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Bone Building Books
Step-by-Step Guides for the Preparation and Articulation of Animal Skeletons
By Lee Post (a.k.a. Boneman)
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About the Books
The Bone Building Books is a series of manuals (each one dedicated to a different group of animals) explaining how to clean, prepare, and articulate the skeleton of that animal in a (hopefully) simple step by step manner. Each manual, heavily illustrated with black and white drawings, is suitable for teachers and students desiring to do a museum quality skeleton on a limited budget.
The manuals (volumes 1 through 9) are heavily illustrated with black and white ink drawings (which I also confess doing) and often have details precise enough to help in zooarchaeological identification of animal bones. The manuals are based on forty years of bone-work, much of it with students and teachers. The language is simple, the illustrations numerous, and the humor can be corny, but with these manuals, even you can do a museum quality skeletal articulation project with tools and materials available-even in the smallest towns and on a budget that even a public school teacher can afford.
The Bone Builder's Notebook (volume 10) is the companion reference book to any of the other bone-building manuals. If you work with bones or desire to work with bones, this is the answer book to questions you may have about preparing bones or skeletons for use in collections, or for display.
The Bone Builder's Notebook details how to acquire bones, the different options for cleaning, degreasing, and whitening bones, the tools and materials used for articulating skeletons, and includes a section for identifying and siding mammal bones, osteology vocabulary, and reference books. Whether you are a bone enthusiast or a museum professional, this manual has the rest of the information pertaining to bone-work.
A Note About This Series
The Bone Building Books have been created from my often indecipherable handwritten notes, by Mary - my wife and computer-graphic whiz. These manuals are published by a very small press; i.e., me, myself, and Mary. As self-published manuals, they are not exempt from having mistakes. They are also prone to have illustrations that I sometimes will look at after a manual has been printed and think, "I could do that one better." Being my own illustrator, I sometimes do. Being that these are manuals with a very limited sales appeal (I don't anticipate Random House to ever come knocking at my door), I have been having them printed in very small press runs. Consequently, it is fairly easy to revise and correct and amend the books as I feel the need or desire. That makes the manuals essentially all works in perpetual progress, constantly in flux and possibly never totally finished as long as they are in my control. Thus, check this website for information about newer versions. If you get stuck or have questions or comments, I welcome hearing from you. Please write to: boneman@xyz.net Happy Bone Building!
These two skeletons were articulated by 15 students in Dillingham, AK, during a three day weekend college class I taught, which was open to high school students. During that same weekend, the students also butchered, de-fleshed and simmered another pair of animals for an upcoming class.