Preparing the arms for assembly
Each arm consists of a large upper ball joint, the upper arm, smaller elbow ball joint sphere, lower arm, wrist wooden ball joint sphere and hand. You need to drill a 2mm hole in the center of the larger ball joint sphere to run the wire thru.
You also need to drill a 2mm hole in the center of the small white sphere ball joint piece. These smaller balls are attached together on a resin rope and need to be cut apart and sanded before use.
You need to sand the seams on the arm pieces smooth before priming and painting these pieces.
Before priming, glue the ball joints to the wrists and lower arm pieces.
After painting, I'm ready to start to wire the arms. By looking at the included diagram, I judged the length of the wire necessary to go thru the upper torso down each side to the mid-lower arm section. I cut an approximately 15" length of the smaller wire included with the kit. I decided NOT to glue the shoulder ball joint to the upper arm piece as it would be too difficult to try to thread the wire thru these pieces with a sharp curve after gluing, so I left the upper shoulder ball joint as a separate piece. When the wire is pulled tightly, it holds all the pieces together.
The wire that goes into the lower arm piece has to be bent into a "hook" at the end and then inserted into the ball joint hole in the elbow. The hole has to be drilled bigger to make this piece fit.
A 2" piece of wire needs to be cut and glued into each hand thru the ball joint into the hand piece. This wire also needs to be bent on the end and a small piece of elastic (about 1/2 of the piece included with the kit) needs to be tied on the hooked wire at the elbow joint, then threaded thru the lower arm and stretched and tied on the hand wire hook. This whole piece then snaps back into the arm and holds the arms tight. So this with both arm sections.
The finished upper body!
Web site to see more pictures of this doll finished
