Well, technically you won't lose anything by detaching the hand as long as the UV mapping is kept intact, but that's basically what my procedure will do. Essentially, you will be making a version of Mike without anything except the hand for geometry, but you have to keep everything down the line to the hip, which is the actor attached to the BODY (which also must be kept) so that it will position correctly. It may be a little bit hard to pose because the other body parts aren't really there, but you can select them from the menu and use dials on them even though they have no geometry. Also, you can pose Mike in the positions and then store the pose (still or animated), and then use the pose on the new figure. The pose dots will work, too. And of course, if you use the translate tool on the hand things will work. Oh, I almos forgot -- remove any IK chains for parts that you remove. Thus remove both leg IK chains and the other arm's IK chain.