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Back to taking your body apart . . . Disassembling the arms - pulling out the s-hook to get slack to grab the elastic |
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Ready to remove the s-hook |
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Here's the answer to the mystery of the missing head-knot - for some reason, Volks strung the body with the knot in the torso. |
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Now that your elastic is quite slack, you can easily pull the elastic out of the torso through the neck by pulling on the large head s-hook. Here is the body disassembled and laid out. Note that I did not remove the arm elastic, since I wasn't sanding or cleaning the pieces it was unnecessary. |
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Time to re-string. I halve the elastic - placing the knot at the TOP (unlike how Volks decided to do it). Put the large head s-hook back there and slip the leg pieces down through the neck and out the torso. Since the hole is large, I didn't find I needed any tools to do this. Line up the large s-hook with the locking slot in the neck, then grab hold of both leg pieces and give a tug to take up the slack. |
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To bring the leg elastic down through the lower torso and out the leg holes, you will need some kind of tool. If you don't own the Volks stringing tool, you can do what I did. Take a fairly long piece of wire (I used 24 gauge wire, about an arm's length piece) and wrap it once all the way around the elastic. Then twist the ends of the wire together slightly to make it easier to insert through the holes. |
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Leg elastic through the lower torso leg holes, wire still attached. Now you're ready to string one leg. Just in case the two leg pieces might have gotten confused - as you've seen, my arm pieces got disarrayed - check to make sure that you are putting the right shin and right thigh into the right leg hole. On the inside of the bottom of each piece is a code followed by a letter - that letter will be either "L" or "R", for "left" and "right" pieces. |
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Use your wire (or stringing tool) to pull the elastic into the thigh and then the shin. If you're using wire as I did, you will have a wire tail sticking out of the shin after you've fitted the thigh and shin together. Brace the shin (as you can see, I use my foot again so that I still have a free hand) and pull hard on the wire until the elastic emerges. |
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This is where the free hand comes in. While continuing to brace the shin with your foot, grab the elastic close to the bottom of the shin. You have to remove your wire, slip on the ring, followed by the ball, followed by attaching the s-hook. This is going to take a lot of force and swearing; you may want to keep a pen nearby so that you can slip it into the elastic and rest your arm between removing the wire and attaching the ankle pieces. Once the s-hook is on, grab your hook took and slip it on the s-hook. Now you can hold the elastic out by pulling on the s-hook and let go of it with your other hand. Don't release the tension on the elastic yet. |
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Slowly ease the elastic back into the leg, and then turn the s-hook so that it fits into the locking slot. |