Restoring a BBE ~A Project For The Insane

[KottonKandy]

Ok, so I've seen resources online about taking hopeless BBEs with terrible eye rust and giving them new life by turning them into non-BBEs, But not anything about restoring their eyes. I'm assuming that's because most people don't really like BBEs because they're kinda creepy lol. But I like them, so I decided to give it a try. I'm very pleased with the results, but it was quite a hassle. Lots of patience and lots of experimenting. I doubt anyone will want to go through the effort it takes to do this, but just in case anyone out there is interested, I decided to make a quick tutorial.

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Here is our test subject: Baby Frosting. Her eye was gross and swollen from how much rust was built up. The eye didn't even blink anymore and the rust was trickling down her face.

So first thing, I pop off her head and using a pair of needle nose pliers, pushed from the back of her socket and popped the eye out. Heat helps here. I warmed her face with a blow dryer to make the plastic more flexible.

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Ok. That's super gross. You can see all the rust that poofed out onto her face after I got the eye out. At this point, I took her other eye out too so I could see what it was supposed to look like AND so I could give her head a good cleaning with Dawn and get all the rust out of her.

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Here's a quick diagram of how BBEs are put together. You have the eyeball, and a housing for it. The housing is two pieces. The back is plastic and the front is metal and they both clip together. Unfortunately, her casing was rusted together. So first I had to fix that. I plopped the whole thing into white vinegar and let it sit. Every few hours, I took an old toothbrush and scrubbed at it. I let that buddy soak for half a day before enough rust was removed for me to pop the casing apart.

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Once I got the housing apart, the eyeball itself got to soak in vinegar and get scrubbed every couple of hours. The rust came off for the most part, but it took one of the little pegs on the side of the eye with it. The pegs are what hold the eye in place in the casing and allow them to turn.

So I made a replacement peg. It's just a straight pin trimmed to the correct length. It's on the left in case you can't tell. I know it's all pretty teeny.


Next up was putting the eye back in its housing and making sure the new pin was the correct size to allow it to move. It was probably the easiest part of all this lol.
Now all the hard stuff is done. Time to get out the blow dryer again and warm up her face! It's definitely harder getting the eyes back in than it was getting them out. Once they're in the socket, you have to kinda poke and prod them back into a normal alignment, but it wasn't too difficult.
Last up, because I manhandle things badly, I had rubbed off her eyeshadow. So I got out my paints and my teeny brush and fixed that.
And now she's all better~

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Like I said, I'm p pleased at how she turned out. Especially since I'd never done anything like this before. And I'm not sure if I'd ever want to have to do it again lol.

[Duenia]

Wow that's pretty amazing

[Wardah]

Has anyone thought of replacing the eyes with acrylic doll eyes? I mean they might not blink anymore but that hole is just perfect for inset eyes.

[Leave a Whisper]

Fantastic job, though I think mlprestoration project has a tutorial for rusty BBEs.

This is the creepiest restoration project I've ever seen. That eye surrounded in gunk made it look like an eyeball monster from a videogame.

[Kikwifluff]

Ooh! She looks lovely now
I'm going to keep this in mind if I ever find a super rusty BBE. I think they're cute, but I can live without the rusty eyes, lol!   

[pinkkittywinks]

Nicely done!

Love pkw xxx

[Mewtwofan1]

Wow! She looks almost brand new! That eyeball though was pretty scary. It's strange. I can handle dissecting a sheeps eye no problem. But that bbe just...

[lostpony]

I've de-rusted my share of BBEs but I've never even seen one THAT rusty!  I've worked on them in the socket with liquid laundry soap, toothbrush and plastic toothpick and even had the lens off the eyeball, but I've never had them out of the socket.

Great tenacity and excellent results!

[sd_dreamcrystal]

Has anyone thought of replacing the eyes with acrylic doll eyes? I mean they might not blink anymore but that hole is just perfect for inset eyes.

I'm actually trying that but it's finding the right size that is a problem... The pony I'm working on I had to cut the back of the sockets completely to do what I was thinking.. still though finding or making the right size doll eyes is the hard part.

[KottonKandy]

Has anyone thought of replacing the eyes with acrylic doll eyes? I mean they might not blink anymore but that hole is just perfect for inset eyes.

I'm actually trying that but it's finding the right size that is a problem... The pony I'm working on I had to cut the back of the sockets completely to do what I was thinking.. still though finding or making the right size doll eyes is the hard part.

Oh man, that'll be cool to see. You gotta post pics whenever you find the perfect eyes!

[NightGliderSA]

What a huge difference! That eye was seriously creepy before you fixed her up **shivers**

[lostpony]

Has anyone thought of replacing the eyes with acrylic doll eyes? I mean they might not blink anymore but that hole is just perfect for inset eyes.

I'm actually trying that but it's finding the right size that is a problem... The pony I'm working on I had to cut the back of the sockets completely to do what I was thinking.. still though finding or making the right size doll eyes is the hard part.

To follow you off topic on the tangent of doll eyes, I acquired a doll head with bbe eyes just the right size for an adult pony and I'm going to try and install them in a pony and the issue is how do I go about crafting the eye sockets....if I cut out the sockets and try to attach them to the back of the pony and cut out the eye holes, how do I get that to look right?  I'm considering trying it on a TE with the deeper sockets but I'm not sure yet how to proceed.  i was thinking maybe trying this on a baity Peachy and seeing if I can make it into a peachy-size my pretty pony custom.

[Snapdragon]

Wowwww that's incredible!! How did you manage to make a BBE look CUTE?! ... er? I mean, uh, yeah, they're already adorable! *nervously eyes piles of BBEs in my collection*

Great work!

[CrystalSnowflake]

Nice work!
I am glad to see them restored and not just changed to non BBE.
I think some of the restoration projects are amazing.

[northstar3184]

Beautiful work!