Okay, I'm setting up for a single frame shot, dig? No animation. 
I have a suit of armor. I just want to put hands in the armor, where they would go, holding a sword, a helmet, axe, whatever, K?

So, since I don't know of any poseable disembodied forearms hands, I decided to start working with a figure "James", and made everything invisible except the hands. Okay, fine, but why can't I seem to disable kinematics ? I disable Inverse K and autobalance, but every time I move one hand, the other will move to compensate.  It's maddening.

I am almost ready to add an additional "James", to supply one of the hands (thus isolating), as my last resort workaround, which I know will certainly work. But it seems so clunky and excessive a solution. 

Does anyone know if invisible polygons and rigging, etc will continue to tax system resources, even if all of the attributes are disabled (visibility, seen by ray tracing, casts shadows, etc)?

Does anyone know a better way to do this hand and forearm thing?

While I am at it, does anyone know why poser, in the material room,  doesn't allow you to simply save and load (entire, ie, all attributes) surfaces? The closest I can get is to hold shift button as I copy all nodes, and paste to the new (object) surface. Not so bad, but far from ideal.   Probably I'm missing something.       In all of this.     This all can't be right, it has to be my own stupidity or unwillingness to read manuals too often.