#leviathan axe

first of all.

FINALLY! I FINALLY FINISHED IT!

This project took years. not of constant work, but due to of lack of access and waning motivation. It all started when I looked at my dead Christmas tree and decided I wanted to make something out of it. Took a bit, but once I'd thought of the Leviathan Axe, I knew I had to do it. I think the natural curve of the trunk was what sparked that idea.

So at the beginning of this project I printed out full-size image of the axe to compare against. I immediately screwed that up. It ended up being, like, 30% bigger than that mock-up, cause I got the handle to this size and decided I liked how it felt to hold. Plus it makes it look more like the weapon of a god by being comparatively oversized.

After leaving it out to dry for a while I got started with trimming off the branch nubs with a saw. That worked reasonably well, but was tiring. Sanding it the final remnants smooth using an electric belt hand sander was much easier. That worked pretty well, so I continued until it was flattened and then removed the rest of the surface bark.

This actually took a lot less time than I was expecting it to, probably cause it was a soft pine wood.

Once I got to this point I debated whether to continue sanding down until it was a uniform texture, but ultimately decided to leave it cause it would mess with the shape too much and I liked the variation in texture. I came to love this decision.

The pommel was probably the part I was most worried about. I had some experience in semi-similar stuff (ceramics and pin making), but had never done any serious wood carving. If I screwed this up, then the project would be ruined.

Thankfully, it turned out pretty alright. I didn't trace it, but I very much do not trust my eyeballing skills, so I was constantly comparing to this printout. This paper cutout is like the fifth attempt at getting one the right size. I would sketch out the design, decide it wasn't quite right, erase it, and repeat. Took a while.

Staining. I did not enjoy this portion of the project. Was it satisfying? Yes. Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? Also no. Debated between several stains and went with a cherry stain. Since there was a variety of surface textures, I had to similarly vary the amount of stain. Worked better in some spots than others, was a real struggle toeing the line at the edges of the bark.

No, this was the most stressful part. Everything I said about the stress during the carving was the same for the branding, plus it included the staining progress. Instead of actually making a brand to use on this project, I used a pyrography (love that word) set to burn the design in. This is basically just a soldering iron with specialized tips for wood burning. Since I wasn’t comfortable free-drawing this part, I created a stencil out of a printed image and some tape to transfer the shape onto the wood.

The handle wrap is barely worth talking about. I got a rectangle of black leather, cut some triangles out of it so it would overlap less, and wound it around the shaft. Under tension, I started wrapping the leather strips around that. Surprisingly, this isn't held in place with anything else, it's completely held by its own tension, and therefore completely removable. I really like making things completely deconstructable without damage, not sure really why.

Anyway. That marks the end of the journey to make the handle. Now, in order to talk about the process of making the axe blade, we have to jump back to near the beginning of the project. This is the portion of the project that I actually had prior experience in. I have done a bunch of 3d modeling and am used to creating based on reference images.

I can't exactly remember which part I did first, but I probably did it logically, and this is what I would choose to make first. I was very careful about getting the specifics of the face designs correct, because the main reason I was designing this myself was that none of the files available online were at all detailed. Like seriously, they maybe had the main lines, but none of the intricate stuff.

Anyway, I don't think I thought too carefully about its vertical silhouette, because I did not make it similar to canon and don't have any saved reference material for that perspective. While I personally like how it turned out, it does urk me that I didn't realize this mistake until it got to the point where I would've had'ta remake it from scratch.

The other parts fit perfectly fine on the 3D printer bed, but the blade was far too large for my printer. So I ended up splitting it into three parts using these ducktail tabs to attach them together. The top tab ended up fitting so well that it didn't need any other adhesion (I still glued the final pieces together), the bottom tab was less clean, but worked just as well in the end. The hole in the center of the left picture was added when I started to figure out how I wanted to attach the blade to the handle. I flip-flopped between wood screws and a bolt all the way through for a while, but settled on the bolt cause it would allow me to remove a piece if it became damaged with minimal damage to other pieces.

This knob was extremely simple. I made the design in a single quarter of the knob and copy/rotated it 3 more times. I could have included this as a part of the main body, but went with it as a separate piece. I can use it as a cap to cover the bolt, and more importantly, it would save a lot of hassle when trying to paint them.

The charm notches were in my wheelhouse (pin making) so they took maybe five minutes total. They were separate for the same reason as the golden knob, ease of painting and using to cover something.

THIS. This was my kryptonite. The main reason it took me so long to finish this project. The main reason I STARTED this project. The intricate detail was just glossed over in all other models I saw. I needed a good version. This took several months of work, by which I mean at least an hour almost every day. A big reason it took so long is that at some point, it got so complicated that the modeling program had trouble running. Like, every time I tried to draw a line, it needed a minute to compute. There're definitely things I could've done better in that sense (I should have used multiple sketch layers instead of just one huge layer). In the sense of how it turned out, I love it, literally no complaints.

So yeah, after making all the parts in separate files, I put them in an assembly to do final touches and make sure they all fit together properly. It was at this moment that I realized I had completely ignored any kind of standard sizing. Like, the knobs were about the same size as the blade. Not a big issue, just resized everything in the combined file.

Physical assembly was the easiest part of the process. This wasn't the first multipart 3d print I'd designed (A lightsaber rack that lights up for my brother's birthday), so I was able to avoid most of the common issues. There weren’t even any failed prints this time around, just a single test print to see if I could get the proper detail on the bracket.

Oh yeah, since I wanted to mount this on my wall, I wanted to create something that at least resembled the hook Kratos uses in game. Not gonna lie, I half-assed this part. I did not care enough to make it look perfect. Its got the Jormungander omega and won't break under the weight of the axe, so it works. Plus, I included slots to put a rubber band on so there isn't any way for the axe to slide off, from like an earthquake.

As with any project, I first practiced the parts I had little to no experience with. This is my practice log, a stump from another old christmas tree.