#custom weapon tutorial

Okay so here’s some process pics of how I made the custom gladius shown in the first pic!

Here’s the main tools I use - a FatMax Stanley knife (a good, comfortable knife is so important!) and a pin vise drill. I’ve used the knife to cut the original sword off the arm and clean it up a bit, then used the pin vise drill to drill a hole into the top of the hand. This isn’t entirely necessary, I just prefer to attach things with a peg-and-hole rather than just gluing two flat surfaces together. I’ve also drawn the sword I want to make onto a piece of plasticard that’s about 1.5mm thick.

Using the knife, I’ve trimmed away the edges of the plasticard to get the overall sword blade outline. I’m ignoring the majority of the hilt at this point though, that will come later. The pencil drawing’s rubbed off by this point so I redrew the line down the middle to help me keep an eye on the midpoint. 

I’ve shaped the blade by carefully trimming/shaving away the plasticard, alternating which side of the blade I’m working on so that each side ends up relatively even. I also use very fine-grit and almost smooth sandpaper to sand off any rough patches and smooth things out. Apologies for the not-very-defined photo, it’s hard to photograph plain white to actually show the different angles. 

Once the blade’s done, I cut out two pieces of plasticard that’re about 1mm thick and glued them onto either side of the hilt. I probably should’ve cut the rough hilt shape out first before gluing them on, but eh, I got lazy. XD Just try to make sure the top edges are level, at least!

I let the glue dry for a few hours (technically overnight because sleep), then I started carving and shaving the hilt down to shape. I also used my two grades of sandpaper (shown in this pic!) to help smooth the hilt out. This is also when I carved down the little peg of plasticard that will go into the hand hole, regularly testing the fit as I went. Once that was done, I drew a couple of ultimas on very thin plasticard (about the thickness of thin cardboard) that were the right size to fit onto the hilt. 

I used the pin vise to drill a nice round hole in the middle of each ultima first, then carefully cut them out and trimmed/sanded the edges/outline before cutting the gap in the top of the ultima (the one on the left in this pic is finished, the one on the right still needs some tidy-up and the top gap cut out). This way it’s less likely that any bits will break off while you’re working with such thin plasticard. 

Once the ultimas were ready, I glued them onto either side of the hilt and let that dry, then I fitted the sword peg into the hand hole, and voila! Done! The sword’s not even glued into place yet, it’s just sitting there comfortably because of the peg/hole setup. 

And that’s it! I hope that helps, and let me know if you have any questions!