Are you bothered by seams????

Armeleia wrote a really interesting post on a previous thread regarding seams... unfortunately I can't find it now!!! D: She explained very well about casting procedures, and why some dolls may arrive "smooth" even though the buyer never requested seam-sanding, etc., and why more seemingly expensive dolls may arrive with larger seams. I'm gonna try looking for it again... ^^;

Anyway... to answer the OP, I'm really not bothered by seams. Unless they're so big and sharp they might cut my fingers if I re-dress my doll!! I sanded my first doll because I wanted to get more hands-on with her. It takes forever, and to be honest it's not very fun work... and I was worried about all the resin dust (though I did sand wet and used a mask, but even so...) I did not sand my second doll to arrive. I might do his hands at some point because I'd like to blush them, and then the seams would definitely get in the way! But honestly, I don't notice them...

Hm, summing up... I am surprised at the number of people who consider dolls flawed or consider companies lazy(!) when they arrive with seams... O_O;

 

Mmm, nope. They don't bother me at all. Unless they are really rigid, but none of my dolls are like that.

 

It really, really depends. I don't mind them aesthetically, I think they add to the 'doll' feel.
But the issue I had with my Souldoll hye (now sold) was that her seams were very pronounced and SHARP! She actually cut me a few times ;_;

 

I'm also pretty amazed by the number of people who consider seams a "defect."

 

I would suggest sanding outside. Otherwise, what's the point of wearing a mask if you're still filling the air in the room with dust? Are you going to wear a mask in that room for the next however-long it takes for the resin dust to make it out of the air?

Sanding sponges are great. I prefer them.

How its done depends on how bad they are. You may need to scrap them off with a blade before sanding, or just set right to it. Always sand in circles. For more detailed suggestions etc. check out the seam sanding sticky in the workshop.

 

Only if they are so rough they cut me or look like will separate due to not really lined up well.

 

I hated seams and would sand them off as soon as possible. Now, since I have several realskin Iple's that the seams can't be sanded I am somewhat less bothered by seams.

 

I'm not bothered by seams at all. To me, they just come with the doll. You can sand them if they bother you too much, but I never have. I don't know..to me they just come with the territory, so to speak.

 

I've sanded the first 4 or 6 dolls I got, because I thought that's what everybody did and it's fun to work on dolls. At the moment I can't be bothered to sand seams when a new doll arrives, unless I want to give that doll a full body blushing. If I'm going to blush to make the doll look more "real" then the seams have to go. Unless it's a tanned doll, but I have issues spraying MSC on tanned dolls, so my tanned dolls won't get their bodies blushed.
I still prefer to have my dolls without seams, though. It looks and feels nicer, but I can live with seams on my dolls.

 

I'm not bothered by seams. These dolls are a hand cast product and seams are just a part of it. If they bug me, I sand them myself.

I've noticed this as well and think most of this has to do with what Lulu said here:

Back in the day the dolls sold weren't even considered 'finished products', but more like kits that needed some do-it-yourself work to make it completely your own. There is such pressure to get the perfect doll and the perfect collection as soon as possible right now. Some parts of the hobby are different from what they used to be.

 

Wow, so this hobby is generating reminiscences already... I think I must be "old school" despite being fairly new to BJDs, I always order blanks and wait ages to do the face up and mess with wigs and bits of fabric thinking about how I want them to look. The seams on my Peaks Woods Skiya are the only ones I've noticed so far, they were really quite OTT on her upper legs so i wet-sanded them. Where they are visible on my other dolls they are quite subtle, and to me these are dolls, not little people, so it doesn't bother me really.

 

I'm less concerned about seams than about people who apparently don't realize that "seams" and "seems" are two completely different words that have little to no connection with each other

It seems that seams are a big problem for some people. I do prefer the nice smooth finished products, but it's no great difficulty to remove them. On tan dolls I'd rather have some seams left than have ugly sanding marks, actually.

 

I just saw this comment... I make dolls, cloth dolls but they take hours and hours of labour and a great deal of aptitude to make and yet I can't really charge a fraction of that time or the doll would never sell. I would love to make a BJD and know what is involved and have worked with resin in a previous day job.... except I sat down and worked out a rough estimate of what it would need to be charged out at and think that, frankly, we get a pretty good deal from most of the Asian doll makers.

This isn't a mass-produced item, this is someone sweating and CARING over every individual piece of the dolls they create and they sell them at a price that they can afford to do that work for. They sell them without the seams sanded in most cases because that would add yet another day to the production of each and every doll... that's another 8 hours added to the price! If the seams bother me, I am more than happy to sand them myself and have something truly beautiful at a price I can just barely afford. What you can do with these dolls by learning how to sand, face-up, customize YOURSELF would be such an incredibly valuable thing for you... no matter how your doll came out you would love it more because it would be your sweat and care that finished it off.

 

Found the quote I was talking about earlier! I thought this was very informative and should help give reasons for why things are the way they are when it comes to companies & seams!

(Btw this was from a debate thread about sanding, and from Armeleia...)

 

that's pretty funny, It kinda reminds me of how my dad is always like, "When I was younger I had to go to the library and spend hours looking for that book, instead of google! I still do that to date too. It's like kids these days don't even want to take the time and effort to do the slightest of work themselves!"
Of course I only got my doll a month and a half ago, so I'm still pretty new! I don't think age is the reason though. I think it's the fact that the older people have been through the pain of customizing where the newer haven't quite push through to that stage. As somebody who has done ceramics and painting, you can never expect everything to be picture perfect. I think there will always be a different respect to people who have worked hard on their dolls to be perfect then people who just bought one to be "perfect". For anybody who has worked as a cashier at a busy retail or local market, I'm sure you can relate too. You would easily be able to tell the people who have done the "fun" job of being a cashier, because they respect the pain you have to go through with some customers and know you don't control the prices or anything. While on the otherhand the grumpy people who haven't just want you to get the sales prices right and do your job fast! Funny how the cashier is usually the first to get yelled at by the customer for all the store's mistakes..but you can def' tell the different respect levels xD

sorry...i relate everything to being a cashier! I named being a cashier the worst part of my life so far....ughhh, eversince being a cashier i try my best not to judge any job and try to fix things myself instead of complaining xD

 

I totally despise seams as I cannot help associating them with low quality products. BJDs cost a whole lot of money and I don't want my dolls to look like cheap plastic figures.
Actually I even prefer to buy from companies where I know that the dolls will come without seams or where I can have them removed, because I hate to have to do it myself. I tend to stay away from dark skintones such as tans or fantasy colors where the seams cannot be removed without causing strange discoloration issues.

 

I love seamlines! They give me something to do when I feel angry. XD
Sanding seamlines is for me a way to relax.
Also I love drilling eyeholes.
I'm even sad when a doll doesn't give me enough to work on. How more I work on them how more they feel like my own dolls. Not like something allready perfect I bought in a shop.

But I can understand that for people who don't like to custumize or sand themselves, seamlines are very annoying. I don't think they are pretty. But I don't mind them on my Soom Galena. She is grey skin and luckily the seams are small.

 

I completely understand why many companies do not sand seams on default. it's alot of elbow grease and alot of extra time and the one time I did recieve a doll straight from the company with sanded seams it was a huge surprise (although a nice one, so I'm not complaining).

That being said, to answer the root of the question however, I absolutely despise seams on my dolls and I can't wait until my last two that haven't been sanded yet will be rid of them. Unfortunately, as much as I hate seams, I hate the actual process of sanding almost just as much. I in no way find it a 'bonding' process with my doll, usually more often than not it makes me so frustrated and sick of the doll I don't even want to look at it for a few days. I'm the type where if I had the option of buying the service from the company I probably would since that bit of extra waiting time is worth it. However, once the doll is home I find it difficult to send it out yet again for something I could essentially do myself no matter how much I hate it.

In short, I don't find seams on a doll straight from the company any type of defect, but that certainly doesn't make me dislike them any less.

 

Usually I've found that the color matches back up pretty quickly. The sanded resin hasn't really been exposed to air before so it hasn't had a chance to oxidize. When I did some sanding on a doll I'd had for six months or so there was a slight color difference, but it matched up again within a few weeks.

My rule of thumb is, if you can smell it, you are inhaling particles of it. That's why it's best to sand either outdoors or in a very well-ventilated area (I usually used the garage). Wet-sanding can also be helpful since it keeps the resin dust out of the air to some extent, but you have to make sure your sandpaper is made for wet-sanding. If it's got a paper backing it'll just fall apart.