La Légende de Temps - Part 3

I'm glad your boys are okay despite the smashed boxes. You must have felt so bad when you saw that.

As for the gifts, from what I've heard people from the 2019 preorder all got socks and boots.

And as for my boy appearing to be smaller, I talked to Batchix (she's a bjd artist) about it and she agreed that it's entirely possible that my tan boy's mold was made off one of the first set of casts instead of a master cast. I've asked to meet with my friend to do a proper comparison and take measurements before I contact Julia. I might have been imagining it. (I hope it was an optical illusion from him being a dark resin and my friend's boy being white.)

 

So I'm starting to look into all the feet and hand options on my Neil and I must admit that I am further confused by the s-hook attaching issue than I thought I would be.

For the feet, it seems that the shoe tree and default flat foot parts are attached with a metal bar and the long flat s-hooks that LLT suggests.
But the demi-point feet have a thick round resin bar.
And the ballet feet have a square resin bar.

Add to that, the default hands have a flat resin bar and the long flat s-hook...and it's rather complicated!

The long flat s-hooks fit into the arm and leg channels where regular rounded s-hooks do not...but also, they do not fit around the thicker resin bars of various shapes without reshaping them quite a lot.
I actually partially changed out my Neil's hands to the 5th Motif hands because his default hands with the flat resin bar and the long flat s-hook were fighting and he couldn't bend his wrist. But I had to modify the long flat s-hook completely on one end to fit to the round resin bar in the 5th Motif hands.

The old string method is looking more and more appealing, except that I want to be able to change all the parts easily...

And I haven't even looked at the jointed glove hands yet.
(Admittedly, I woke up with a migraine today so this might just be a total lack of brain power on my part, but pheeeew! )

 

I thought the measurements would be close enough, but Ballerino has the goods in his booty and/or package compared to SSDF and a thicker neck, so loosely tailored SSDF will fit, but tightly tailored SSDF (like a sadol suit, granted, sadol skews pretty tightly fitting ime) will not fit.

 

That was good thinking, to ask a pro like Batchix!^^ I'll stay tuned, it's an interesting phenomenon. I wonder if any other companies do it that way and have size differences between their colors?!

 

@xylene Good idea to take measurements, I was actually going to suggest that. LOL It would also be interesting to see if the head is smaller too or only the body is affected.
Batchix has lots of experience in casting. If she thinks it's possible that the cause for the difference is yours being a cast from a cast like Mandagore suggested earlier, it seems the best explanation IMO. I wouldn't think different resin colors would shrink so differently or this would have become a known issue long ago, thinking how many folks on DoA have the same doll in two different resin colors.

The S-hook situation keeps bugging me. I did order the suggested hooks from AC, let's see when they arrive. If they have to be bent to fit around the various bars in the feet and they can be bent easily enough, one can only hope they are still strong enough. I've had S-hooks in chinese dolls that gradually un-bent from the string-tension until they finally let go of the string.

Also, what can be done when the standard hands don't bend at the wrists, like mentioned above, because of the S-hooks? Perhaps it would be possible to widen the string channel in the wrist to accomodate normal round S-hooks, would that help? Perhaps that could be done to the ankles as well? Assuming the resin is thick enough there and it wouldn't cause stability issues.
I wish I had the doll on hand already to think about solutions, but I guess it will take some more weeks until he flies and is dealt with in customs.
I'm still annoyed Julia didn't address these problems before she started to sell and ship the boys, especially as she already had an order before this one.

 

Admittedly, I was concerned about the s-hooks in the doll as well. He is strung very tightly and usually I have a very hard time bending SD s-hooks due to their thickness, but these are much thinner. So I'm still thinking about a solution for my own Niel. Saddly they seem prone to gouging the resin beacuse they are thin and sharp which worries me. I want to keep him safe.

That aside I'm completely in love with the sulpting. The gorgeous details on the feet and the glove hands are so lovely!
Omg, the glove hands are bliss. The detailing on them is insane! The zipper pull has a little hole just as it should and I can't for the life of me wrap my head around how she cast that. It's amazing!

 

Parzival has a face now. I think I might wanna get him green eyes in a more subdued color.

LLT Neil with face-up by Kaxen6, on Flickr

 

@zekarmisama
Yaaaay! I love him!!
So pleased to meet you Parzival. We've heard so much about you.

 

Wow, this thread has gotten so long since I was last here, and I haven't had any email notifications. Congrats to everyone whose lovely boys have come home! Despite a few of the listed concerns, the pictures are gorgeous!

My tracking still hasn't updated since July 29th, and the USPS shows him as 'pre-shipment, origin post preparing shipment'. To say I'm worried would be an understatement. I'll be contacting Julia during the week if he doesn't start to move. The only thing that makes me feel any better is that she told me she would insure him for the full amount when I requested it.

 

Can anyone please tell me if the resin on these new guys is translucent environmental like it is on most of the heads?

 

The resin isn't translucent.

 

Oh, I was going to say that my WS Niel is slightly translucent.

 

Huh. My normal skin guy doesn't look any different than my other dolls.

 

Oh, huh. That's interesting! I wonder if it depends on resin tone?

 

Mine says the same, still says "handed for air transportation" in Beijing checking Packages24, but USPS hasn't received any info yet. I have three other parcels coming from Korea, Russia and Singapore, and all three have been stuck in Chicago customs for over two weeks. They seem very backed up and like they are not scanning often/at all. With how everything is right now, unfortunately we may be waiting for a few weeks and I am not sure what Julia can do

 

For those concerned about the s-hooks for the pointe and demi-pointe feet: I had extra hooks on hand that came with a MSD bjd from Granado and they worked just fine on those resin bars in the additional feet.

Spoiler: S-hook pics

Here's my tan Roderich with a nearly finished faceup.

 

If I'm not the only one in this situation, then I won't worry as much - although mine doesn't seem to have made it as far as yours. But if it's anything like EMS in the US, the sender is able to instigate an investigation into the whereabouts of a package if it has gone missing...and two weeks is a pretty long time for an EMS shipment to be in complete limbo.

 

Normally, yes it would be a long time! Unfortunately l my other packages are EMS too, its like everything has completely stopped. It is definitely concerning! Have you tried tracking on a site like Package24, or is that where its only showing that last scan? Maybe ours are hanging out together doing some ballet?

 

My Lazuli arrived fairly quickly. I was lucky and he went through San Francisco. Packages that come in through Los Angeles can take months. I haven't found a China tracking site that shows when the flight leaves tje airport. So I can't tell if the package is waiting for a flight or sitting in a container in t by e US that just hasn't been processed.