and receive both the head and body, so you can test and check how good or bad the fit is before you do anything to it. Probably the easiest thing would be to get a 22mm (7cm circumference divided by 3.14 = 2.2cm=diameter) eye beveller and pry the ball and it's metal shaft out of the wooden handle, and then use the beveller in a dremel or battery drill to buzz into the neck hole. Do it in steps and keep testing often so you don't go too deep. You can use apoxie to backfill if you do go too deep, or as I mentioned, to back-fill from the top if the resin seems thin after you've finished.

Remember to wear a dustmask or (ideally) a respirator, and use water under the bit as you drill, so that the dust is not airborn, and is less likely to clog up the bit.

 

Yes that's the one. You can of course leave the wooden handle on and sit and do it by hand. While this is more tedious, you will have more control over the outcome.

When I do neckholes, I use a round cera canna blade, as I really only do bigger dolls, so there are no eye-bevellers the size I'd need. I do prefer working by hand though.

 

I'm with twigling on this one, usually sanding the neck down doesn't really make for good posing...
~Pandora~

 

You don't need to PM me about this, it's better if the information is publicly available. You can PM me to say you've added more questions to the thread though, in case I miss it

You don't need the round cera-canna (this is it here: http://volksusa.com/matlab0008.html). Using water as you grind is the same things as using water when wet-sanding. Keeps the dust from being airborn and also works as a mild lubricant to remove the resin a little faster and keep the dust out of the way, to prevent it from clogging up the tool. Basically, have a cup of water (can even put some dish detergent in it) handy and dip the tool in it every so often. Also keep an old towel or rag on your lap or worktable and wipe away dust and water now and then.

 

Huh, I find this mis-match interesting, since the Leeke FAQ says that the circumference of Mabel's neck is 7.5 (gentle body) - 8cm (real body). Wouldn't that mean that Mabel doesn't fit onto her own body either?

So don't be surprised if they both come and you find the neck-head match better than you thought

 

I'll put my question here at end of this, if someone could answer it as well, as it is same subject! :3

I'm considering planting minifee head and neck piece on soom little gem neck. Neck is a bit too big for the head (by measures, i have had no chance to test it yet) but could this midification be possible, and what should I start to modify to make things fit, neck, head, or neckpiece?

 

Question, but how would you fit a head with a 10.5cm neck hole on a body with a 10cm neck size?

 

Hello everyone, I am not sure to be at the right place to ask ...
Indeed, I need help to make my Mabel head hold on my souldoll body.
Is there any system, any woodhook or anything else not to damage the resin inside of the head ?

 

Hi si me i'm trying to mod a eldolon sleep xun is match neck size head neck 9.8 as my iplehouse body neck hole and head 9.8 but i need to mod bit more on my xun head but will see will try the sandpaper method or dremel si i confident will fit which i not afraid trying new things. Even though i had family members doubt me trying lol but i can pull it off.

 

I'm no expert, but I wouldn't think 0.5cm will make too much of a difference, if anything it might mean the head movement could be a bit freer and better for posing.

However you could try making a neck piece I used one method to put a boy head on a girl body so 10.5cm head on a 8.7cm body to make it more secure it had a tendency to flop around. I used a tutorial from here and used sculpey, but I want to do it again with air dry clay as I think the sculpey shrunk a little when it baked.

I did a search and can't actually find the tutorial in question but hopefully my results should demonstrate.



The basic jist was cover the body neck and neck hole in clingfilm (to protect it) take some clay then put it into the neck-hole (it was clay in the tutorial but I only had sculpey at the time)and place the head back on the neck of the body (with no Shook of course) and push it in so that it would make an indent (some will go up the hole but you will cut that part away anyway for the Shook hole and the clingfilm will protect the doll). I hope I'm making sense. Then it was just a case of refining it so that it wouldn't be visible.


This was the size difference and how it looked before neck piece



Just an idea of what it will look like


Showing how it sits in the neck

I apologise if the images look giantnormous. I did resize them in Photobucket but it mustn't have translated to here

 

Hey guys, sorry for the necropost.

I'm not interested in buying proprietary tools if I can help it - would it be enough to just hand-sand a neckhole wider if needed?

 

You could try to do that if you want, of course, but it would be a lot more time and effort-intensive.

 

I've always been afraid to try a hybrid doll - this might have been why. I'm deathly afraid that if I don't buy from the same company, the resin won't match and that the hands/feet/head/other won't fit! Thanks for sharing!!

 

I have a question regarding a different approach.

I got my Dollmore Sion Yoon head the other day, and his neck opening is tiny. There isn't much resin to bevel out either, so I'd be stuck with sanding the neck (or adding apoxie to the outside and sanding into that).
On the other hand, the resin is so thin that it got me thinking "maybe I can widen this with heat".

So, customization wizards and witches ... do you reckon it could work? Heating up the lower part of the head and widen it to fit the neck? Any input welcome!

 

I have no idea if anyone would be able to answer my questions as it seems to be a rather 'dead' thread but I really want to put a 8cm head onto a 9cm neck... Would the fit be really bad? And if yes would I be able to fix this. I have no real experience with modding so I would have no clue of what i'm doing. Any suggestions of what I could do? And if it comes to modding should I do the neck or the head?
Thanks in advance!
-Kate

 

Hey~ As most people have said before, it's totally doable to put a cm neck difference on. I had a Soom Obsidius that I put onto a Loongsoul Grace V2 (it was a 10.5 to 11.5 ish neck) I suspect the measurements are off but regardless I opened the neck of my head to like 11 or 11.2 just by using 60 grit sandpaper and going at it, then using 200, then 400, 800 and 1000 grit to smooth it out. It took me probably.... 30 minutes total if I was doing it nonstop? Do note that I am on the high-above-average side of strong and do a lot of craft related work so I was pretty confident when I did this, if you went slowly and checked a lot i'd say opening .5 cm would take maybe an hour by hand?
Another word of advice: I did this by hand because I know a lot of people have done neck mods with dremels, and this destroys the S ring. Personally, I don't like the structural integrity of resin to be damaged and I also just don't trust apoxie as much (most people remake the S ring with apoxie). Try to keep your sanding even and circular, but also focus more on the back of the neck or opening the back because you don't really want to sand into the jawline. I can post some pictures to explain what I mean if you want

 

Thank you! I'm not really scared of modding I've already drilled earinghols so if I know what I'm doing I don't mind going a little faster I'd love some pictures that would be very helpful! I'm so glad that this is actually doable! Doesn't seem to difficult. The only thing that I'm slightly worried about is the back of the neck hole is already not that thick so I won't be able to take much off there. On the site it says that the neck is 8.9 (the head) and the body is 9cm so it's just a 1mm difference according to the site. That can't be such a huge difference? I know I said 8 but I seemed to remember that the difference was more significant. I guess I'll just have to get the body and then see how the fit is.

 

You could give it a shot, if it's thinner resin and the difference between the neck and the socket in the head isn't that much different. If it's more than a half a centimeter you may run into issues. Then it would be better to sand out the neck socket. Do be careful if you give it a go, and post your results!

 

I will! It will definitely take a while though, his body is still on layaway.

 

Hey! Sorry for the late reply but it was a busy week for me, I didn't get a chance to take pictures >_<;; A 1mm difference in my opinion is next to nothing, you might not even have to mod it! I think modding only gets extreme when you have to go above .5 cm ^_^ So that's good news if the site is right! I'm not sure how much this helps but I did just finish my mod of putting my Soom Obsidius (my grail head!) on a 5th Motif Timeless body. Regardless I'll put it up so that any other person who wanders on this thread with the same intention I did the first time (I was looking for extreme neck/head mods) can get some help? Although what I did could be considered sacrilege to some Venitu fans.... I can hear them coming after me now.... Here's a super image heavy example of what I did.

So here's what I had to work with at the start.... I had already opened his head up to like 10.8cm but like WOW that was not going to do it. They say venitu's neck measurement is 13cm BUT I THINK THAT IS A BIG FAT LIE I SWEAR IT'S LIKE 14cm OR SOMETHING. I had some Doll Chateau stuff going on here. (Don't get me wrong I love DC but just not on this head or this body.)




This is a picture of left to right: Modded Soom Obsidius (ignore his ears I'm not close to being done with those), 5th Motif Venitu, Soom Topaz, Soom Wolf
So what I had to do was open up his entire neck,but there wasn't enough resin to do that so I decided to copy the Venitu head opening design... sorta. but if you don't have enough resin to work with the only way to open up a circle is to go up essentially. I drew a line on my topaz head about the neck mod I basically did. I took a xacto knife and carved away the excess resin, then to open even more I went back in with 60 grit sandpaper, 200, 400, 800 and finished with 1000 while wetsanding. Don't do this indoors. Please. For your own health. I know that there's another person on DoA who did an extreme neck mod and she used a dremel to do this instead, like I said before I don't like to because doing it by hand gives me control and I didn't want to destroy the s ring.




Neckhole view, you can tell I took out a lot of resin from Obsidius' upper neck and rounded that out. He basically has no neck cap now.
EDIT : if you can't see the images and want to look at my reply below




Back of neck view, Obsidius' neck now looks like an odd hybrid between a normal neck and the Venitu neck.




SO SADLY. I OPENED UP THE NECK OPENING TO 12 CM FROM 10.5, BUT THAT WASN'T GOING TO CUT IT. So here's where people are going to come after me with pitchforks and flamethrowers, but I modded the Timeless Body neck. I basically took a dremel and went at it while saying I GIVE NO FLAMINGOSSSS (I try not to cuss). I think it started as a 13-14cm neck, but after A LOT OF SHAVING AND SHORTENING AND BREATHING IN CANCER (through a mask, mind you) I think it's like 12 or 12.5 now, I haven't measured yet. PS. Yes this was in the rough sanding stage and I sanded it smooth after XD
But end result! I left the neck the same as the original Venitu's style, I didn't see a reason to change it.




Excuse the nudity~




And him with his wig on, which to me is the PERFECT proportioned head. Because wigs add like 1-3cm's worth of head size @_@ And I prefer realistic proportions. I legit cried when I finished this.




But yeah! I hope this helps anyone out there. The other person I know who's posted their results of doing an extreme head opening mod is here /threads/operation-iplehouse-eid-akando-body-and-dim-minimee-hybrid.281810/. Good luck~~ remember to always wear a heavy duty mask or respirator if working with resin and work outdoors if you can! I would highly recommend washing clothes after too! o v o b

 

So DoA decided to murder two of my images..... You can either reply/quote to see them (they show up for some reason???) Or have the direct links XD
Neckhole Comp
Back Head Comp

 

Hi there! I'm looking for some hybridizing help. I’ve been considering buying a secondhand Chicline body, but I’d like to hybridize it with a minifee head. The only problem is that the body doesn’t come with the minifee head adapter, and since Fairyland has shut down production of the chicline, I can’t order the adapter from them. Is this hybrid possible without the adapter? Is there any way I could sculpt my own adaptor piece, or it is really intricate? The pictures I've seen of it online make it look a little complicated. Or could I forgo the adapter altogether, remove the chicline neck piece, and use the S-hook and a neck donut to attach the head? I have an extra minifee neck key, could I possibly attach that to the chicline body? My main concerns for this undertaking would be any severe bobble-headedness, or gapping, since the neck circumference on a Minifee is 1 cm bigger than that of a Chicline. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

 

I can't seem to find where/how to modify my dollshe sleepy eye Saint head on to the Akagi boy neck. The S-hook is too short to catch and I have floppy neck

 

On a whim (and by my husband's suggestion) tried my Coral Reef Caroline head on my Vings 47cm boy body. I was surprised that it actually looked in-scale and good. The head's neck hole is 6.1cm in diameter, and the body's neck is 7.1cm in diameter. The head "fit" on the body, but was resting on top of the neck, rather than flush together with the neck inside of the head hole. I took the head off because I was worried about something cracking with the fit like that. Is a 1cm neck narrowing/head hole widening mod do-able for a first time modder?

 

Sanding is easy, and not easy to screw up, more so if you go with sandpaper. So, the size of the neck or neck opening is not really an issue as long as you go slowly. Also, make sure you are happy with either choice. Most people go for modding the neck, but I prefer heads that don't look like apples on a stick, so I always sand the neck opening on the head larger. I prefer a good balance between jaw and neck framing the face, rather than a bobble headed looking doll. Having said that, some people also don't want to ruin a potentially more expensive head sculpt, than a relatively easily replaceable body. Which is not even close to being the case for me, but then I own dolls that are 20+ years old now. Lol!

Don't be intimidated by sanding, if you sand the neck opening on the head, 1cm can be relatively nothing, due to circumference, or the roundedness of the hole so to speak. If you can use a sandpaper that you can use wet, as that will make things go smoother and also be smoother at the end. Regardless which you choose to sand, the neck or neck opening, good luck and don't be afraid! It's hard to ruin something by sanding it, unless you're not being careful or using a power tool you don't know how to use (: