I was given this skeleton last fall (2000), the only hitch was that I had to dig him up. Whenever someone says to dig in a certain place always dig the opposite direction. The people swore up and down that Dusty was buried just a few inches below the surface. I dug about 4 feet down. NOTHING. Finnaly, frustrated and exhausted I filled the hole back in and dug where I'd put that pile of dirt. 4" down I hit bone. He was laid out perfectly. I have all of his bones except one hoof bone. I've gone back to the site several times to attempt to find this bone, w/no luck. I hope to have some pictures of our excavation expedition up soon.
I finished Dusty in March of 2001. He's about a yard high. His bones are still very porus due to age I reckon. I was also unsuccessful in my repeated attempts to whiten his skeleton. I think it's a combination of his lack of age and burial decomposition. The pictures will show he was articulated w/a combination of wiring and pins. I will eventually make him all pins, but that won't be for a bit.
I recently changed the method I'd been previously using, for constructing the rib cage (really, prior to this, there was no method, hehe). I tried this idea first with a bulldog skeleton I did, and I like the results. I changed a few of the variables, but I tried it again w/the pony's ribs. You'll see the pony (in the first two pictures; the updated ones) has a cartilaginous rib cage. I took his sternum, wired it together (w/about 1/4" spaces between peices). Once that was completed, I bought silicone (in the caulk gun fashion) and put silicone between the peices of bone, this looks like cartilage and covers up the wire you would normally see. I then took 18 g. wire and wired the sternum to the ribs. I fished the wire through holes drilled in the sternum and the silicone already in place. For this pony skeleton I connected 9 sets of ribs to the sternum. Over the next week I proceeded to cover the wire connectors w/the silicone in several layers, this produced the look you see in the pictures. Granted silicone doesn't just come out looking like that, what you see are my fine sculpting skills at work! (actually it just took really soapy water and icky soapy fingers to mold that). The pony has 5 layers of silicone covering the wire supports.
The only disadvantage I noticed to using the silicone vs. Goop (which is what I used for the bulldog skeleton) was that the silicone does have a slight odor. Silicone also really sticks to your fingers if they aren't wet and soapy enough. Caulk guns are also a major pain, BUT...Goop is much more expensive (3x the cost of silicone, and I used one tube of Goop on the bulldog (7 sets of ribs) and half a container of caulk on the pony). Both dried in about the same amount of time...Goop dries hard, silicone is rubbery. I think I'll continue to use Goop for smaller skeletons (hard to get a huge caulk gun inbetween teeny ribs) and silicone for larger skeletons. Anyway. Enjoy the pictures!
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