Jon, yeah: ) It's right. i scaled the box. Then i tried it using a sphere. and i didn't scale the sphere. and it worked: ) and the hand did not distort. However, what puzzles me is when i IK hands of a character to body of another character , then if i change my mind and want to start over( setting parent to another body part) then it just goes wacko. Good news though guys, i figured that the best way is to start over a new file and get it right the first time so that i don't have to do IK with a different parent. if i get it right the first time, then all is good. This is annoying though