Reason #48 for why it's nice to live in a big city: It's no problem to skip down to your local anatomical models manufacturer and pick up a decent cervical spine model.

Yes, I bought a model and what a difference it makes! In the same time it took me to (very poorly) model just one vertebrae yesterday, I roughed out all seven today, including reworking the one I took a stab at yesterday. Still lots of adjusting and tweaking and refining to do on these, but it's coming along very quickly now --

And here's my new buddy, come to save the day (cue angelic choir):