My second skeleton kit is called “Build Your Own Human Skeleton: Das menschliche Skelett zum Selberbauen (Taschen Specials)”. Taschen is the publisher I believe.
Shirley the skeleton. Isn't she cool ?
Initial comments about this kit :
- This kit is large. A2 or bigger
- The pieces are pre-cut, and just pop out easily with your fingers
- It’s made of thick card, less bendy
- No glue involved. It uses split pins to fasten joints together
- Joints move once pinned, as they swivel around the pins
- Wall bracket included so you can hang him on a wall
- All the bones are clearly marked in English and Latin
This is a quick kit to make progress with.
(I put the bean tin there to give a sense of scale)
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- Shirley the skeleton. Isn’t she cool ?
Comparison with Skeleton #1 (from Osborne):
- #2 is easier to build
- #2 provides a more impressive result
- #2 is slightly more expensive (£12-ish instead of £7-ish)
Overall: 10/10.
We call ours Shirley (the skeleton) and she likes to dress up in Christmas tinsel and sun glasses !
Cobweb 
Hello,
I’ve been looking for this skeleton model here in my country for almost two years now with no success. I think it’s amazing that someone had made an anatomically correct model out of paper (i know it’s cardboard, but the template could be printed to paper as well).
I wonder (and would be inmensely grateful) if there’s the possibility for you to scan the skeleton templates and publish the PDF, so others could build the same skeleton. Horst Kiechle published a life sized anatomical model of a human torso (http://torso.amorphous-constructions.com/), but it doesn’t include bones.
I’m a 4th year medical student, and as part of a project, my classmates and I teach biology and basic medical sciences in general to the kids of the community who aspire to become doctors and nurses; Kiechle’s torso had been of help to show the internal organs structure and anatomy to the kids, but we lack of import resources to buy a skeleton (In Venezuela, stuff importation requires a lot of procedures and paperwork that makes it almost impossible, and that kind of articles aren’t manufactured locally.) to teach them the joints, bones, movements and skeletal system in general.
Anyways, if it isn’t possible for you, I understand its a very complex request. Thanks in advance and congratulations for your blog.
Please excuse my poor english, it obviously ain’t my mother language,
Best regards.
Hi Manuel,
Your English is great. Probably better than lots of school-leavers here in the UK 🙂
Scanning the templates for the bones and publishing them ? That would be a copyright infringement. Besides, I don’t have a template… the card that came in the kit is now part of Shirley, hanging in the lounge still. I’m not about to take her apart to flatten and scan her for you. Sorry.
I think you need to contact the firm who makes the kit and ask for/pay for printing rights, or create a competing kit in the open-hardware/open-source model for what you’re proposing.
If you do get something like that together, I’ll volunteer to trial it and give feedback.
Sounds like your outreach program to kids is a good cause, perhaps the publisher would send you a free copy if you explained why you wanted it ?
Hello!, and thank you for your amazingly quick reply.
I figured it would have legal and personal difficulties, and I totally understand you don’t want to dismember ‘Shirley’ (which, by the way, looks great with those sunglasses). Our problem is not about having the money to pay for it, but about the national procedures to obtain the foreign exchange to import it. The new Venezuelan laws have become more tricky, lately.
I found some free life-sized skeleton printouts for teaching purposes (http://www.eskeletons.org/resources), I have already printed them out, but they’re not as visually accurate as a 3D model would be, so I’ll take your word and create an open model my own.
I took the eSkeleketon model size as a reference to draw the bones and fold them to build a 3D model; but from the few pictures of Taschen’s skeleton found on the web I have no good visual references on how to make joints and some parts that are anatomically tricky.
So, without encouragement to bother you anymore, is it possible for you to publish or send me some detailed pictures of ‘Shirley’ (just as she is right now, completely built), so I can take her as a visual reference to this project? I mean, if that doesn’t infringe any UK law, showing the model you’ve built.
Thank you so much for the feedback and please excuse my insistence,
Best regards.
The eSkeleton reference model:http://s15.postimg.org/xhfrmovxn/IMG_20140904_154628.jpg
First drawings: http://s2.postimg.org/hikkd28h5/IMG_20140904_154559.jpg
Horst Kiechle’s torso organs that I commented before: http://s30.postimg.org/h2l3nzi8x/IMG_20140830_192148.jpg
I now hate patellas and hip bones. I find the instruction book next to useless. How did you find it?