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Removing yellowed coating from a doll’s face-up

The “after” pic is above. ^^ A bald “after” pic, for a better look at the head, is in my previous post.

The “before” pic is under the cut below. DX

To begin with, I should describe the condition of the head before I cleaned it up. It is a Volks oldskin normal head from 2003, with its original painted face-up by Volks/ Zoukeimura. I believe some rubbed blushing was fixed by a friend, Djinn, around 2006, and I subsequently added some shading around the eyes and deepened the lip colour with paint by myself. All these fixes/ additions involved multiple layers of Mr Super Clear (both the regular version, earlier on, and then UV-Cut) over his original face-up. The doll was handled frequently until around 2008, and then stored in a dark cupboard until late 2017. When he was put into storage, he still looked in good condition and nothing like he looked 10 years later. The state of the head on 22nd August 2018 is as shown:

You can see the contrast between his bare resin and the yellowed coating + blushing particularly well at his earlobe, where much of the coating was rubbed off. The staining around his hairline is from his wig (a Kemper mohair wig which I dyed with human hair dye - same wig as the picture at the top), which I unwisely left on him without a wig cap for a decade. D:

Method:

I went in with the aim of saving his original eyebrows if I could. The larger areas of discoloured coating and blushing on his forehead, cheeks and ears were removed by scrubbing with cotton pads soaked with Mr. Hobby brand thinner. I used thinner because I was all out of Mr Tool Cleaner. I would recommend Mr Tool Cleaner or a similar paint removal product, rather than thinner. I also forewent gloves, since the work was a little delicate, but my fingers definitely suffered for it. D: (Aside, I have ordered a paste-type paint remover from Taobao and will report back on how well it works.)

For around the eyebrows and other painted parts I wanted to keep: I folded a cotton pad into a point and moistened it with paint remover. Then I used the pad to dampen the area I was working on, and firmly but carefully dabbed/ wiped at the resin, going as close as I could to the painted area. Repeat with patience until the finer areas around the painted parts (particularly the eye area below the eyebrows, and the inner corners of the eyes) are totally clean. You do need to use some pressure, especially if there are many layers to remove.

For removing only discoloured coating from on top of painted areas: I found that making a few quick passes with a moistened cotton pad directly over the painted eyebrows, lower lashes and lips was effective to remove the top few layers of yellowed coating and blushing from those areas. (This made me decide to keep the lower eyelashes and lip paint as well, since they were looking much fresher already.) I would immediately rinse the area thereafter to avoid the paint remover soaking down into the lower layers of paint which I wanted to keep. Never allow your paint removal product to sit on any painted areas you want to keep, even if it doesn’t seem to be dissolving the paint immediately, because it will eat down into them eventually. Occasionally, this swipe-and-rinse method would leave a little white frosting, but another dab with paint remover would get rid of it.

I worked on cleaning up the head over 2 days, whenever I was free and had daylight (I found that I would miss spots when I worked at night under artificial light). On the third day, the cleaning job was done. I used a very fine, 1500 grit sanding sponge on some areas which appeared to have surface scratching (only visible from certain angles), scrubbed lightly all over with magic eraser, then washed the head with dish-washing liquid and let it dry. The eyelashes had survived the whole cleaning process (!), so I stuffed the eyeholes with cotton wool to protect them before spraying a light coat of Mr Super Clear UV Cut over the head. I touched up a couple of rubbed areas on one eyebrow and the lower lashes and applied a very minimal amount of pink chalk pastel on his forehead, lower cheeks, nose bridge and chin. One more light coat of MSC, and he was done! =D

Looking at him all nice and clean has made me realise afresh why this was the sculpt that sucked me into the BJD world in the first place. I had never wanted a doll for myself until I laid eyes on a grainy picture of MSD Hewitt on the Volks website in December of 2003~~~ His resin has definitely yellowed and deepened compared to when I first received him, but it doesn’t look bad. I do also want to try highlighting! his face with white chalk pastel once I manage to get some. Perhaps I can utilise the warm yellow tone of the resin as a kind of natural “shading”... I will report back on the results in due time. Thanks for reading! I hope it helps anyone who has a well-loved, vintage BJD to save. ^_^

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