Articulating a porcupine skeleton part 2

In this post I will talk about articulating the paw and attaching the scapula to the leg.


Once again, I soak the bones.

I start by drilling a hole in the humerus and scapula where they meet. Make sure that the holes are in the right angle!

I attach the scapula and leg, and let the glue dry.

I then work on the harder things:

drilling in the metacarpals and the phalanges.

I decided to not include the carpals (wrist bones) because I only have a few of them and it is very hard to find exactly where they go. 

Here's the name of the fingers, in this case in a  human hand:

In most animals, the distal phalanges are the 'claw bone'

I started with the metacarpals.

Drill a hole in both ends of the bone. it works better if you just drill through the bone (so it makes a 'tunnel'), but I could not because the drill bit was too big. (I used a 1.5 mm drill bit)

 Then, I cut the wire that will connect the metacarpals to the radius pretty long ..maybe 7 or 8 centimeters so  it'll be easier to tie the fingers together later on.  I glue that wire. (To help distinguish between the 2 forearm bones : the radius is thicker then the ulna whilst the ulna is longer. The ulna has a 'hook' at one end which connects with the humerus.)

I drill a hole on both ends of all the metacarpals, and proximal phalanges. (I only drill into one side of the intermediate phalanges)

I put wire like this

(the proximal phalanges and intermediate phalanges are already glued)

I then glued the intermediate phalanges to the distal phalanges (claw bones)...

and glue the metacarpals to the proximal phalanges.

I now have 4 fingers and a leg.

So, I must attach all the fingers to make a hand or paw.

here are the steps I took to attach the fingers:

this is what the completed paw looked like:

 and here's the finished leg. Love it!

Articulating a Porcupine Leg Part 1

*Safety first, always wear a mask when drilling/sawing bones. Bone-dust is not good for your lungs!*


First, you need all the supplies.
This is a list of what I used :
-white glue (I did not use super glue because it dries too fast)
-drill
-1.5 mm bit
-elastics
-wire
-wire cutters
-pencil
-water (not necessary)
-BONES

Before I started, I soaked the bones in water, so there would be less dust when I drill in them.
After getting all my supplies, I took the  ulna (hook shape at the top, picture: on the right) and the radius (left) and marked with a pencil where I wanted the holes to be (do this at every step).  I then drilled equilateral holes in the bones. I also cut small pieces of wire that I will place later.

I then drilled a hole in the ulna and humerus where they meet at the elbow joint.

make sure to check that the bones are at the right angle and that they fit at that angle because I made a mistake and had to drill 2 holes in the humerus.

After I made sure that the hole was okay this time, I  CAREFULLY drilled through the bottom of the radius (wrist joint side ) and into the ulna.

now the bones should look somewhat like this:

I put the pieces of wire with some glue into the holes, and attached elastics to hold the bones in place while I let them dry.

next week I will write about attaching the scapula, wrist, and paw.