Let's Hand it to Hands: Part 1

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Hey again guys! In the last post I got a new tinker lab about hands, so today we're going to talk about it. It's really "handy," so handy you don't need a "handyman!" (RIM SHOT!!)

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Long ago in caveman times, people thought hands were useless, but they help us create tools and other things. Without them we wouldn't have inventions people have made long ago!
Our hands are made of three different types of bones: the carpal, metacarpal, and the phalanges. The carpal bones are near the wrist. The metacarpal is a bone that connects the phalanges to the carpals. The phalanges are what make up your fingers. All three bones are connected by joints.
 There are two muscles that makes the hand move, one in the forearm the other in the hand. The muscles need to work together with the bones to make the fingers move, that's where tendons come in. Tendons make the muscles and bones work together for the hand to move. Cool huh?

When I started my tinker lab, I went straight to the blueprint for the biomechanical hand. It was pretty easy. First I added finger shaped pieces of foam on the wood palm piece. Then I stuck finger pieces on the sticky foam fingers to make the finger joints. Next, I added eye screws to the medium sized holes in the pieces on the palm side of the hand. The eye screws are for the elastic cord and string.

Here is the front.

Here is the back of the hand.

To keep the fingers from flopping forward, I took some elastic cord and knotted it to one of the eye screws on the fingertips.  I threaded it through the holes in the finger pieces (NOT THE EYE SCREWS!!!!) until it got to the hole under the finger on the back of the hand.  I put a brass fastener into the hole and opened it to keep it on the palm. To keep the cord in place, I looped the cord around the fastener.

Making the fingers move was the next task. I started knotting a piece of string onto the same fingertip eye screw.  I let it go through the other eye screws. I let the string go to the bottom of the hand and I tied a loop at the bottom for my finger to go through. I repeated these three steps for the other fingers. It was fun controlling the hand!


I had a bit of trouble with the
string, but it's worth it!

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

I hope you enjoyed the post, if you did please like comment. In the next post I'll be making some puppets and talking about prosthetic hands. Bye guys! <3
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\