How to make short swords out of balsawood

Hi,

I'm finally back after a very chaotic, hectic, tear-and joyful, lively great year.

During my extreme cosplay season I somehow neglected my blog again as usual. But I want to look on this as a chance and share some of my more interesting making process experiences more frequently now during the winter break.

I’d like to start with something I made in August for Aninite (my first foreign, though only Austrian con xD), which turned out very much to my delight:

Alibaba’s second metal vessal from Magi.

The original

This time I decided to make nearly the whole weapon out of balsa wood, as it is a great material for short swords. It’s not as easily broken as styrodur, but also very light and easy to work with.

First of all I started as for every model with a real life sized sketch on paper.

The first sketch

As soon as I was content with the shape I used the draft as a pattern to cut the same shape (1 times mirrored) out of two plates of balsa wood (approx. 3 mm in diameter) and another one complete with a very crude pattern of the hilt (approx. 5 mm in diameter) using a box cutter. 

First part

The three pieces were to be glued together like a sandwich later on. 

 

Sword-sandwich

 But first I rasped the outer parts in order to achieve a 3D-shape.

Afterwards 2 very small plates of Worbla’s finest art and 2 artificial stones were to be added as decorations on both sides.

First 3D-parts

  

The next step was to shape the crossguard of the hilt. I again used this times two parts of balsa wood (again approx. 3 mm in diameter), rasped them and glued them together.

The crossguard

 

Now the hilt had to be shaped and I cut off the old one added another plate (5 mm in diameter again) rasped like a devil to glue it back in place later on… I also tried to shape the dragon head at the end out of balsa wood. But I didn’t like the outcome. So I used as originally intended Worbla’s decoart for this.

The dragonhead

That was a very sticky business… especially as I added acrylic colour to the still hot worbla’s as recommended in some tutorials… I wouldn’t really recommend that again… Especially since the golden colour  didn’t turn out that convincing and I had to apply more colour on the outside later on anyway…

The next “problem” was how to glue the worbla’s to the hilt. Out of a lack of better ideas I just used some more worbla’s decoart as glue. Didn’t turn out perfectly smooth but sticks to the wood now very well. 

 

Nearly all pieces assembled

The next step after gluing everything together was applying about 3 layers of wood glue to smooth everything out. Afterwards I applied spray-colour and acrylics and started to shade this a little. I had no time to apply varnish before the con in the end but would recommend it. (Besides of course the stones and decorations made out of worbla’s were painted and only glued to the rest in the very end).

Some time I want to make the sheath as well but I didn’t have enough time for this occasion…

Finished result

Besides I’m already working on another sword with the same technique: Hotohori’s sword from the Fushigi Yuugi artwork (which is also currently turning out nice). 

Hotohori's sword (progress)

Hope I could inspire someone with this. And sorry about the low quality of some progress pics. Back then I didn't own a camera at all -.-'''...

Next time I’m going to show my first experiences with printing fabric (up till now I always preferred to paint them directly and probably still do so), maybe after that my first experiences with sewing a plushie and some outlook  of what is to come in 2016.