Skeleton
General repairs
If guests have not been nice to your skeleton, it might have more than the usual wear and tear. Neck, arms, and spine all have a good chance of breaking. For catastrophic issues, you can just order a new one, however, they will all share the same weaknesses. The solutions below are just loose examples that might prove to be helpful.
If you have a break at the spine, here is a suggested way to do it with a wooden dowel.
Unscrew the small screws holding the skeleton together until the spine comes apart in halves (front and back)
Clip out one of the plastic shelves on the inside on each side. This will give the dowel space to run along the spine
- Rescrew the halves of the spine together so that it is only coming apart at the break
- Thread a dowel through the spine as far up and down as you can. Mark how far it can go and cut the dowel to fit.
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Insert dowel
Rejoin the two halves of the spine
Screw the dowel in place on either side, straight through the plastic and into the wood
If you have loose legs, check out the hardware in the hip area. Most skeletons have similar hip joints and are connected via bolts and stop nuts (or regular nuts). Over time these can loosen, so occasionally tightening them is a good thing to do. See the image below for reference on where to find these bolts.
If you have other loose limbs (arms, wrists, etc), check out where it's joined on the skeleton and assess the best way to reattach. We have seen several limbs become lost over time, but sometimes this can be an easy fix. If the limb is needed, there are a few things you can try. If it's an arm, usually you can use a flexible threaded tape (we recommend white gaff tape) and tear it into thinner strips to wrap around as if it's a bandage. See the image below for an example of an elbow fix. This should hold you over until you are able to get a new skeleton!
If you go through a lot of skeletons, consider changing how you have it mounted. Brackets or a new primary way to hang it on the wall might affect how much abuse the skeleton goes through. You have to protect him! He has no-body else.
Mounting the skeleton to the wall
The biggest part of this is getting the looped wall bracket to stay on the wall. You’ll be screwing through the padding and into drywall, wood, or concrete depending on your walls. (Or some combination of the three)
When mounting the looped wall bracket, make sure you pick the appropriate hardware (bolts or screws) depending on the material you're screwing into. Also, ensure that they are long enough to pierce far enough in. If you’re screwing into a wall that is hollow, we’d recommend using Toggle Bolts to hold the bracket in. Otherwise, use an appropriate set of wall anchors for your material - either will hold.
Beyond that, any combination of chain, quick links, etc that allows you to connect the skeleton to the looped wall bracket should work.
We do not recommend zip ties as any load bearing part of this, however, they can be used to hold lesser weighted areas if you are using ones that are thick enough (ex. the spine, if you have a looped wall bracket there). Traditional thinner ones are a bit too brittle to last long.
For a strong hold, consider wrapping around the spine or several ribs at the top and then add additional support where necessary. We have seen several different ways of mounting the skeleton across all stores, and many of them are great. A few examples of the different ways you can mount the skeleton are shown below.
If you are having frequent breaks on specific parts of your skeleton, you might want to consider changing where or how it is attached. Bracketing sections of your skeleton to the wall might be a way to make sure guests don’t mess with them too much. If you need further advice, please contact Support!
Redoing SHOCK in the skull
For this puzzle, you will need to remove the back of the skull. This can be done easily with a small screwdriver.
NOTE: Some skeletons ordered from Amazon do not have the ability to open the back of the head. If that is the case, then this might work for you:
Using a drill bit that is slightly bigger than the ear peeper’s viewing piece. We started with a smaller drill bit and then sized up as we were testing the view in the ear peeper. I would say the bigger the better - so if you have something like a ⅜” or ½” bit, use that. After drilling the hole, with a Sharpie, write SHOCK in all capital letters. Make sure you write it big and bold enough to see with the otoscope.
Redoing the shapes on the skeleton
For this puzzle, you will need a Sharpie or black paint.
The shapes you will need to draw are as follows: square on the left shoulder, circle on a knee, triangle on the right shoulder, heart on the arm or wrist, star on the ankle. I’d recommend filling in these shapes so they don’t get lost among the details of the skeleton.
When you finish drawing or painting the shapes, we'd recommend covering them with a clear coat. This can be done with waterproof Mod Podge or something similar. Here's a link!