Volks pureskin SD, SD13 leg break

Volks has never made pureskin replacement parts for anything but hands and feet, and I think sueding would just exacerbate this particular issue :\

 

My girl came today, and I noticed that the joint is...'loose'? Theres alot of room between the ball of the leg and the actual joint, and she's not loosly strug. Is this normal, or prehaps have her knees been previously modded to correct the pressure point? I really see what you mean witht he /\ leg position, she's worse then my sister's lishe, but she's awefully cute!

*throws SD10 body love at you*

 

I've been working on this for a while and I guess I should really start a new topic, but I'll just post a few pics here. Hope it helps some.

If you just grab the lower leg and bend it, the knee joint will spontaneously bend out of the joint, because the teeth at the back of the knee works as a hinge, causing the knee bends at the back instead of swivelling at the middle of the joint:



Especially this position causes pressure on the side of the knee.

With repeated pressure material fatigue develops which eventually causes the side of the knee to crack, and once it's started to crack it's most likely just a matter of time until it breaks off completely.

What I do, before I bend the knee I grab it like this:


Then I push slightly with my thumb at the back of the knee, while pulling the knee joint out of the knee slightly with my finger:


Here's a view of the knee from the back to see more clearly, the teeth locked into the knee in the normal straight position:


And here's the teeth pulled just slightly out of the slot they rest in:


Once you've got the teeth out of the slot you can bend the knee without the knee joint popping out, and without creating pressure on the side of the knee:


Side view of full proper knee bending:






I hope this long slighly ranty guide was of help to someone.

If anyone is interested in reading more about material fatigue there's a pretty good article at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_(material)

I have sanded down the sides of the knee joint in the left knee on my Kun, to mimic the flat knee joints of the suwaricco body. So far I have noticed no ill effects, she stands as stable as always, and there is no pressure on the side of the knee no matter how I bend it. I plan on sanding down the right leg too when I get around to it.

 

HAIBANE! You are an angel! What a wonderful tutorial!! It's so hard to explain the way the leg bends in words. Now when people ask I'll just say "Look at these pictures!" XP

So sanding down the ball helped relieve some pressure? Awesome!! I'm so glad it worked for you!! Thanks for reporting this!

 

Glad you liked it!
I tried to explain with words in one of the earlier topics... but it was just like...
Then I took some pics but never got around to making a proper tutorial to post.

 

oh my god, this needs to be in the faq or something. thank you SO much for putting that together! i actually figured this out and have been doing it with my new SD13 body, but seeing it here made sense out of it and makes it easier to explain. i'm terrified that it'll break anyway >.< but this is going to be such a great help to everyone else. thanks again!!!

 

If anyone wants to repost it somewhere where it's easier to find it's all good with me.
And yeah, I still worry about my Kun's knees, the material is soo thin at the sides. But I love the way the SD10 knees look. I'm considering fortifying the sides of the knees with epoxy putty once I'm all done sanding the joints down.

 

Wow, Haibane, thanks! ^____^

Also, today I acidentally strung one of the legs of my Nana far tighter then it should have been. I could really see the pressure it was putting on the one knee compared with the other leg that was normal. Dolls with the problem my be too tightly strung, which would add more pressure. Loosening will really help, I think!

 

I'm bumping this thread to see if anyone has any updates. . . has anyone contacted Volks about this problem? We've been okay so far, but now I'm frantic about my Nana! (T___T

 

Very helpful. Hope it helps others.

Does this apply just to SD10 girl bodies or are SD10 boy bodies in trouble as well? --- is worried for her incoming boy

 

I have never heard of SD10 boy body knees breaking, but I'm not sure if that's because their knees are really different or if the SD10 girl bodies are just much more common.

As long as you're careful about bending the knees correctly I don't think there's any need to be frantic about it. It might help a bit to not have the doll wear long thick pants because they make it harder to see and feel what you're doing when you're bending the legs.
But I have my big girl in jeans right now and I still bend her legs by pushing at the back of the knee through the fabric, so it's not that big of a deal.

I have modded both the knees of my Kun now, first by sanding down the knee joint on the lower leg, and then filling up the sides of the socket with epoxy putty.
At first I wasn't going to bother filling up the sockets with putty, but then I noticed that after the knees were sanded down they tended to wobble inside the socket in a way that also caused pressure on the flaps on the sides. (sigh)
But I think the putty also has the added bonus of strengthening the knee flaps and hopefully making them less prone to breaking for that reason too.
One side effect though, is that without the ball shaped joint now only the string tension keeps the knee from bending backwards, so it's a bit more prone to do that. On the plus side, now when it does bend backwards it doesn't hurt the knee in any way.
The posing or standing ability has not been affected in any way. I think the sueding I did at the same time made much more of a difference.
I don't expect a lot of people to actually go through with this modification, because it's not really necessary. I mostly did it for my own peace of mind. But if anyone is interested I can give more details and post a few pictures.

 

I have little to no plans to dressing him in pants of that variety. Saw his legs & enjoys them in the open.

I'll first look & do this 'check-up' w/his knees when he arrives... For m peace of mind as well.

Thanks muchly on this... Till I saw this, I neverreally got the deal about 'kneeteeth'... ^^

 

By the way, I don't think anyone linked to them before in this thread, but nakitama posted some pic of her doll's breaking knee in an earlier thread here:
http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showpost.php?p=555936&postcount=24

Really scary and sad.
But I'm really grateful to her because it's really interesting to see where exactly the breaks happen so you know what to watch out for and be careful with.
You can also see very clearly in the middle picture how the ball of the knee joint causes pressure on the side flap.

 

THAT looked very painful indeed. But it should serve as some kind of 'what if'... for us SD10 owners...

 

I wonder if this is an SD10 problem mainly...has anyone with an SD13 had these problems? I've had my pureskin dolls for a while now (the oldest is two years and one for about a year) and they sit down 99% of the time. Haven't seen any problems yet...

I think you should call Volks about replacement parts anyway. They will probably charge you, but it might be worth it.

 

In the old thread, at least three people posted that they had tried to contact volks for replacement parts but had no luck at all.
http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41394

And so far no one seems to have heard of this happening with SD13 bodies, just SD10.

 

I haven't repaired any legs, but I have fixed some broken resin issues. One of Taco's dolls broke a part inside his head, and I fixed a crack in a DoD back. I also had an S hook strip out of my AR's foot.

I use epoxy to glue them. It comes in two tubes that you mix together and it dries /very/ hard. You can get it in the hardwear section of just about any store.

 

Question: Would oldskin legs fit? For girl or boy?

For instance, could you switch out to oldskin legs when wearing pants, and keep the pureskin stored away for photoshoots where you need to show some skin?

Might not work as well for the girls with skirts, but it might work for boys. I'm curious about this, cause I like the SD10 bodies.

 

Probably not, the oldskin thighs are considerably larger and aren't sculpted the same way at all. Also, I don't think these few cases should make you decide against getting an SD10, these are not common and there are thousands of doll owners who have never had problems

 

Thanks for this! I think I might give this mod a try too. Just to ease the pressure a little bit (and I mean that in both senses! XD)