Restring Journey Girl Doll Arms

The Journey Girl dolls tend to have problems with their arms coming off. My restringing kit has the custom parts you need to easily repair the Journey Girl dolls. You can buy my repair kits on eBay: CLICK HERE

PREPARATION

BOTH arms need to be removed from the doll. If only one arm has come off, you’ll need to remove the other one as well. Find someone with muscles to bend the arm back until the plastic joint inside the shoulder breaks and the arm comes off.

NEXT you need to remove the original pink plastic parts from the arm, as well as the shoulder of the doll. To do this, I used a large flat blade screwdriver to loosen the parts, and pulled them out with a pliers or needle nose pliers. Be careful not to puncture the vinyl as you do this. 

NOTE: You can heat the arm piece with a hair dryer for approximately 20 seconds, which will soften the vinyl and makes it easier to remove the plastic ball from the top of the arm.

SHOULDER HOLES: When you have the pieces removed, the shoulders of the doll should have a hole in the middle, as shown. On my doll, you can see that one shoulder (on the left) has a larger hole than the other side: this is because the pink plastic disk stuck to the vinyl and pulled more of the vinyl out, than the other shoulder (on the right.) I think the vinyl happened to be thin on the left side.

On the right side (with the small hole) the vinyl was still intact after I removed the plastic pieces. There was no hole at all. So I poked at it some with my screwdriver and the center came loose. I pulled it off with my pliers. 

In some cases, the vinyl may be too thick to pull off (as I did) so you may need to create a hole using an exacto knife. You only need to clear away the smaller hole: it’s not necessary to have the large hole for this job, although it’s nice if you have a tad more room to work with. It's better for the doll if only the small holes are cleared. 

REASSEMBLY

Now that the doll is apart, it’s time to put her back together. The restringing kit has custom parts that make it easy to do. 

Slide the small white washer to the center of the elastic cord.

Push both ends of the cord through the hole in the large plastic washer.

Using a small pliers, push both washers into an arm of the doll. You can heat the arm with a hairdryer for 20 seconds if the vinyl is too stiff to push the large washer inside. Heat will soften the vinyl.

 And pull until the large washer is seated firmly inside the arm. 

Thread both ends of the cord through the body of the doll, as shown. You may need hemostats to help grab the cords and pull them through.

Next, prepare the other arm. Arrange the hook through the hole in the large white washer.

Push the hook and the large white washer inside the arm and pull on it so it’s seated firmly.

To keep the hook in place, it sometimes helps to tie a ribbon around the hook.

Attach the hook to ONE cord.

Tie the two cords together. Do NOT tie a knot, yet!

Pull on both cords until the arms are snug inside the shoulders. Pull tight so there’s strong tension on the arms, but not too much tension. If you pull tight to an extreme the arms won’t be able to move naturally.

Now keep the tension on the cords and tie a knot. The knot will slide right into the shoulder. Pull tight so it’s a good tight knot. Then tie it one or two more times so the knot can’t undo itself over time.

Trim off the extra cord, leaving approximately one inch or so on each end.

Push the ends inside the shoulder, all the way inside the shoulder hole. Your large flat blade screwdriver is helpful for pushing the cords in.

All done! Journey Girl is back together, and better than ever. Her arms are likely to have more freedom of movement than with the original parts.