I have been working on a biracial Elliot (Michelle Fagan) kit for ages. I put him in the NuWave for a bake, and his arm came out looking like someone had taken an X-acto knife to it. Anyone ever seen anything like this before, and if so . . . whhhhhhhhy?
Did you already have his arms filled with beads and stuffing?
Did Bountiful Baby ever create a Biracial Elliot? I don’t remember one. Also, our regular Elliot has been out of stock since January 2, 2014.
However, I believe Elliot is an 18" baby, so you should be able to use 18" arms from some other baby. Go ahead and look at our website for 18" arms, then contact our customer service at sales@bountifulbaby.com. Tell them what happened, and tell them that “Nevin” said Bountiful Baby would send you the 18" replacement arms for free. Put a link to this post in your email so that they can verify what you are telling them.
Of course, you will then need to match the colors with your painting, because it is doubtful we can match what you have in an 18" arm set. You’ll need to do the matching via special painting. But we’ll send you arms.
Nevin Pratt
CEO, Bountiful Baby
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Thanks! That’s very nice of you to offer and I appreciate the great customer service, but I think with all the body parts I’ve got lying around, I can probably manage lol. Luckily, I have some Easton arms I can use for Elliot, and some Shyanne limbs I’ll use for Easton. This was not biracial vinyl, by the way - I just painted him as a biracial baby from a Caucasian kit. I’ve had him for quite a while, and just got around to him recently.
Cheers
No. I started to assemble him, then realised that I had forgotten to varnish the nails. He did have a small amount of glass beads sticking to the inside of his limbs, but I don’t think it was enough to be significant (plus none of the other limbs did this and they also had bits of beads clinging to them). However, the arm flange was a bit rough around the inside edge from day one. I didn’t really think much of it at the time, but I think I’ll be checking all my kits more carefully from now on.
I’m wondering if you might have had the opening in the arm blocked when you had him baking? I can’t think of any other reason for enough pressure to build up inside it to make it do something like this! You had his arm looking really good and to have something like this happen after all that work must have been heartbreaking! Hope he gets better soon!
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At least I hadn’t rooted the hair yet LOL! Actually this happened to me once before with Lincoln Eagles’ torso. Apparently some of them were flawed and after a number of bakes, the vinyl just fell apart. It was exactly the same thing: looked like the vinyl had been cut with a knife. It’s possible that the opening was blocked because I did have the arm in a really weird position to keep the nails from touching the towel . . . definitely something to keep in mind in the future.
No, for pressure to build up, it would have to be hermetically sealed. But I had couple of heads that cracked inside after several bakes; one of them expensive German kit. They both just crumbled inside, but held together by the outside “skin”, as I heated them to insert the eyes.
Wow! He was turning out beautifully too. Do you remember about how many times you baked it? Just curious. I wonder if sometimes the vinyl just cant take so many bakes. My Lilly had to be at least 40 times or more when I had to adjust her coloring. I’m surprised she held up. I think my next baby I will start keeping a list of each layer coloring and baking.
In spite of the fact that I put a lot of layers on this baby, I don’t really feel like I baked him more than usual (I don’t bake after every layer - more like every 2-4 layers). The Lincoln torso I had did the same thing after only 4 bakes, so I guess if it’s going to happen, it can happen at any time. In reality, I’m a bit relieved because I’m assuming there were internal cracks in the vinyl that finally broke through to the surface. Glad it happened to me rather than to the future owner (I mean, I stuff my limbs pretty well - who knows if the pressure from that alone would have eventually cause the vinyl to give out?)
That’s bad, Lumilla! It would have broken my heart if the head had cracked!
The arm wasn’t stuffed, and I don’t use plugs. I had dumped out the beads after I realized that I forgot to varnish the nails, and there was only a small amount of beads sticking to the insides of all my limbs (you can never get them all out, tiny little things!)
I contacted the manufacturers and both replaced the heads, one also gave me 20 euros voucher against my next purchase, to compensate for all the work I put into the baby, 
So, i was happy with the outcome, especially as I felt that I did better job second time around on both.
Glad it all worked out for you! Still a bit of a pain in the you-know-what LOL!
Oh my goodness!!! What in the world could have caused that. On top of it you had some great coloring going on. 
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I never did figure it out! Now I have a head, two legs and ONE arm, and I’ve lost the will to strip and repaint - even though I do have replacement limb. I’ll probably just paint an entirely new set of limbs to match the head the next time I make an ethnic babe.