GIANT Sawblade Throwing Star

I love Instructables.

A lot of days, I practically live on Instructables.

Which means, of course, that I am constantly presented with lots of awesome ideas. Most of them I store away in the back of my brain, to pull out later when practical, or when I have the materials.

I also get a lot of knife and sword catalogs. Not because I buy a lot of knives or swords, but because it is a great resource. I have a stack of them on my desk at the moment, and I love them. When I am designing a knife, I look through the catalogs. When I am planning how to build a spear, I look at my catalogs. When I have nothing to do, I look at my catalogs. When I am discouraged, and the world comes crashing down around me, I sit down, lean back in my chair with a cup of coffee, and look at my catalogs. Yes, I am a knife nut. But so are you. After all, you're reading about a Giant Sawblade throwing star.

One of my favorite catalogs is the Cold Steel catalog. It is really very well done. Lots of great ideas, one of which was the Cold Steel Battle Star. To put it simply, it is a humongously large, awesome, way overpriced throwing star, and I wanted it.

Yes, I wanted it. But not bad enough to buy it. Yes, I know you know the feeling. So, like any decent DIYer, I decided I would make it. But I had no metal, so the idea was stuck in the back of my mind and forgotten, waiting for that spark to recall it to memory.

The spark, in this instance, was the finding of a big circular sawblade, rusty, dirty, and covered with ash, in the deep, dark depths of my friend's burn pile. I snagged it, instantly seeing in its rusty, dirty, ash covered glory an awesome Battle Star.

And thus comes this Instructable.

The materials are simple, all you need is one large circular sawblade.

The tools I used:

Angle grinder

Bench grinder

Belt sander

As I said, the inspiration for this project came from the Cold Steel Battle Star. So, I logically wanted the it to look like the Battle Star. To make it simple, and eliminate the need to have to draw out the design, I found a picture of the star on google, and pasted it in a Word document. Then, all I had to do was blow it up the correct size, and print it out.

Then I simply traced it onto the sawblade with a permanent marker.

I clamped the sawblade to the workbench, and took the angle grinder to it. I got it to the rough shape, and then perfected it with the bench grinder, and cleaned up all the edges with the belt sander.

Grind the edge with the belt sander. If you don't have one, you can use a file, bench grinder, or angle grinder. I used the belt sander because it is easiest and leaves it looking better. However you do it, make the flat edge a blade.

You could end there if you wanted, but since mine was very dirty, black, and all around ugly, I decided to paint it. Spray paint. Very simple. I washed my star, dried it, and sprayed it. The color you use depends on how long you want to be able to use it. If you do black, you will be losing it very soon. A nice orange however, and you will be throwing happily for years.

I decided on red. Mainly because it was the only color spray paint I had left.

This thing is a lot of fun. Now go and make five more, and figure out how to launch them from a cannon.

Or just throw them.

It's awesome either way.