To begin, I needed a real human hand as a model.

I drew around it onto a piece of paper, also marking the positions of all the joints.

That's all. Thank you, hand.

I covered the paper with a flat sheet of clear polythene, then pinned it down to a wooden board.

Using ordinary silicone bathroom sealant, I traced a line around the outline of the hand (on top of the polythene.

Once it's cured, the silicone will peel away from the plastic layer cleanly.

I filled in the outline with more silicone, squeezed in as a pattern of zigzags, so as to create a fairly thin layer across the whole area of the hand.

Once the whole hand was covered, I pressed on five plastic drinking straws.

These are in more or less the same position as the bones in a real human hand - and they will partly serve the same purpose - to provide rigidity.

They will also form channels for the control cords (analogous to tendons in the real hand).

I left the first layer of silicone to dry overnight - it's best not to create anything too thick with this stuff, as it would then take a really long time to fully cure.

The next day, I cut the tip off the spout of the slicone applicator, allowing it to produce a thicker bead - which I then applied along the back of each finger. This thicker section will give the fingers their spring and substance.

Once everything was fully cured, I trimmed everything up so it looked a bit nicer, then cut channels across the fingers, and through the straws, on the palm side of the hand at each joint position.

Taking a closer look at those joints - the palm layer is removed, along with a section of the straw, but leaving the thick bead below intact.

It makes the whole thing look a bit skeletal - I guess if I was going for greater realism, I might stretch a latex glove over the whole thing.

Finally, I threaded a piece of strong, thin cord down each of the straws, tied to a small bead at the fingertip, to prevent it pulling through.

And that's it - the hand is ready for testing...