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I want to give my sergeant a natural stance where his right arm and hand are extended behind him balancing the outstretched bolter arm. Unfortunately, I don't have any right hand bits other than gun handle gripping so I took a bolter holder left hand and cut off the thumb and fingers. I managed to glue a new green stuff thumb on the hand, but I'm at a loss as to how to sculpt fingers.

Does anyone have tips, suggestions, or links that talk about how I could sculpt something so small as space marine fingers? So far I tried rolling some GS into a small cylinder, cutting off little finger sized bits and letting them dry for a few hours. But the fingers were too big and didn't look very good. Any suggestions?

Don't sculpt fingers, sculpt a hand. It's unlikely that anyone in that position would be forcibly splaying his fingers, so you can simply (well, comparatively simply, at least) add a flap of GS in the rough profile of a hand, then press lines into it to separate individual fingers/armor plates. If you look at the nubs of the fingers you cut off, you can see that they're all attached to each other, as well - it's all just surface detail that makes it look like a believable hand.

I would suggest using the grenade hand (can't remember if it's in the tac box or assault box).

Failing that, there is an open left hand in the Sanguinary guard box. If you were careful you could probably use the fingers from that to build a right hand (or just swap the thumb).

If you have your heart set on sculpting...

Fingers need to be tapered a little towards the tip. In fact the whole hand tapers towards the finger tips. The little finger is much shorter and set further back than the others. The index and 3rd finger are very similar in length. The middle finger is the longest and is about the same length as the palm.

I would suggest making the 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers as on piece, as oadie suggested. 1 flat piece tapered towards the end, then cut a little staircase to represent the 3 different finger lengths (remember the longest finger is the same length as the palm). When you carve the lines that separate the fingers, start at the knuckles but fade the line out before you reach the finger tips, leaving the tips apparently joined together. This will give the illusion of the fingers being further apart at the base (which is how they really are). The index finger and the thumb are the most important for gesturing, so you might want to do something different with those.

I hope that helps, sorry if it's a little difficult to visualise. Maybe i'll upload a picture later...

If I have to do some sculpting like that I useally use pins of some sort to give it a form, then I add the Greenstuff to the pins.

I have found that helps a bit.

Good luck! Hands are one of the toughest things to sculpt.

Thank you all for the tips and suggestions! In the end the only part I sculpted was the thumb. I opted instead to take the fingers from another hand and glue them on. I'll see if I can get a pic up.