Hi YouTube!
Jess here.
Today I wanted to show you a step-by-step of the modification that I recently completed.
I modified my Unoa here to have a magnetic hand system like a Minifee.
So this is a really useful mod for me, because this girl has 5 pairs of hands right now.
So I can just switch them out really easily.
And as an added bonus, it makes getting clothes on and off easier.
So it's a really useful mod, and I'm really happy with the way it came out.
So this is going to be the first in a hopefully ongoing series that I am tentatively calling
"Let's Make!" where I kind of go through the process of making or modifying things for
my dolls.
I just wanted to hopefully encourage you guys to not be afraid of customizing your dolls.
Because I think it's a really fun process that a lot of people are kind of scared to
do.
But I find it really fun and enjoyable, and I think it makes me love my dolls even more.
So, let's go make some stuff for our dolls!
This modification was pretty simple, but it's time consuming, and also a little scary because
you're literally chopping pieces of your doll apart.
But since I took it really slowly and used my hands instead of power tools as much as
possible, I felt more in-control of what I was doing.
The materials I used were: and X-Acto knife, a ceramic knife (which is kind of optional,
but I liked having a different cutting option) and an eye beveler to separate and shape the
wrists and sockets.
Then a drill bit to drill holes for the magnets in the wrists.
Apoxie Sculpt to reshape the wrist balls, and of course some really strong neodymium
magnets to keep everything together.
You're going to need two really strong magnets for the wrist balls, and then smaller magnets
for each of the hands you want to attach.
First, I separated the wrist balls from a pair of hands.
I wanted to use the doll's actual wrist ball because A) all the hardware was already attached
on mine, and B)
I knew it would fit my doll's arm perfectly.
But you could totally just sculpt some completely new wrist balls and not have to worry about
cutting if you wanted.
So I just took it slowly, and cut away at the doll's wrist.
Luckily for me, Unoa hands kind of already have a nice line for me to follow.
Just keep slowly scoring along the wrist line, and eventually you'll get all the way through.
You're left with a weird little half-sphere wrist, which we'll keep for later, and a hand with
a roundish divot cut out of it.
Now, I actually did this on two pairs of hands, so that I'd have and extra pair of wrist balls
to work with later on, in case I messed up.
But you don't need to do this careful cutting step for every single pair of hands.
For the rest of the hands I modded, I just removed the wrist ball completely with a Dremel
tool, kind of gouging away at the resin until I got it to roughly that same round divot
I would have gotten if I was doing the cutting with the X-Acto.
So I hand-drilled holes for the magnets with just a regular drill bit, that I turned by
hand.
For these particular hands, I used a quarter inch drill bit.
It was the biggest size that I felt could go deep enough without poking out of the sides
of the hands.
I did this by hand because it gave me the greatest amount of control, but you could
definitely use a Dremel or a regular power drill for this if you have more confidence
in your drilling skills.
Just keep twisting, and twisting, and twisting.
You don't want to go all the way through, obviously, but the deeper the better, since
you can get longer, stronger magnets in there.
But just make sure that all the holes are the same depth on each hand.
I used a little stick that I marked off with a pencil to measure each one.
My drill bits actually have little tips on them that make a smaller hole at the end of
the big hole.
I took advantage of that and put an extra little magnet inside the little hole before
putting the bigger magnet in.
After drilling the holes, we need to shape the divot at the top of the hand so that the
wrist ball will fit on.
I found that making this as spherical as possible has the best fit and look at the end.
So at first, I carved a bit away with the ceramic knife.
I got mine from Volks, but Luts and I think a few other doll companies also sell them.
It's easier to do this with the ceramic knife than the X-Acto, because the ceramic knife
uses a scraping motion to shave away resin.
It doesn't actually cut like a knife.
Later on though, I discovered the awesomeness that is the eye beveler.
Even with the rounded ceramic knife blade, I couldn't get the nice rounded shape I wanted
in these wrist sockets.
But the eye beveler works perfectly.
I used a 12mm beveler, which was almost the exact same size of the wrist ball I needed.
You just need to twist this around in the little divot you made until it's all smooth.
You can kind of get an idea of what the hand will look like on the wrist here.
To make the wrist parts, I used Apoxie Sculpt to make balls on the ends of the pieces we
cut off the hands earlier.
I only had white Apoxie Sculpt, and no matter what I did, I couldn't tint it past a light
tan.
So if you have a darker skinned doll, I might suggest getting a set of the colored Apoxie
Sculpt, so you can get a better match and not have to worry about coloring it later
like I did.
So once the apoxie cured, I drilled holes for the magnets to go in.
For this, I would definitely use a power drill, since the apoxie is really hard.
Or you can put the magnets in the wrists before the apoxie is hardened, but I wanted to make
sure they were as spherical as possible and that the magnets were straight, so I decided
to drill holes in the cured apoxie.
Then all that's left is to glue the magnets in.
I used super glue.
For the magnets, the stronger the better.
The first time I tried this, my magnets weren't strong enough, so I had to go back and get
more.
For this finished product, I used N52 grade from a magnet supplier I really like here
in the US called K&J Magnetics.
That's where I get all of my magnets.
I'll leave a link in the description below for that.
When you're gluing the magnets in, be very careful that they're all going in the correct
direction, because there's really not much you can do if you glue a magnet in the wrong
way, and it repels instead of attracts.
Honestly, this was probably the most stressful part of the whole project, because I used
quarter inch magnets in a quarter inch hole, and it was a really fiddly tight fit.
So here's the finished product!
You can see all of the finished hands, and there in the lower right is the first failed
attempt at the wrist balls.
The magnets weren't strong enough, and they also weren't shaped quite right so they didn't
fit the same on all the hands.
And here's another shot of the magnet inside the hands.
You can see there was really no room in there, but I wanted to maximize my magnet strength.
So you can easily remove the hands from the wrists, but it's strong enough that you need
two hands.
These hands definitely don't just fall off when she moves around.
And here you can see the big magnet that's glued into the wrist ball.
That actually kind of sticks into the hand part and keeps everything together better.
It's really great.
The hands turn the wrists just fine.
Everything's really nice and secure.
Quick and easy changing!
Well, thanks so much for watching!
I hope you found this video helpful.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, or if you have any requests for
future Let's Make tutorials.
Happy Crafting!
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