Info Page

I just made this page to post my thoughts about the weapons that I've made, and how I make them ^^ And just pretty much whatever I wanted to say about junk.

Materials/Tools
The majority of the wood I use is basswood, and I usually buy from Michael's. All of my swords, knives, most of my props are made of basswood. I also use plywood sheets for heavier weapons, like staffs or the keyblades because I can find 12" x 12" sheets of plywood that I can't find in basswood. I can only cut through 1/8th of an inch of plywood, however I use all different thicknesses of basswood. There's another kind of wood I used on one project, balsawood. It's very light and almost feels like foam. It's very easy to cut through but doesn't work for strength in weapons. I had to use it for Meru's Hammer because it was the only wood I could find in the size that I needed, and any other wood would have been too heavy for it.
I use wooden dowels for sword handles, staff handles, and other small pieces where I need a long rod for. I also will use small wooden cutouts that you can buy in packs at the store, such as pre-cut circles or stars.

For bonding I use elmer's wood glue, super glue, and hot glue. I use wood glue when bonding any wood or elements of the basic construction together. I use hot glue to attatch things such as feathers, gems or orbs, chains, and other misc objects becuase it dries fast and is strong enough to hold them. I don't often use super glue unless something breaks or is not holding with any other type of glue.

For carving I use an exact-o knife, typically size B #2 blade, although I have an A and C size handles also, as well as an arrangement of different blade sized along with a saw attatchment that I use to cut dowel sticks with. I use scissors if needed to cut plastic or paper if needed.
I use a dremel to sand my weapons down/sand edges flat and shape them. Though my dremel has other attatchments such as blades, cutters and drill bits I don't normally use them. I buy my sandpaper and replacement dremel sanders from Lowe's. I also use these sanding blocks which are apparently used for drywall *shrugs* I never knew e.e I just know that they are good for the last sanding to make everything smooth.

When it comes to paint I buy Craft Smart paint from Michael's because it's only $.50 a small bottle and it's good paint. I have an assorment of colors and mix what I need to make any in betweens. I keep large bottles of black, silver, white and gloss because I use them the most. Before painting I like to prime the wood with white, because it shows up better and requires less coats. For colors such as that of a blade I use a base coat of gray, and then silver. Because if the silver is just painted on, it looks too much like a piece of silver jewelry, it's too bright. But painting the base coat of gray makes it come out more like a blade. For gold I always have to mix gold with yellow. The gold I buy is too dark, and usually too thick to paint with, so I mix it with yellow to get various shades.


Okay, so that was all the boring stuff ^^; sometimes I think maybe I would write a tutorial up on this just for the hell of it, or at least HOW I do stuff. But I just felt like getting all of this out. Here's some information on individual weapons:

Sakura's Gun - This one was easy to make

Seifer's Gunblade - It was challenging to carve a gun since I was never really into the, nor had much knowledge of their design. But I just copied from the pictures I had and it came out great.

Meru's Hammer - This is a memorable one, the only way I could make the huge head of it was to get wood from an art store downtown, I believe the pieces were 2"x3"x36" and I needed 3 of them. First I cut and glued the pieces together until I formed at 8"x8"x12" block, then I carved that into a cylinder shape, and then followed with the design. Overall this piece was difficult to construct, even the handle proved to be a little hard. But the weapon is very strong and I even took an overhead swing at my bed with it showed no signs of breaking.

Oblivion Keyblade - Keyblades require more work than the other weapons because they have many layers of wood. But this one wasn't as hard as its predecesor the Oathkeeper Keyblade. Because I'd already worked the bugs out of it, piecing this one together didn't take long

Oathkeeper Keyblade - The project that started it all, this was the first one I ever took on. It was hard, but not overly so. It was my first project so I did a lot by trial and error. Realizing the right size of wood I needed and how to actually construct it, but it came out good.

Yuri's Claws "Chimera's Claw" - I made these for my 2008 Otakon costume of Yuri from Shadow Hearts: Covenant. This one made me break out of my 2-D box in weapon making (like Meru's Hammer) because it's more than just a flat blade. I had to construct something that went around my hand and that I could grip onto. So it was a lot of messing around to get it to look right.

Kidd's Dagger - I remember making this a few years ago for my friend's halloween costume. It was just a simple blade that I glued to a piece of dowel, I don't think I put too much work into it.

Hand Blade - Honestly I don't remember when I made this or what for e.e; I think I was just bored and must have carved it.

Syaoran's Staff - This project was a pain really, I had to put the wood on the floor to draw its dimensions because the staff head was so large. And since my compass was much too small to draw the circle I had to do it free-hand (anditI had curves u.u they're hard to draw and cut) Overall the end of the staff that I thought would be hard, was quite easy, and the head was the most annoying part to make.

Yuna's Staff "Guillionaire" - The only weapon I had that broke during construction. Honestly, it was me being a little lazy with it. I have a certain way that I construct staff heads so they are held in place (it involves more work but then they're steady) My construction wasn't very good, once I had glued it together and picked it up later on the entire staff head fell off. So I tried 2 or 3 times to fix it, and finally got the superglue to hold. There's a crack up by the base of the head that I can't seem to fix, but it's not that noticeable.

Fai's Staff - It's a large weapon, and my favorite part about this one is the crystal suspended from its middle. I carved the crystal from many pieces of a plastic framing panel and put them together so they would give it depth like a real gem. I used transparent tape to bind them together and a stain glass paint to give it the see-through look. I threated a piece of fishing wire through the plastic gem at the top and bottom to hold it in place and make it look like it was floating.

Sailor Pluto's Staff - This staff was fairly easy to carve and make. The head of the staff actually broke at one point (not due to construction, it fell and cracked >.>) But I was able to glue it back together without any marks left on it.

Sailor Cosomos' Staff - For this staff I had very little carving to do. I used dylite balls for the majority of it, drilling holes in them and putting them down onto the staff head. (Yeah I had no idea what dylite was but apparently its just like thick foam, and doesn't crumble when compressed like regular foam balls. Which made it perfect for the staff, because I couldn't find any wooden balls that big)

Umi's Rapier - This sword was pretty basic, and I had no problems constructing it. The blade is much thinner than any of my other swords because I wanted it to have the feel of being a rapier.

Morgif - I made this for my friend as a present. It was also very easy to make, and I didn't have any trouble with it.

Kurogane's Katana - At the time I was making this one, I nearly quit several times. The dragon's head at the base of the handle was very hard to carve and cut, and sometimes I can't believe it came out as well as it did. I think it's one of the projects that I look back on and am very proud of.

Arashi's Katana - An easy sword to carve, although katanas are annoying because the blade is curved and it's hard to get it to look right and not bent the wrong way. The handle is carved and etched with design, which was probably the hardest thing about it.

"Keiran's" Sword - This is something I made for a character I created, I used his person for Halloween one year, so I made his sword. It had a crude design and construction, in which I just taped the blade down onto the handle. It worked for Halloween, but later on fell to pieces.

Yuri's Talisman "Periapt" - Let me just say it took me forever to find a 1" red glass bead to use for this talisman. It wasn't hard to make or put together, but I had to buy a bag of beads just to get the one I needed.

Gurdy's Moogle Pompom - A moogle pompom,... it was simple once I figured it out. I used a boa for the poof at the end, just wrapping it around until it came to a ball.

Sailor Cosmos' Brooch - Made this for a friend's costume, they were easy to make.

Diclonius Horns - I plan on being Lucy for next year in Otakon 09', so I made myself a set of horns. Mine are carved out of clay because I wanted to create the effect of the broken horn.

Hige's Collar - I believe it was Otakon 06' when I went as Hige from Wolf's Rain, the collar is surprisingly sturdy even though it's only made out of cardstock.

Kidd's Necklace - One of the few projects I used sculpey clay for, just to make the round beads and then painted them.

Squall's Gunblade "Lion Heart" - This is one of the mini weapons that I made, just for show. It came out pretty good although the keychain looks kind of retarded.

Cloud's Buster Sword - I'll be honest, my actually attempt at this was to make all of the combined pieces of Cloud's buster sword fit together. I don't know if it's possible (after all it is just a game ^^; ) But had to try *shrugs* My thoughts were that if I could make it in a small size I would make it in a full-sized weapon. Right now Cloud's sword isn't on my list of weapons to be done, lol. Maybe at a future date.


Back to Home Page