If you ever thought that restoring a figure was easy let me tell you it really isn’t. I have now spent many hours just in the process of stripping the old black minstrel paint off of lucky Charlie.
In the process it revealed the original pinkish color that Frank used when he was first painted. As tough as the black paint has been to remove the original paint is even tougher to get off. The old oil based paint from almost 100 years ago is as hard as a rock.
I have been using cotton balls and strypese and ever so gently rub the paint remover on and wipe it off being very careful to not let it sit on the face too long. I then have used a very fine carving tool to get into the original carvings in the face to remove more paint. I have also used 000 steel wool to rub down after the cotton balls.
As you can see he is really coming along now. It should not be too much longer and I will start sanding with very fine sand paper to smooth and feather out the face. Then Lucky Charlie will be ready for his repaint.
Click here to see the first photos of the restoration
Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
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Ventriloquist Central is the brainchild of Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst. Dan is a ventriloquism enthusiast and ventriloquist figure collector. He has been collecting for over 25 years. He created the Ventriloquist Central Collection. It now has over 100 ventriloquist figures and over 50 of them are Frank Marshall figures. Steve is a ventriloquist as well as builder of ventriloquist figures. He also has a background in sales, marketing, building websites and computers. Because they both love the art of ventriloquism, the website Ventriloquist Central was born. For more information about the website, go to: http://www.ventriloquistcentral.com
Copyright 2013 by Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst
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