I would like to second that note about being careful with power tools. My fingers on the left hand have never recovered from a stupid mistake I made when younger.  Never hold the object you are working with in your hand. Amateur has show some very good jigs... I really doubt his use of "Amateur" as a username.

Thanks to all for the kind words.  I am in fact an amateur when it comes to woodworking.  But I am also an amateur classically trained musician and even though I don't play very well my fingers are very important to me.  So when I got interested in wood working I read everything I could find on shop safety and talked to the professionals I knew about the subject, picking their brains as best I could--even the ones who didn't have all their fingers (the number of which was quite sobering).

And, again,

Thanks.

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I'll sneak this glueup in here.  The next post will either show it working or me heading back to the drawing board.

I managed to steal some time and get out to the shop and finish the finger.  It works fairly well at this scale but I'm going to rethink the design for a smaller scale .

That is so cool.  You did an awesome job.  Is the action smooth?  It looks like it ought to be.  Can't wait to see a whole hand put together.

Way to cool...................... Thanks for sharing. this is so exciting to watch.

Billy D.

Thanks.  The last joint tends to jerk as you move from the position shown in the penultimate frame to the last frame.  Dont' know why.  Otherwise yes it's smooth.

I will need to move to a smaller scale for an actual puppet and I'm going to try to simplify this design.  The hands actually attached to the puppet will not be manipulated by strings but will be poseable. For these hands the ligaments will be a malleable metal, I'm look at pure copper, soft brass, and spotted metal (60%Sn +40%Pb), haven't decided--looking for suggestions.  The string manipulable hand will be attached to an arm but the arm will terminate in a controller for the hand where the elbow would be.  The hands must look identical so I can cut from one to the other without problems

Why don't you give electrical fence wire a try.  It comes in a variety of guages, is fairly inexpensive and handles a lot of bending and unbending without breaking.  (one time I had a piece of electric fense wire and I wanted to break a short piece off.  I bent and unbent that wire for several minutes and finally gave up and went and found some cutters.)  You can find it a most farm supply stores I know I can get it at the local TSC.

This is really neat to see the progress, I also can 't wait to see the end result.

Daryl H

Why don't you give electrical fence wire a try. 

Thanks Jon I expect that would work.  But I think it would likely look different than the string controlled hand as I'm going to be making extensive use of close ups of hands and faces to impart expression.

You're on your way to becoming the next Cashore Marionettes!  He is my absolute hero with building and manipulating marionettes.

http://www.cashoremarionettes.com/

WELL DONE!!!