Prop Sword From the Hobbit

I decided to recreate a movie prop from The Hobbit, directed by Peter Jackson. The design was made by Paul Tobin and I suggest you take a look on some other designs that was made for this movie prop.

To make it safe, the blade is made out of foam AND hot glue! The movie version of the sword has a handle made from a dragon fang. I do not have access to a dragon, so I used a deer's antler instead, btw. said deer got rid of that by himself, and he is still perfectly alive. If you want to recreate this instructable I suggest using wood instead (it was a pain to use the antler).

• Hot glue gun with sticks
• fiberglass rod for core
• polyurethane or EVA foam
• wood for guard handle
• material for the pommel (I used a metal cylinder)
• playdough
• molding silicone rubber
• silver spray paint or plastidip
• (optionally) antler for the handle

First I took a screengrab from the movie, where the sword is clearly visible and I traced it in Photoshop (actually it was its free online clone photopea). I wanted the sword to be at least 900mm long, and I don't have a plotter, so I split the outlined version on multiple A4 sheets and saved it as a PDF. I attach this document, so you can use it yourself!

Logically the next step was to glue all the papers together, to form a blueprint.

This is the first and definitely not the last use of hot glue on our project. To prevent the fiberglass core of the prop from working itself through the foam, I first file this little tooth on the end of the rod. Then I wrap it with tape (I used power tape at first, and it didn't work out, so I reinforced it with old paper and textile tape). Mentioned tape wrap makes sort of a mold, for the hot glue. This will make the tip softer, and it won't stab through the foam. While I was waiting for the hot glue to set, I started on the guard.

I transferred the shape of the guard, to the plywood I had laying around. I cut the basic shape with a bandsaw and chiseled the rest of the shape. The Center of the guard was drilled, so the fiberglass core can be put through.

Speaking of the bandsaw, I used it to cut a big thick chunk of polyurethane foam I had lying around as well. Just like in the case of the guard, I used the printed-out template.

And just like with the guard, we have to cut a pocket for the fiberglass core to snuggly fit in. I didn't want to cut the foam in half to cut the groove, so I instead decided, to drill out the foam for the core. I didn't have the drill long enough, so I instead made my own, from a metal tube. This tube has the same diameter as the thickness of the core. To make the tube cut through the foam, I filed a tooth on one end. This worked great, I few holes next to each other to make a slot for the core.

The shape of the blade was finished with an angle grinder.

I cut the antler to size and then boiled it. This way it is easier to drill the inside.

I made a pommel out of a metal cylinder. It was shaped with an angle grinder and drilled. When shaping I first cut the material at an angle (referencing the printed template) and then ground sides narrower. The finished pommel was then glued to the core. I used polyurethane construction adhesive for gluing.

After the glue was set, I attached all the remaining parts to the core. Everything was glued with PUC adhesive, only the foam was glued with UHU universal glue.

To prevent the sword's blade to look porous (just like the foam it is made out of) I wrapped it in textile tape. This tape was then glued (hot glue alert!) to the wooden guard.

The first coat is to make surfaces even more uniform, to resemble metal. I masked the handle and blade with painter's tape and painted the wooden guard with acrylic paint. After it set I sanded the whole guard. I repeated this painting/sanding process at least three times, so the wooden texture was all gone.

I did the same for the blade, but there was no need for masking and instead of acrylic paint I used PVA glue diluted with water.

I decided to add runes and decorations to the sword and the best material for this seemed to be hot glue! The idea was to first model the decorations from the playdough. Make silicon mold out of it, and then fill the mold with hot glue and stick it to the sword.

I printed out the sword guard in color and with some other reference pictures tried to model the sword details. At first, I modeled the playdough right on the picture of the guard with the intention to transfer the dough onto the actual sword. But during the transfer, all the details on the dough were destroyed (even though I froze it just before the transfer), so I had to do it again, right on the sword.

I started with guard runes and then moved to blade ones. To prevent dough or silicon for the mold from sticking, I wrapped the blade in a food wrap.

From the rest of the playdough, I formed boundaries for the mold and filled the area with silicone. This turned out to be a mistake since the boundaries collapsed overnight and the mold did not form properly. I tore down overflown silicon, reinforced boundaries with cartons, and poured silicon over the first attempt. To reinforce the silicone, I did another pouring this time with plaster. This way, everything turned out ok.

I poked out the playdough and checked if the modeled details were transferred. Everything seemed okay, so I trimmed the edges of the mold with a hair trimmer, where silicon got under the playdough.

I was afraid, that casting with a hot glue gun would not end up well. For the cast I needed more than one stick of hot glue and reloading the gun and waiting for the melt of the new stick could disrupt the casting process.

Instead, I cut hot glue sticks into little beads and heated them in an old pot. To prevent overheating the glue or possibly glue bursting into flames, I used bain-marie heating (pot with water is put onto the stove, and on this water pot is another, heated by steam).

I was generous when filling the mold, so the resulted casting had a lot to clean up. I sanded down all the extra material, then preheated the contact area with soldering iron and stuck it to the sword.

I spraypainted the blade and guard with plastidip, keeping the handle masked. The closest color I was able to get locally was gold. So I sprayed it gold and then used acrylic chrome car paint.

I don't have an airbrush, so painting cast decorations was very tough. Instead, I oversprayed decorations with a blue metallic spray, then masked them and spraypainted overspray with chrome again.

The connection between the pommel and the antler handle didn't look that great, so I decided to cover it with some leather. I once again used masking tape a masked all the areas I wanted to be covered. I cut the tape with an Exacto knife to the shape I want the leather cover to have. When I put the tape down, I had a perfect template for my leather part. I stuck it onto a thin piece of leather and cut it to shape. To glue the leather onto the handle I used contact cement.

Thanks for reading down here! Making this prop was quite a journey for me. I hope, this instructable entertained you and I would be humbled if it even inspired anyone.

See ya!

Kudlas