Progress! Right this minute busy rough sanding the doll I wanted to get done for Aisha. I could stop now, but she'd look a bit odd. Major mods done. Just in time, too, it's turned hot and the drilling & dremling mods had to be done outside with dust flying. I'm extremely pleased so far with results of the mods, but have not yet strung her again to test some of the important ones. If you visualize the parts as beads strung on elastic, you'll have the general idea. Elastic is tighter and more useful in posing that the ribbons or strings or wire loops when it's strung in puppet style.
For sanding, I'm kind of doing dampish inside, with plastic shoebox of water and distinctly NOT wet-dry 120-grit sandpaper. Damp shredding paper has a milder effect than stiff dry sandpaper, which is useful in places. Trying for a kind of brushed-metal level of overall sanding, to go down further with finer grades. Still have a torso part and one arm yet to do, and then it's on to the next allover with a finer grade of sandpaper. This part of the job is to sand down gaps where I knocked down rough edges and spread out color changes where I smoothed out mold lines. Texture and sound on the parts comes out like sanding down mahogany that's aged with time to have a tougher outer coating, something I didn't know polyurethane might do.
Also received in the mail a black shirt for her and green fatigues for two other guys, and I'm jittering about ordering a good but inexpensive body for a head, one that I really want, but budget... ouch!