So I am going to summarize what I have decided about Wolverine's natural claws during the discussion

To start, I think they are a bone core with a fleshy quick, and then a self-sharpening keratin outer layer like a cat https://twitter.com/The_Ada_Rhodes/status/1352657108743966721

Why?
Well Logan, Daken, Laura, and Gabby's natural claws all seem to be REALLY SHARP and not just capable of scratching or puncturing but CUTTING

Cats are able to do this by shedding the outer layers of their claws leaving new sharper layers beneath them (like a dangerous onion)

In Logan and Laura's cases, they have had adamantium grafted to the bone, but for Gabby and Daken they must have to sharpen them on something (trees, scratching posts, furniture) to shed the outer layers

Why does just bone not make sense?

Well, bone doesn't really like to be sharp unless it is broken

There are even these things called osteoblasts and osteoclasts that add and remove material from bone to reduce points and reinforce areas that need to support more loads

If the natural claws were bone they would be constantly dulling

Also things generally don't stab their own bone out of their body to attack things, unless they are a Hairy Frog which actually does exactly that by breaking their bones, but that seems different (also brutal)

The next question is how would Wolverine's claws retract and extend, which is a really interesting thing from a biomechanical perspective

Looking at cats with retractable claws it is essentially a little lever (though you could also represent it as a multi-bar mechanism)

Wolverine's claws slide out though, which is very different
There are some illustrations of muscles that would do that, but it doesn't really make sense because muscles can't contract that far

Also, he would basically have to constantly be flexing which would be exhausting

Instead, I think the mechanism might be more...
um...
"vascular"...
Yeah let's use that word

What I think happens is that there are spongey vascular tissues around the claws and when Wolverine is "excited" the blood vessels leaving and entering the tissue constrict and relax and blood collects in the vascular tissues forcing the claws out

This is a solution we see in lots of mammals where they have to unsheath a protruding body part...
They um...
...
They...
Basically, I am saying biomechanically, Wolverine has dick arms

Why does this actually make a lot of sense?
Well when Wolverine gets excited he sometimes loses control of his claws
Like if he gets angry or scared or other things... they tend to pop out on their own
*DIKT*

I also think that the sheathes they are in are probably kind of wet, just because they are pretty long high contact areas and there needs to be a mucus membrane for lubrication
So...
Yeah...

Also they would come out of him warm...
Warm and slightly damp...

So good news though!
At least in Logan and Laura's cases, they are actually really clean because their claws have anti-microbial properties

This is because we know that the adamantium skeleton is poisoning Logan and he is only fine because of his healing factor (yay!)

Why does this mean the claws are clean?

Well there is this thing called biofouling, which means that organic stuff grows on a surface

Some metals (like copper and silver) are anti-biofouling so bacteria and critters can't grow on them because they put off ions that kill them

Because the adamantium skeleton poisons Logan we can assume that the alloy has this ion shedding property

Which assuming you have a person who isn't going to be killed by it is actually a really great way to make sure their body doesn't try to break the adamantium down

Also, this means that the claws likely either taste like copper pennies (ew) or silver which is a noble metal and has no real taste or smell which I really hope is the case

So yeah
Hope that was informative
I put my biomechanics and biomaterials training from Baylor to work today

Does this thread count as sci-comm???

Also what do y'all think?
Does this make sense?
Did I overlook something???