Doll company measurements - how accurate are they?

I'm not sure there would be enough error to tell a recast by the mere size difference...but I've never been face to face with a recast so I can't really tell you. I do know the normal indicators are the tone of the resin (A color the company doesn't use/coloring is off) and the price. Recasts are usually very very cheap, the recast company is trying to get you to buy the doll from them instead of the company so they want the price to be lower. Usually (unless its a secondhand scammer) the company is pretty straightforward/its easy to tell its a recast.

Edit: I compared my doll, she's pretty much spot on for the old body she's actually on (They have made a newer body which has wider hips and longer arms/legs with a shorter torso). What little discrepancy there was was probably user error and less than even 1cm.

 

My Luts KDF; which was purchased straight from Luts and is guaranteed to be authentic, has a hip measurement that is off by a whole 10mm.

I'd suggest that company measurements are a rough guide. Fairly useless for detecting recasts, and possibly a bit dangerous to use for sizing clothes too.

 

From my experience...not very accurate. It varies by company, but the worst variance I've seen was my Doll Leaves v2 boy body was supposed to be 60cm with head and he was 56cm! While it's true that my doll was a hybrid, the head I used was actually bigger than the Doll Leaves head, so I don't think that alone caused him to be 4cm shorter.

 

Part of the trouble with company measurements is where exactly they're measuring. For instance, some companies measure shoulder width from joint to joint, and some the entire width including arms. I haven't found company measurements very useful for pattern making.

 

^That. Most doll companies also tend to be kind of vague with a margin of error of up to 3cm on the actual height of their dolls. Sometimes more. We still don't know why this is.

 

Rubber rulers.

 

There are plenty of variables to account for the differences, even if the measurements were taken in the same way, with perfectly-calibrated measuring tapes (not rubber rulers ). One is mold variance -- silicone molds stretch a little with repeated use, according to what I've read. Eventually molds become so worn that they have to be discarded and replaced. Resin can vary from batch to batch, as well -- in color, in texture, and so probably in density and mold-filling properties as well.

Casting a doll really isn't a surgically-precise process like precision machining. I think there's a mistaken assumption or two at work in the original post here, though it's a logical idea from a precision-manufacturing perspective.

 

Seconding that casting a doll is not precision machining. I have bodies direct from a company not known to be re-casted with obvious height/size difference, so I don't think smaller size / size variance is always an indicator of recasts.

 

Definitely not a good way to tell. Heck even head size isn't a good teller since you have to constantly try new things.

 

Well, I was trying to buy shoes for my Soom ID72 and the website listed the foot size at 8.Xcm but when I measured it on my boy that I bought directly from Soom it was over 9.Xcm lol. I think some slight variance are to be expected but it sometimes throw me off when I try to buy outfits for them. I'm interested to know if the size difference is pretty huge for recasted dolls though, otherwise I think just comparing the measurements alone is not that telling especially if the difference is not that significant .

 

Definitely not a way to ID a recast. As someone said above, different companies measure at different points and may vary in accuracy. My first doll (and this was almost 12 years ago, I'm sure this isn't as common now!) was fully 4cm shorter than her measurements claimed! I bought her directly from the company. For me, the best use of company measurements is to determine what brands of clothes will fit best--if I want to buy heels for a boy, I want to find out which companies sell girls with feet that same size and buy shoes made for those bodies, or if I want to get non-Iplhouse clothes for my SID I need to know who else has majorly beefy chests!

 

I have an Island doll, girl and I took measurements of the body when I got her. Their measurements are spot on. What you see on a page is in reality so when it comes to girl bodies I highly recommend theirs. (58 cm only, I don't have experience with other ones!)

 

@Sin's Wife although some doll sculptors do their own casting, probably the majority farm it out to a casting service. There are some that specialize in BJD casting, like Dollshe and Haru, and some that are part of larger factories that do all kinds of casting work. So you could say that the vast majority of BJDs are cast by experienced people.