Glowing Daggers

[novacat17]

Hey all!

So a while back I hoped to build Valeera's daggers as seen in Hearthstone, though I am sure they are based on a WoW set of daggers, I am not sure what those names might be as I have never played WoW (lack of money, now a lack of time). Still, I love Blizzard's designs, such a fun build.

My main goal here was also to experiment with LED lighting of the blade, as the blades glow. However, after going through a few design concepts and talking to the folks at my local casting supply shop, I decided to use incandescent powders while I cast the blades. I already had to cast the blades under pressure, as they are semi-transparent, so why not add one more step to the mess and get something that requires no soldering! The entire pre-molded model was made with MDF and apoxy sculpt. Many of the curves were slowly carved or sanded down. The result was a "boxier" look for one dagger than I wanted, but I still think both turned out alright. Paint and leather wrapping helped hide the crimes throughout.




It only takes about 3 minutes of sun exposure to get the glow you see. The stuff glows bright too. For any interested it was "Glow Worm" powder.

 

[dhunpael]

awesome work

 

[cavx]

Nice! Looks like it might be a similar or even the same stuff I use in my MAG glow kits.
What percentage to volume did you mix at? I have mixed at high as 50% even though the spec sheet said no higher than 15%. At 50%, I had to add a drop of translucent blue to the mix to take the custard yellow colour the powder turned the clear polyurethane I use into. .

 

[novacat17]

Thanks dhunpael!

I mixed in a 1:2 ratio powder:resin. The stuff I was using has a green tint to it, as it glows green (there is a blue as well). This worked well, as the blades are transparent green. When I tried to up the mixture a bit, too much of the powder settled before the resin cured, which might be owing to the slower cure time of the transparent resin I was using. In one of the daggers, not pictured, there is a noticeable green tip, where a good deal of powder settled before it cured fully. I found I got the best results when I coated the mold with powder and then added .5:1 powder:resin in the actual resin mixture. This created the best "uniformed" glow while still making it quite bright and keeping quite a bit of transparency.

The only downside to the stuff is that it only comes in two colors, green and blue. This makes it far more limiting than other powders. If I had a faster kicking resin (which I now do) I could probably add more powder, but I honest don't see too much of a reason as the stuff glows bright with very little exposure.

What powder did you use cavx?