[wink] Scalping a Pullip

Okay, so I thought I'd write a separate post with a few pics of the scalping process. I learned everything from the tutorial at Puchimadam and all the terms I use are from them.

First, the tools of the trade. Hohoho.

First of all, remove the head from the body. This is in case you have a hard time and in the process of scalping, snap the head off from the body. ^_^;

Just remove the three screws from the neck down. The torso pops apart enough to enable you to remove the head. (For some reason, Street's head knob is a different color from her body.)

Now let me describe the scalping process. First, this is what the top of the Pullip head looks like when the scalp has been removed:

See the groove running all around the head? That's where the flange of the scalp sits. The flange is the bottom of the scalp that's slighter thinner and that fits into that groove. The scalp is some hardish rubber material and is glued onto the head, so it can be cut through. Depending on how much glue is holding the scalp in place, scalping will be a relatively easy thing to do, or a hell of a problem.

So anyways, when the flange sits in the groove:

Always start from the back of the head. ^_^ See the parting line between scalp and head? What you need to do is to just take your blade and poke it into that parting line. What you'll be doing is trying to cut through the glue holding the scalp in place. So crunch crunch crunch your blade along the line. All you need to do is separate the glue all around the back of the head.

After you think you've cut through all the glue, slide the flat screwdriver into the line, and see if you can push the scalp into the head. If the scalp separates from the head easily, try to lift up the scalp enough so that you can get a hold of it. Then just pull it off the head. ^_^ And yay! You've just scalped your head!

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Sometimes, it might seem as if the damn scalp is superglued to the head or something.When this happens, you might want to cut through the flange so that you can separate enough scalp off the head to be able to hold onto it and pull it off.

Here's a picture of a scalp that had it's flange cut off a bit in order to separate the scalp from the head:

Note: Use some tape over the head of the screwdriver to make it less...harsh against the plastic head. And try to be careful when using the screwdriver to pry up the scalp. You don't want to end up with a mess like this:

In this case, the scalp was ridiculously hard to remove. Part of the flange had to be cut through, and that still didn't help much. A lot of force had to be used to lift the scalp from the head. -_- Impatience is not ideal in cases like this, as can be seen from the picture. ^_^;

Another Note: The flange can be totally cut off, but most of the time, we want to preserve it so that when we can put the scalps back on. This is so that wigs won't flop funnily over the vacant space on top of the head. Heh. Trust me on this.

Though if you want to know the truth, all my guys don't have scalps under their wigs, because I can't be bothered to remove the hair on the scalps and put them back on. They don't look that bad with wigs. ^_^ So with that in mind, how careful you want to be with the scalp is up to you.

So anyways, that's enough words used to describe the simple scalping process. ^_^;