FFVII - Advent Children - Kadaj's Sword

TODAY'S PROJECT:

Kadaj's Double-Bladed Sword from Advent Children



The purpose of this tutorial is to show how a decent prop replica (in this case, a double-bladed sword like the one shown above,) can be made using a pair of commercially sold plastic toy swords. (The quality of this particular weapon is, of course, not going to be as good as it would have been had it been made out of wood or a more sturdy material, but then again, this sword took far less time to finish and wound up looking fairly good for something that had been made from a child’s toy.)

I've written a materials list for this project (I'll try to provide one with every tutorial I do in the future, but PLEASE don't e-mail me asking for materials lists for past projects. I'm afraid my memory isn't good enough to recall everything I used for any particular project offhand, and I just don't have the time to go through my past works and carefully jot down everything I used.)

Now then, here's the materials list for this project:

2 - plastic toy ninja/samurai swords (Note: most kids swords are pretty short, so it may take some time and effort to locate a pair of toy swords with blades as long as the blades shown in the reference picture. Ideally, you’ll want a sword with a blade that’s at least 30” long.)
1 - 9” x 12” sheet of 6mm thick craft foam
A couple of strips of 3mm craft foam (use some scraps if you have any on hand.)
Some hotglue
Gold enamel paint
A strip of chrome silver monokote (I’ll go into more detail about this item later…)
Styrene sheeting. (A piece at least 10” x 20” )
A package of black ½” wide hem binding
A package of white ½” wide hem binding



Step One: Remove the plastic samurai/ninja swords you’ve bought from their packages and unsheath the swords.

If the tips of your swords are rounded for safety, you'll want to make them look more like the blades in the reference picture and less like children’s toys so you want to cut them off at an angle. Start by drawing the intended cut line onto the sword tips with a marker.



Carefully cut the tips off using your utility knife.



You don’t want open holes at the end of your swords, so take small scraps of styrene and hotglue them over the holes’ openings.



Use your utility knife to carve away the styrene which isn’t covering the holes. Refine the shape of the tips as best you can.



Take one of your swords and pull the plastic buttcap (or kashira) from the end of its handle. (It should pop off quite easily provided it’s not glued on.) Now unravel the fake tsukamaki wrappings covering the sword handle, and remove the sword’s fake plastic tsuba (in this picture, it’s the flat black plastic thing which rests between the blade and the handle.)



Take your heavy scissors and cut the blade free from the handle. (Try to cut it so that the end of the sword blade has a slightly wider base, as in the picture.) Do the same to the other sword (only discard the handle of that sword after you’ve done so. You’ll only need one handle for this project.) Discard also the tsuba and wrapping for both swords, but hold onto one of the kashira.)




To make the blades of the sword look more metallic, I’ve decided to cover them with chrome silver monokote, -- a type of silver vinyl sheeting with an adhesive backing popular with model airplane builders. Care must be taken when applying this material, as it tends to get air bubbles trapped under it very easily. (This can be avoided-- I’ve heard-- if you dip the material into a solution of water and a few drops of dishwashing soap before applying it to your surface.) It is common procedure after applying the chrome to apply heat to the surface by means of a hot air heat gun, or by using a blow dryer set to a high heat setting, --at which point the chrome will shrink a little and bond to the surface it’s covering. (I’d personally recommend using the blow-dryer method myself, as anything hotter might melt the plastic blade you’re working on as soon as it would melt the chrome adhesive…)



Here we have a chrome strip that I bought from a hobby shop. The first step I took in the chrome-applying process was to take one of my blades, lay it down over the backside of the chrome strip, trace a line around the blade about 3/8” away from it and then cut the resulting shape free of the strip.



I then peeled the chrome gently from its backing. (I didn’t feel it was necessary to dip the chrome into the water and soap solution I mentioned above, but that’s certainly something you can do if you’re finding yourself bothered with air bubbles trapped under the surface of your chrome.)



The next step was to apply the chrome to one side of the blade (with the adhesive side touching it of course,) and then gently press the chrome onto the blade with my finger.



I mentioned before that when I traced the blade and cut the chrome strip, I cut it so that there would be about an 3/8” overlap of chome on both sides of the blade. (This allows me to cover the sides of the blades with chrome while I’m covering the front and back.) Since the blades I’m using for this project are slightly curved, I had to cut notches in the overlapping chrome to ensure that the it would cover all of the surface area of the sides without wrinkling.



The next step after this was, of course, to press the chrome/adhesive tabs onto the sides of the blade.



And of course, the entire process has to be repeated for the other side of the blades…



After you’ve managed to coat ALL sides of both of your blades with chrome adhesive, take a hand-held hair dryer, put it on a high-heat setting and blow hot air over the surface of the blades. (Try not to apply too much heat to one area of the blade at once, and if it looks as if the area you’re heating up is about to melt or catch fire, STOP! )



Once you’re finished, set the blades aside—it’s time to begin work on the tsuba…

First step: Take your 9” x 12” sheet of 6mm craft foam and draw out the shape of your tsuba, using your reference pictures as a guide. (The tsuba I made for this project was about 4” by 4” in size.)



Cut the shape free of the craft foam (being extra careful when you cut out the shapes and holes of the side-loops.)



Hotglue your tsuba piece to a piece of styrene sheeting. (Luckily for me, I had a large enough scrap lying around to glue my shape to.) Cut the craft foam free of the styrene with a utility knife (making sure you’re extra careful when cutting the inside of the side-loop holes…) Do NOT hotglue styrene to the other side of your tsuba just yet…



Use a scissors to refine the shape of your tsuba until you’ve got it as close to your reference picture as it can get. (I rounded the corners of mine, as you can see. This will be your last chance to make any changes to the tsuba shape so make sure you’re happy with the way it looks before you proceed.) That done, you’ll want to figure out where the holes for your sword blades will go. (This is easy, since all you have to do is place the ends of your sword blades onto the surface of the tsuba and trace around them.)



Use a marker to define the shape of your blade-holes and then use a sharp utility knife to cut them out. (Make sure when you do this, that the holes are evenly set and spaced from each other…)



Hopefully, when you cut your blades from their handles earlier, you made it so that they had a slightly wider base on the end of them. When cutting your holes, make sure to make them just wide enough for the blades to slide though, and for the bases to NOT pass through. (Note: in this picture, the foam side of the tsuba is up, while the styrene-covered side is facing down.)



Drizzle hotglue over the base of the blades to hold them in place…



Now comes the fun part. Take the handle (which I hope) you were saving and hotglue it in between the bases of the blades. Glue it securely so the blades don't bend inward towards each other...



Cut a square from the 6mm craft foam large enough to cover the tsuba. Cut a rectangular hole in the middle of the square just large enough to accommodate the sword bases and the handle. Hotglue the foam square down over the tsuba as shown in the picture and round the edges of it with your scissors so that its shape exactly conforms to the tsuba piece.. (You’ll notice in this picture, I didn’t make the foam square quite large enough to cover the side loops of the tsuba. After taking this picture, I and cut a pair of loop shapes from the 6mm craft foam and hotglued them over the existing loops so that all parts of the tsuba now had a layer of craft foam glued over them.)



Now, for the next step; take a scrap of styrene large enough to cover the entire tsuba (side loops and all) and cut an oval hole in the center just large enough for the handle to pass through. Drizzle a generous helping of hotglue over the entire surface of the tsuba and press the styrene sheeting onto it. Then carve away the excess styrene with a utility knife. (So what you should have now have a tsuba piece with styrene covering both of its flat sides. Don't worry about the edges for now, you'll do them later…)



Turn the sword so that the blades of the sword now point upwards. Take your 3mm craft foam and cut a pair of strips from it an inch wide and several inches long. Wrap them around the base of each blade exactly once and (once you’ve determined how long the strips should be and have cut them to size) hotglue them in place. That done, take 1” strips of styrene and hotglue them over the strips of 3mm craft foam, making it so that the styrene plastic overlaps itself by about ½” (This will create a seam, so you should wrap the styrene in such a way so that the seam faces the inside of the blade where it will be less noticable.)



Hopefully now your blades will have enough support so they don't tilt or lean wildly. You’ll want now to cover the entire side edge of the tsuba with styrene. Take a ½” wide strip of the plastic and hotglue it carefully around the edge, making sure it fits the rounded edges and corners exactly. You may need to bend the styrene in places, and hotglue just a few inches of it at a time to do this successfully.)



After carving away all of the excess styrene and neatening the edges with my utility knife, I had this:



The next step was to brush on the first layer of gold testor's paint...



I then opened my package of black hem binding and used it to wrap the handle of the sword in a fake tsukamaki fashion. (Basically wrapping the binding around the handle so that I had two cords in my hand which I crossed on one side of the handle, then wrapped around and crossed on the other side of the handle, then wrapped them around and crossed again on the first side. I kept repeating this process until I had woven the seam-binding all the way up the handle. I hotglued both ends of the binding to the tip of the handle (where I had removed the plastic buttcap). I then put some glue on the inside of the buttcap and pressed in into place at the tip of the handle.




(Note: Those of you who want to learn how to wrap tsukamaki the proper way, will find a helpful tutorial here: http://pages.prodigy.net/tlbuck/tsuka/tsuka.htm )


This part done, I gave the tsuba and buttcap a good two or three coats of paint, making sure I covered every surface (interior of the sideloop holes included.) I then tied strips of white and black seam binding to the sideloops and fabric-glued the dangling strips to each other so both would each appear as one strip.




Here's another view:



I kept the plastic scabbards and hotglued them together to create a double-scabbard for the swords (Connecting them together with a bridge of styrene sheeting, which I painted glossy black. I made the gold raised decorations using hotglue.)



Questions? Comments? Leave a comment below or write to me at dietzt@cloudnet.com!