ArcaneWorkshop
New Member
I was commissioned by a friend to make the book variant of the heron marked blade from the wheel of time and I took enough pictures of the whole creative process so I figured I’d share it here. (This is a very long thread)
I started off by taking and image from online and scaling it to an accurate proportion in a word document, then using that to make my own template
After that I cut out all of the individual pieces. (Pommel, handle, tsuba, cross guard, & blade)
The blade is 1/2 an inch thick, 30 inches long, and made of poplar wood as this is just meant to be a decoration piece. Every thing else is made of pine.
I originally wanted the handle to be a wooden dowel that tapered at the end and I had just the right piece for but I don’t have a drill press so naturally I messed up drilling the hole and just ended up cutting two pieces of pine (17cm long), carving a channel, and gluing them together. The tsuba is made from a piece of pvc pipe that I cut and flattened and it has a diameter of 9cm.
The cross guard (4 & 3/4 inches from end to end) was also put together by carving a channel.
This is what the rough model looks like:
I sanded out the handle with my belt sander and smoothed it out with various grits of sand paper and used my rotary tool and sand paper for the cross guard and pommel (1 & 1/2 inches).
This is what the full handle layout looks like:
I didn’t get any photos of giving the blade a false edge but it’s just beveling it with a rasp and file, then smoothing it out with sandpaper.
For the handle wrap I wanted to do blue leather/ fabric (I couldn’t tell which from the reference images) but I didn’t have any, so went with a piece of brown leather.
I also didn’t want to do a spiral wrap so I tried wrapping the handle in a single piece of leather by making a template of the handle from duct tape and using that to cut out the leather
But it ended up not working so I had to resort to a spiral wrap with some black leather. I glued it to the handle with wood glue.
The final step before painting and assembly was etching the heron mark in the blade. I took the image from the first template I made and traced it onto my blade using some etching paper. Then I used my rotary tool with a carving bit to etch the design.
After glueing everything together I painted the cross guard, pommel, and tsuba a glossy acrylic gold and the blade a flat chrome, then sealed the painted pieces with a clear protective coat.
And this is the final result!
I started off by taking and image from online and scaling it to an accurate proportion in a word document, then using that to make my own template
After that I cut out all of the individual pieces. (Pommel, handle, tsuba, cross guard, & blade)
The blade is 1/2 an inch thick, 30 inches long, and made of poplar wood as this is just meant to be a decoration piece. Every thing else is made of pine.
I originally wanted the handle to be a wooden dowel that tapered at the end and I had just the right piece for but I don’t have a drill press so naturally I messed up drilling the hole and just ended up cutting two pieces of pine (17cm long), carving a channel, and gluing them together. The tsuba is made from a piece of pvc pipe that I cut and flattened and it has a diameter of 9cm.
The cross guard (4 & 3/4 inches from end to end) was also put together by carving a channel.
This is what the rough model looks like:
I sanded out the handle with my belt sander and smoothed it out with various grits of sand paper and used my rotary tool and sand paper for the cross guard and pommel (1 & 1/2 inches).
This is what the full handle layout looks like:
I didn’t get any photos of giving the blade a false edge but it’s just beveling it with a rasp and file, then smoothing it out with sandpaper.
For the handle wrap I wanted to do blue leather/ fabric (I couldn’t tell which from the reference images) but I didn’t have any, so went with a piece of brown leather.
I also didn’t want to do a spiral wrap so I tried wrapping the handle in a single piece of leather by making a template of the handle from duct tape and using that to cut out the leather
But it ended up not working so I had to resort to a spiral wrap with some black leather. I glued it to the handle with wood glue.
The final step before painting and assembly was etching the heron mark in the blade. I took the image from the first template I made and traced it onto my blade using some etching paper. Then I used my rotary tool with a carving bit to etch the design.
After glueing everything together I painted the cross guard, pommel, and tsuba a glossy acrylic gold and the blade a flat chrome, then sealed the painted pieces with a clear protective coat.
And this is the final result!
