Prop Apocalypse Sword

So it’s after the apocalypse, you and your group of survivors need weapons to defend off the other roving bands of scavengers and protect what little supplies you have left. You have some typical raw materials; basic hand tools a generator and a Lincoln weld pack 100 welder to work with…

My goal was to build a prop sword that looked like sometime from Escape from New York, from materials I had laying around the garage and have the whole thing take part of an evening or two.

I started out with a simple design on paper. At first I didn’t let how I would make it get into the way of what I was trying to do.
Since I wanted to try something different I decided to try to use a piece of tubing as a back bone. I figured with the thickness of steel I was going to use for the blade it was going to be pretty flexy so having the tubing as a backbone would stiffen up the sword.

Materials.
Like a 1 ¼ inch piece of mild steel tubing
Some really frigging big nails
A piece of sheet steel. In this case it was 24” x 10” for the blade
A brass door knob for the hilt
A piece of leather for the handle – or in this case one of my kids old belts that was gonna go to Good Will
Tools needed
Lincoln well pack 100 welder
Tin snips
Brass rod for welding
Torch for doing the brazing.
Super glue

After I welded it together I wrapped the handle on. I found an old kids belt laying in a pile of stuff going to the good will and figured that would make a perfect grip. I wrapped it around the handle and cut the ends at a diagonal on each end so they would butt up against the guard.

Uses some sand paper and made a small attempt to clean it up. but not too much I wanted to keep it with an unfinished look.