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The arms have limited articulation, mainly because Barbie's wee torso isn't quite thick enough to accomodate 6 arm mechanisms.

I'll try my best to explain this sans visual aids, so please keep asking questions if something's not clear.

First off, let me say that, while the arms ARE posable, this doll is NOT intended for hardcore play. The arms are movable strictly for light posing. Her original arms have full mobility, but the additional 2 arms on each side WILL BREAK if someone attempts to force them beyond their limited articulation. 3 of Spiral's arms are legit Barbie arms. The other 3 belong to a "barbie-type" doll.


Here is how I attached the doll arms.

-First off, I drew out on the body with a pencil where the arms would be going so she wouldn't end up having her left arms higher then her right arms or something. Then, I drew a permanant marker dot where each of her new arms were going to go.

Spiral's arms are positioned in this pattern:0
00

Meaning, that she has one top arm (Barbie's origina, 'normal' arm), and two arms below in a pyramid formation.

-Now that I had the arm positioning laid out, I put the base doll aside, and grabbed my arm donars. They had no idea what was coming....I took my Dremel tool (which, for those of you who don't know, is basically a small, hand-held drill that you can use different attchments on), and sawed open their bodies across the back and on the seam line to free their arms from their bodies.

(gristly!....)

Let's see if I can properly describe the attchment posts of the arms...They insert into the body with a post that has a disk attached on the end. The Disk essentially keeps the arm from being pulled out of the body. As an aside here, let me say that the legit Barbie dolls have a slightly different mechanism, which makes this process MUCH more difficult. Instead of one large disk, they have a set of two disks to 'lock' the arm into place.

-I took the 'anchoring disk' on each of the doner arms and sanded it down into a small post. Think of a classic, old-fashioned key. Think of how it's made of a long, rounded bar, with a small post sticking downward. This is what the arms post looked like when I was done.

-Back to the base doll. Using my dremel with a drill attachment, I drilled holes approximately the same size as the doner arms post where I had marked for each of her new arms. Then, using a 'gouging tool,' I added a small notch below the hole. Essentially, I built a keyhole to insert the arm 'key' in to.

-Each of the 'keyholes' was slightly smaller then the arm 'key' to be inserted into it. So, I heated the arms, and forced them in. I made sure to offset each of the arm 'keys' so that, when the arm was in resting position, the 'key' could not fall out of the 'keyhole.'

-This essentially created the new arm joint. The arm can move the full 360 degrees of motion inside of the body, EXCEPT that there was simply not enough room in her body cavity for all of the 'keys.' Basically, her arm motion stops when the key hits up against the inside of her body. Still, you CAN get around it by turning the arm completely in the opposite direction.

In conclusion, Her new arms are pretty much secured inside of her body, and there was no need to actually build a new arm joint. The holes are small enough that the arms themselves mostly conceal them, as well as her outfit's large shoulderpads prevent people from looking for them in the first place.


I'm really happy with how the body construction for this doll turned out. I only had to start over once! biggrin

sweatdrop

Shorthand version:

Tore dolls apart. Drilled holes. Stuffed arms in. Called it good.

LMFAO!

*GLOMPS Zod.*

ninja domokun heart wink

It just seems to clash with our stare Spiral xd

but aside from that the resemblance is uncanny!