All my dolls are second hand. You could say they are resques as all came in less than stellar condition. One came as a box of parts, one with a weak black elastic inside. Perhaps the best strung is Noa, with a 3 to 4mm thick elastic. Pretty taught though, as she starts kicking whenever you try to pose her.
So, after all the cleaning it’s time to restring. Which is a problem if you don’t have any documentation. And witch such a niche community which is extremely weary of recasts (fakes) it’s very hard to find any copies of manuals. Or any usable information on forums.
Now I don’t have any reason to believe my Unoa or Minifees are fakes. Though I have no COA on two of them; they are either to old or to neglected. Parts got damaged or traded away, if not thrown away (Who needs boxes anyway? *cries in collector*).
So, it’s time to start pulling some strings. I had some old black elastic laying about to put the dolls together again. Though the old elastic was loosing stretch.. And I reused the old elastic from a Minifee to string Noa as I want to have her on display. Noa’s elastic was glued in place (wtf?), apparently to help stability. Her previous owner didn’t have the guts to remove/fix that.
Stringing Noa – Unoa Lusis
After hours of digging online I found photos of the manual included with an Alchemic Labo Unoa. I did some processing and made a PDF manual. My Japanese is very limited and I can’t read it so I used Google Translate to translate the manual and made proper english out of it. So a translated (Eng) PDF manual is also available here.
The manual is very clear about the length of elastic, but not the diameter. It tooks some more digging, eventually finding a restringing set on the Alchemic Labo webshop that mentions the 2mm thickness. Of course, length and diameter are not the only factors as the power or strech is not mentioned anywhere. But it’s a starting point. If anyone can share the brand of elastic used by Alchemic Labo I’d be very much gratefull.
Alchemic Labo Unoa
Body: 1x 100cm x Ø 2mm
Arms: 1x 36cm x Ø 2mm
Do note this is the size of the loop. It needs to be doubled over and it does not include extra for the knot. More information on this on the Unoa page.
I cut 110 cm for the body, leaving 5cm to make a knot. And 46cm for the arms, again leaving 5cm fot the knot.
Stringing Toulouse and Miryoku – Fairyland Minifee
Fairyland Minifee dolls seem to be more common than Unoas, but strangely enough I can find even less information on string specifications on these BJD.
In the end the best answer came from a forum post on Den of Angels, which according to them is from the Fairyland website. Though I can’t find the exact source.
Fairyland MiniFee
Body: 1x 90cm +/-5cm x Ø 2,5-3mm
Arms: 1x 40cm+/-4cm x Ø 2,5-3mm
Knots should be small profile; 0,5cm
The diameter is not specified anywhere I can find. Leaving me to guess. If the know has to be as low as 0,5mm it”s reasonable to assume that 2,5mm to 3mm would work.
I’ve read recasts have 3-3,5mm elastic. Ironically enough this was easier to find than any offical Fairlyland information. If anyone has the correct information from the Fairyland manual I’d much appreciate if you let me know.
Stringing dolls differs a bit for each model. So I won’t go over everything here. Perhaps I will make a tutorial for each doll (model) seperately.
I ordered a bunch of elastic knowing the Unoa specifications and kind of regretted not ordering a length of 3mm and 3,5mm as well. I’ll have to save that for another order.
2mm Seems very thin and I wonder how Noa will fare with her new elastic. Right now she is very kicky and I’ve seen her move her arm on her own because the elastic is to tight (no, dolls are not creepy at all :). I used recycled 3mm elastic I had laying around and the body elastic is a mere 80cm, 20 shorter than specified by AL.
The title of this post inspired me to make a t-shirt print, as it’s my own design and I can make my own shirts I might be able to sell them. But that’s for another time.
Noa's Home 