Project: Basic Cosplay Weapons: Mai's Daggers

      Mai from Avatar has quite an array of weapons.  I already made a set of her simple stillettos, now I'm making the more difficult, but still relatively simple daggers.  I do a lot of work like this out of cedar, but for this project I'm using poplar.  This is because I want these to be pretty thin and half inch poplar is readily available at hardware stores.  So I started out with a 4' x 1/2" x 3 1/2 " piece of poplar.  I cut it into 4 pieces of about a foot each.  Ah, but wait, I need a pattern.  I took the Mai's weapons schematic, and blew up the picture to make the dagger the size I wanted.

Great Mai weapons schematic.

The 4 blocks with the pattern on top.

I printed out the picture and used spray contact cement, a really useful product, to stick it to a file folder, then cut it out.  To make it easier to cut I took two of the blocks and used contact cement again to glue them together. That way I only have to cut twice to get four pieces. Of course I took my pattern and traced it on to the wood, then cut it out with a jig saw.

And here's 4 blanks ready to carve and sand.

If your'e ever making blades it is very handy to mark the center of the blade all the way down the piece. I do this with my center marking gauge which is very useful if you'll be doing this sort of thing a number of times.  Of course, if you don't have one, and who does, I made a simple substitute with two popsicle  sticks, a pencil and tape. I cut a notch out of one of the sticks, marked the center and taped a pencil on the center line, see picture.

At right a center marking gauge, at left my makeshift one and in back the blanks with the center line marked.

Now it's time to start carving.  You don't need to carve the whole blade, your'e just removing some stock to make your sanding easier.  With wood there is a definite direction to carve in.  Generally with these you want to carve from the tip down to the middle of the curve and then stop and start from the other tip to the middle.

Carve to the middle then stop and start again from the other tip. Keep your hand behind the blade.

As I said you don't need to take a lot off, just enough to establish an edge, most of the work is with a sander. About that, if you are going to do more than one project like this, you will want to get a Random Orbit Sander. Not a 1/4 sheet sander, not a belt sander a Random Orbit Sander. I saw a ton on eBay for 25 to 50 dollars brand new and used ones from 10 bucks. This sander will open up a lot of cosplay possibilities for you. O.K, you need to work your way around the whole piece with a knife. Now it's time to sand.

This is how little I carved the edges.

So know I hit the edges with the sander working all the way around. The sander really works fast. Use maybe an 80 grit or 100 grit at first then change to a 120 to150 grit. you can experiment and use what works best for you.

Working with the sander.

I kept going until I get pretty good edges. Fro there I finish up with sandpaper. I really like sanding sponges, you can get them at any hardware store and they are great for edges and detail.

After some good sanding.

So after a bit of hand sanding I finally like the overall look. Time to think paint. I did some tests on a piece of scrap wood with a bunch of colors and I could not find one I really liked. So I'm going to mix some. If you do this you need to stick to a formula, hopefully 50/50 cause that is easy to replicate. So I mix 1/2 golden brown with 1/2 brown and I think that's about right.

The sample is brown on right, Golden in middle, and custom on left.

When you have a good blade edge it's pretty easy to see what you need to paint what color. Start with the brown mix and paint the inside. I found a few chips on the edge so before I paint I will fill them with spackle and sand it before I paint.

A couple nicks get repaired.

Now to paint the edge with some metallic silver craft paint. Metallic paint seems to cover other paints a little better, so this is best used last.

I like to paint on a new paper towel cause it's such a clean surface.

Here's the lot of them.

Now we have to wrap the handles with leather like Mai's daggers are. At the fabric store it is pretty easy to find a fake leather 1/2 inch trim. This project requires one yard, $3 a yard. I cut one end straight and hot glued it to the edge like so.

Hot glued to the top of the wrap.

 Next you wrap it around a few times, this requires some experimentation. You are going from the top bend to the lower bend. At the bottom I made a slightly angled cut and glued it down.

Wrapping

Cutting the end at an angle and gluing it down.

So after a bit of work here's how it ended up.

Not bad

The wrap is a bit tricky you have to play with it. I think it came out very well though.

Project: Basic Cosplay Weapons: Mai's Stillettos

      I wanted to start a series on making cosplay weapons, but some of the stuff I make is a bit complex.  And I'll get there, but let's do a few simple projects first.  Mai, the awesome Fire Nation warrior from Avatar, has an array of weapons.  I'm going to make a set of her stillettos, then a set of the more complex daggers.

A great schematic of Mai's weapons I found from a simple image search.
The stilletto is of course at the top right.  It's a basic cylinder, slender, with a flat 4 sided  not rounded tip. The tip is silver, the shaft is a reddish brown, and it appears to have fletching.

So how to make one, or four.  I started with a quarter inch dowel and cut it into 4, 6 inch lengths.  Then I took each one and wacked the tip with a hammer a few times.  This is for two reasons, to get it to flare out a little and to make it more safe.  If the strands are busted up a little it will bend rather than go through some one.  You can't be to safe with cosplay weapons.  Now I'm gonna carve the point on the end cutting down to the center on opposite sides, then a little on the other two sides. You don't want a rounded point, you want flat blades..

Carving the first flat side. Note smashed wood.

  When I was done I filled cracks in the piece, mostly cause I hit it with a hammer, with spackle

This is the only spackle, all others suck.

Next I thought it would be nice to taper the back of the stllettos a bit just for looks and maybe a place to hold them in the fingers. This shows three of the points and one of the backs.  Now they all get sanded with a 150 or higher grit sandpaper. 

.

 Time to paint, I'm using craftsmart brown, and metallic silver.  Cheap ass craft paint.  Now try not to overlap these paints cause it looks funny.  First some brown on the shaft and silver on the tips.  It will take two coats

Once your happy with the paint job we're going to do some light fletching.I got some white turkey quills from the craft store and sliced them right down the middle with a shrp knife.  I then trimmed some of the hard middle of the feather down, cause these stillettos are small they need delicate  fletching.  I then cut 1 inch sections of the feather, we need two for each stilletto.

Once I trimmed the hard part to my liking I used some gel type crazy glue to glue them on.  Gel crazy glue is much easier to work with.

Now you take a very sharp pair of scissors, Ginghers , and trim the feather like it is in the Mai weapons picture.

Like so.  And there you have 4 stillettos to pierce the hearts of the Fire Lords enemies.  Or you can just hold them while people take your picture, either way.  A simple project, but you will learn things doing simple things that will help you later.

For You Avatar Fans: Ozai's Angels

      If your an Avatar fan, you should check out this Tumblog, Ozai's Angels.  The name alone is brilliant, I'm kicking myself for not having thought of it.Go HERE and check it out.

Katsucon 2011 Saturday

       Saturday again found us incognito taking pictures with Kimi's fancy new Nikon D-5000.  There was a lot of good cosplay out there Saturday, here is but a sample.   

Adorable EVA girls,  with a Pen-Pen, Yeah.

Really cool How to Train Your Dragon

Breathtaking  Cosplay. :)

Great Team Rocket,  wish I got a better shot of Jessie's  hair it was epic.

Kick ass Jack Skellington.

Oh yea, also these big headed thing started dancing, weird.

Now time for us to get dressed. It's Lantis and Alcyone from Magic Knights Rayearth. 

By EBK

We wandered for a while and then hit the sports bar for dinner.  The ribs were quite good, and it's not as frighteningly expensive as the other places.  One non con going young lad referred to Kimi as the devil lady.  Which is crazy cause those are clearly bat-like ears not devil horns.  It's amazing how fast the day went, it was already into the evening and he had not done Auron and Lulu yet.  But first, I saw one group of cosplayers while I was Lantis that I just had to get a picture of.

Mei, Ty Lee and Azula from Avatar

Unfortunately I took this with my crappy pocket camera so it's not very good.  But this group was very good.  They were perfect like they walked right out of the show.  They had the characters down pat.  I wondered for a second if Azula was about to do something terrible.  These girls get it.

EBK  again

Anyway it's time to switch to Auron and Lulu and head out again.  Again we walked around then headed to the Final Fantasy shoot at the fountain.  Which was a totally disorganized mess. A giant contrast to the One Piece shoot.  Less said the better.  Well time to head up to the bar and meet up with The Steampunk Family.
Who are also my actual sisters family.

Phineas and Madame Von Hedwig

 We also ran into world renowned cosplay photographer Eurobeat King who took the above picture and a few others.  well time to fly.  Before going up to change we ran into two more cosplays I really liked.

Detective Conan

The cutest Detective Conan,  and some old school Leiji Matsumoto characters Harlock, Emeraldas and Maetel.  Who all originally appeared in the classic Galaxy Express 999.

Harlock, Emeraldes and Maetel

We went up and changed into our secret identities and headed out for a late night screening of adult AMV's.  Several of them were pretty funny and clever, the rest were kind of lame.  Still an amusing end to a great day at Katsucon