Modification A Day In the Sun For F-31 (Volks SD13 FCS refurbishment)

PROJECT COMPLETE!


I started 2021 buoyed up on a wonderful, generous, completely unexpected gift from
@cthulhu: a Volks SD13 F-31 in sunlight skin who needed some TLC after 13+ years and at least 4 owners. I love the animism of Volks' brand, especially the whole idea of Tenshi no Sato, so doing restoration work on one of their special Sato-exclusive models was a dream come true (on top of, y'know, incredible beautiful surprise doll!? I used to daydream about owning this exact boy when I heard he'd be available at NY Dollpa back in... 2006???)

TO DO LIST
✔ Resurfacing. Darker resin shows areas of sanding as a whitish bloom unless all scratches are polished out. While this doll's seams have been removed, they were done at about 400 grit, which was insufficient. I will be continuing up to 1200 grit and superfine steel wool before coating.

✔ Add thigh joints. I'm fine with single-jointed elbows and knees, but I really enjoy the more natural sitting poses that are possible with extra rotation from the hip. I've done this mod on three different dolls so I've got the technique down. The challenge this time will be producing a swivel insert that matches his resin color, as bright white PVC pipe will be visually disruptive.

✔ Open mouth. The mouth crease is sculpted super deeply. I'd like to open the deep recess from behind to increase his expression changeability from different angles, and add a removable insert for teeth.

✔ Head reduction. I have one Volks boy on hand for comparison (Sakamoto Ryoma), and their faces are about the same face size but F-31 has a HUUUUGE cranium. Getting him down to to the larger end of an 8-9 from a 9-10 will make him look a little more maturely proportioned to match his longer legs, and give me a wider selection of wigs that fit.

✔ Magnet system for ears. F-31 has interchangeable ears with pegs that in theory stay on via friction but in practice stay on via eye putty and swearing ;u; I don't want to modify the sockets in the head, so instead I'll replace the pegs on the ears with same-sized cylindrical magnets and add disc magnets on the inside of the head to stick them.

Track down some FCS exclusives for him to wear. I want to give him back the GE-11 Zoukeimura eyes listed on his birth certificate, and get him an omukae outfit. Well, I *got* the omukae outfit and then he ended up looking better in Angell Studio's Chinese fantasy sets... The Zouks broke in transit, so I decided to try something completely different and ended up with YUKINObjd's "Morpheus Trap" resin eyes.

✔ Faceup + ✔ body blushing. The dark_angel faceup he came with was done to match a burgundy wig and had more pinks/reds than I preferred, plus the gloss was yellowing. I want something more neutral, with a palette of dark warm browns + shimmery gold highlights.

✔ Silicone sueding. KIPS discs work great but they like to fold up, especially in smaller joints: I wanna try sticking them with a tiny bit of Smooth-On Silpoxy.

 

Before and after on the mouth opening. I started by drilling in from the front with a pin-vice, then holding the head in front of a bright light and using the two illuminated holes as a guideline for a larger 3/8 drill bit and then the router bit on the dremel. I've cleaned up the outside with a diamond file and I'm waiting for an appropriate grinding burr to neaten up the inner cavity.

 

Today I worked on the thigh joints.
@Tetradeka has a wonderful detailed walkthrough of this mod on an SD13 girl here: /threads/add...3-legs-volks-rinon-very-picture-heavy.531149/

Cuts made and sanded flush.


The stringing channels are offset and will need to be asymmetrically widened to center the axis of rotation. The white bits are PVC pipe that will be epoxied into the upper part of the thigh. I didn't put as fine a finish on the pipe as I usually would because I'm going to cover it with a layer of color-matched epoxy clay.


The 561 cutting bit on the Dremel is faster and tidier than any of the grinding attachments for making the cutouts. It makes coarse shavings instead of powder.


This took less than 5 minutes, woooo~ The first doll I did this on, I used the sanding drum and it was a MESS.


I finally figured out how to get the epoxy a good-enough color! Magic Sculpt is a two-part epoxy clay: the resin component comes in white and earthtones, but the hardener component only comes in medium gray, so it usually ends up too cool-toned. This time I mixed some acrylic paint in raw sienna, process magenta, and cadmium yellow into the gray hardener to make a neutral brown before adjusting the resin color.


This is where I've stopped for the day. It'll probably need another round of sanding-and-patching to make it perfectly smooth.


One last point before I go:
I've been here for a long time, and have heard so many rumors about tanned resin in general and Volks Sunlight Skin in particular. A big one is, "The color comes off if you sand the seams and Volks gets around it by blushing over them." I... don't think that's what's going on...

Here's a good example of this so-called "marbling". The rectangular patch of discoloration on the locking edge is called a "gate vestige"--it's a mark from where the resin was poured into the mold--and they can show up even on lighter resins, my Unoa has the same marks on his butt. The rest is just incomplete sanding.


Here it is in direct sunlight after being buffed with 800 and 1200 sanding sponges. There is the faintest dark line where the gate was, but no more light spots.

 

No progress today and not a lot of coherent thought either: Buyee sent his replacement Zoukeimura eyes in a paper envelope inside a plastic mailer and they obviously arrived broken.

 

Last night and this morning I did all the magnets for the head~

I got these magnets to replace the ear pegs. They're the correct diameter to work with the existing plastic sockets, so he'll still be able to wear unmodified ear parts. They'd be perfect if they were about 1/16" shorter--I had to drill quite deep into the ear to seat them, and you can see the magnet through the resin in the deepest part of the ear such that it'll need concealing blush--but filing magnets to length would have made a mess.


I talked in the mouth-drilling post about using light to check the placement and alignment of pilot/guide holes before switching to a larger bit. I drilled the pilot hole with a pin visw drill before cutting the peg off flush, so the peg could serve to align the hole.


Then I used a larger drill bit to enlarge the hole to seat the magnet. You can do it by hand holding the bit, resin is soft and the allowances are very small.
I also did a little bit of sanding and carving to improve the fit of the ear and the head. Small /flat cast parts often don't fit perfectly flush because the resin shrinks unevenly and warps as it cures.


I scuff-sanded the end of the magnet, put some clear two-part epoxy glue in the hole, and used the flat end of the drill bit to get the magnet to clamp itself. Once the epoxy had gelled I fitted the ear to get the angle/alignment perfect and let it set overnight.


All done! There's a small disc magnet inside the head sticking it into place. It'll take another day or so for the epoxy to reach full cure strength.


One last pic as proof that it's not just glued together LOL

 

Thank you for the doll!!! When the stars align such that IRL doll meets can resume and we're in the same approximate geographic region, I will bring him to see you in his renovated self :>

This is how I feel about eye opening mods LOL At least with mouth openings you have the editorial power of shadows and lip color to hide any irregularities. Definitely wouldn't have been been brave enough to do it with an exacto knife or a powered drill @_@

 

Okay, he's all sanded and completely scrubbed and tomorrow when there's natural light I can start airbrushing!


His new hands (he came with H-04s, I'm swapping them for H-10s for the same pose but a little bigger) are off in a little jar of hydrogen peroxide to mellow them 12 years overnight. I regret knowing that this is what warm 40vol peroxide does to urethane but I'm glad I can put my previous whitening catastrophes to good use ;u;


This is what I spent most of the past two days doing: can you see the additive resin work inside the head? Glueing the internal ear magnets to the surface didn't look good and they kept trying to fly off towards the headcap magnets or the S-hook, so I countersunk them and coated them in Smooth-On 325 urethane tinted with UVO pigments. The lip where the headcap hook catches is also added back in with urethane, when I took the height off the head I lost that too.


I mixed a batch of correctly-tinted Part B of the urethane and stored it in a syringe so I could decant a little bit at a time to work with tiny 5mL batches. It's messier than epoxy clay--you have to wait for it to get syrupy, slap it on in hideous globs, then sand to shape--but because it's got the same translucency as resin the effect is more seamless.

I got the idea to use urethane for additive mods from an amazing WIP post on @armeleia's Tumblr and I can't wait to do more with it *___*

 

Blushing complete, albeit poorly photographed (I just lost the sun orz)


My preferred way to do blushing is something I picked up from Japanese garage kit painting, where they call it "clear skin method". You mix a dark, saturated version of your target shadow tone in a base of clear gloss (I'm using Tamiya X-22 acrylic) and apply thin layers to build up the color. For pale skintones this is a reddish orange that comes out peach, for sunlight I mixed up coppery brown with a tiny bit of metallic gold for celestial mica sparkles. I do the mixing dropwise in a narrow glass vial so I can see through the paint to check the color.


I'll go back in to do a little pastel work on the detailed areas that need a third color for realism, but for overall contouring, the clear gloss acrylic is much tougher than MSC.

 

I did the sueding today, I'm happy with how it turned out~ I used 1/32" silicone sheet (the red kind felt more tear-resistant than the clear stuff KIPS discs are made of) and a new-to-me product called Sil-Poxy, which turned out to be... fancy silicone caulk!


The process for patterning was the same as for leather sueding. Line joint with masking tape, mark perimeter and stringing hole, then gently peel masking tape away in one piece, cut darts to flatten, and trace onto silicone.

The Sil-Poxy seems to form a physical bond like hot glue or tacky glue (as in, you can peel it off by rubbing if you work at it) rather than the chemical bond (like super glue or 2-part epoxy) I was expecting. It seems to work fine with the sheet silicone to take the abraisive force of the joints, though? I know people have tried directly-applied silicone caulk in the past as a hot glue sueding alternative and that it didn't work out.

He's still glossy while I wait for MSC weather, but I strung him so the silicone can cure under compression. I definitely prefer this method to floating silicone washers, as nothing gets folded up or slips out to where it can be seen. He's still a lousy stander--it's got to be something about his center of gravity and the way his legs align with his torso, he can't balance with his weight on one foot no matter how hard I try--but he's a cute sitter now!

 

I think tightly-laced boots is going to be what helps. His hips and knees are rock-steady now, but his ankles are determined to crush my contrapposto dreams...

And yup, the gloss gets just enough matte fixative over it to kill the shine. I'm worried about it leaving a whitish cast, so I'm trying to apply it as sparingly as possible. Somewhere in a Japanese doll book I saw a trick about using kneaded eraser to do soft-edged airbrush masking, so I think I'll try to reverse-engineer that for his brows and lips to omit a pastel fixative layer

 

Haven't made any progress other than returning his damaged eyes to Buyee for a refund and picking up these resin eyes from Yukino on Etsy. I've been waiting on an order of wigs to come in so I can pick a complementary brow color and shape for his faceup, none of the wigs I've tried so far have looked flattering on his skin tone. Color theory is a cruel mistress

I also picked up Volks' "Intro To Super Dollfie Faceup" to help me better understand the brand's painting style. I've read lots of tutorials and done some faceups over the years, but I still learned some useful tricks.

Interestingly, the book recommends using a 1000-grit sanding sponge to smooth the first layer of sealant, which might be part of how Volks manages to avoid sealant haze on their tan resins.

 

He's done!

Japan is supposed to be in the height of monsoon season, and I'm supposed to be studying and not doing doll stuff, but the hygrometer read 50% so it was a divinely-ordained Mr. Super Clear day.


I gave him applied upper and lower lashes instead of just upper. The pearl-pupil eyes (better pics from the seller: BJD Eyes morpheustrap 14mm/16mm/18mm - Etsy) give him an unfocused gaze anyways, and I liked the contrast of the white lashes with his skintone. It was hard figuring out the lip color! I assumed it should be warm, but I had to go with a cooler color or it looked funky with his eyes.
I couldn't find gray kneaded eraser here, but there's something called 塗り消し that's like a less-tacky white version. It seems nice, holds without leaving residue.
I have a new favorite lash-painting tool: tiny disposable nail-art brushes of the kind found at Daiso. I find them easier to control than the #0000 liner for short strokes.

Glued his headplate back in and gave the wig (Himekazura Long Straight in Mixed White) a bang trim. I couldn't do my usual weeny "well I'll just slide the cap back" shortcut because of the ears, it kept escaping.


He might need an LED halo of some kind :>


Thank you so much again for the continually astonishing gift, @cthulhu! He's so beautiful and I love looking at him every day. I hope you enjoy seeing his new incarnation.