Decided to plunge into ye olde waters of the setup room with Dr. Geep's wonderful tutorial.  After doing the square thing, I did the cube routine.  Importing three cubes from the primitive section.  Found it pretty hard to get all the mesh of each cube selected since the bottom of one is covered by the top of an other one.  So I placed them away from each other before exporting them as an .obj for importing back in.  More or less successful in getting each bone linked to a given cube.  Only problem I have now is that when I rotate each one, they look as if they are all being drawn into a black hole, the youngest child being stretched the most etc.

Got to look at Dr Geep's treatment of how he handles fingers--next project spheres.  Jan