Customizing a Wooden Sword

A couple months back i attended Megacon here in Florida. I wanted to make a costume for it but was a bit short on time. So, i used what i had around the house, and a few extra bought materials to create this prop sword for it. I wont give a list of materials you need because you don't need exactly what i have. This is being made more as a way to give inspiration. I hope you use this to add ides for your own projects, instead of copying exactly what i have made.

I started this project using an old wooden sword i had laying around. Its a good piece of wood, however i was going for a more modern look than what it is right now.

To start i removed the front guard of the hilt, it was a simple shape that i couldn't do much with so i just scrapped it. Then i took the dremel to the back of the hand guard, cutting it and sanding it to the rounded shape you see. And of course finishing it off with some light sanding to smooth it out.

I switched over from the cutting wheel to the sanding drum to add in some scratches for weathering. I used the top edge of the drum to carve in some angled gashes on the blades faces and edge.

I needed some way to hold this thing on me, but i dint have time to make a full sheath for it. Instead i got the idea to hold it to a shoulder strap using magnets. After finding where i needed the magnets i traced them on the blade where i wanted them. This i used the smaller router like bits for the dremel to carve it out deep enough to fit the magnets in. Though they held in tight i still filled the hole with hot glue before attaching them to keep them from falling out.

The magnets worked just as they needed to. But now i had two big metal circles on the side of the sword to deal with. To cover them up i made a template for some cover panels and cut them out of a blue plastic lid from a large storage box. I wouldn't suggest this material though, paint did not want to stick to it.

Now on to the fun part. I sprayed the hilt gunmetal grey before taping it over and spraying the hand guard and the back of the blade in gloss white. I used the same white on the plastic cover panels as well. I had to be careful with these though because the paint chipped off rather easily.

After the paint dried i glued the cover panels into place. I used an epoxy resin instead of hot glue to keep the panels flush with the faces of the blade.

To tie this piece in with my costume i stenciled on the Assassins Creed logo on the bottom of one of the panels. To cover up mistakes i then went around it with silver paint. At this point i gave the whole thing a couple coats of Krylon gloss clear coat to protect the paint job. After this i cut some screws down and glued them into holes on the panels. These of course don't hold it in, they are just there to make it a bit more realistic. After the glue dried i removed the tape from the hilt and wrapped it in red paracord.

The last thing i did was to cover the exposed parts of the blade in aluminum tape. Normally i wouldn't use this because it can be scratched off, but it was what i had. If you do use this, you can give it a once over with some 0000 steel wool to give it a more brushed metal appearance.

And its done! I will definitely be posting more of my projects in the future, because i am almost always working on something new. Drop a comment if you liked this and thought it was helpful, and of course follow to keep up with whats to come.