Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Link's Master Sword


I had planned on going to a convention here in Atlanta in September, but didn't really think of the fact that most conventions don't really like you huffing around a steel sword. Unfortunately, the one I used for my Link costume was steel, and I had 8 days until the convention to figure out what to do.

I started with a 38" sheet of 3" x 3/8" fiberglass and scribed the blade pattern onto it


After cutting along the shape with a jigsaw, I used an orbital sander to refine the edges and sculpt the blade

 
 
The hexagonal details near the hilt required some bondo and filing to make sharp and smooth


After a guide coat and some more sanding, the blade was near finished!


I sculpted the hilt from paperclay. The plan was to make a mold of this and cast the two halves in resin. Unfortunately, I didn't have access to any of my usual materials, so I had to make due with some unfortunate substitutes. The paperclay took forever to dry, shrank in size considerably, and was generally a bad material to use for a mold.


The castings turned out alright, but needed a lot of work to bring up to par.


Two pieces of MDF were affixed to the handle and rounded over. The handguard was sculpted out of apoxie sculpt, as well as the pommel. both were epoxied to the fiberglass on the blade. This is after some bondo cleanup work.


Hilt attached, and primed


After considerable cleanup, the whole blade was coated in perhaps the crappiest silver paint I have ever used. It may look pretty, but to this day the stuff isn't completely dry...


The hilt and pommel were then painted with Testor's Enamel


Finally, the handle was wrapped in purple vinyl and stitched around the handle. The green ribbon is a bit too wide, but with hours to go before I needed to get to the con, I just went with it.


And a finished shot. This piece is currrently in teardown, awaiting some much-needed revisions.


11 comments:

  1. Very nice. Keep up the good work.

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  2. just magical...you have brought my obsession to life

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  3. Ive always wanted to make one of these, Link is probably one of my favorite video game characters. I especially like the work on the Vinyl Handel.

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  4. Hey i was just wondering where did you get the giant piece of fiberglass board?

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  5. can you send me the paper cut out of the master sword, thanks

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  6. dude you are so great i want to try make but where i can find you master sword desing like the hylian shield you have

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  7. I would love to see a rebuild with your usual materials and tools. You didn't seem too happy with the way the build went or how it turned out. I think it's awesome though!

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  8. You posted the vector lines for your V2 Hylian Shield. Any way you could post the lines for the sword? I'm making my own with a CNC mill and PRO/e, and your lines look damn accurate. (also you actually made the hilt purple instead of blue, which makes me a very happy person) The stuff you build? Inspirational.

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  9. as astrokid says the vector lines would be huge help in the quest for a Master Sword of your caliber! Truly love what you've done keep it up!

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