GOTG: Drax Knives (WIP)

[Daniel Nelms]

So since I've been working on so many GOTG builds of late I figured I would try my hand at knife making. Keep in mind I've never done that before and I really don't know the best way to go about it but figured hey, how hard could it be?!

The first thing I did was sketch a rough outline of the blade using a shot of the blades as my guide.
Next I built a quick'n'dirty 3d model and printed a negative mold on my printer.

I hot glued all the pieces to foam board, then hotglued the two halves together and poured in the resin and it is now curing.
NOTE: Pulling the blank destroyed the 3d printed mold even tho I did use a liberal amount of mold release.

My intention is to use this resin cast as a template for crafting the blades overall shape and contours by sanding and shaving. At present I don't have any intention to cast it in metal but I will probably cold cast a couple when I'm done. This should make for an interesting project and is totally new to me so if you are interested fallow along and please comment/share your ideas and experiences if you have ever done this as I can always use advise.

One side of the 3d printed mold:



After pulling the first (and only) cast from it. I want to let it fully cure before I go to work on it.

 

[Yrien]

Subscribed! Drax is a costume I'd love to do at some point, but I haven't even started thinking about how to tackle the knives so I will be watching this with interest!

 

[Kevin Gossett]

Very interesting approach to this! I'll be watching for sure.

 

[Daniel Nelms]

Well I managed to crack the resin blade when I pulled it, it was quite difficult to pull from a abs mold.
I glued it together and make a quick mold using some brush on silicon before I went home yesterday and let that setup overnight.



This morning I after the mold had set I mixed up some smooth cast 325 with equal parts of urefil micro beads to give the resin some elasticity and cast blank blade from that.
I let it cure for a few hours and then started to sand a little bit. Keep in mind it wont be fully cured until tomorrow but I just couldn't want.
The filler helped but boy what a mess!



Now I have the rough shape and a start on tapering the blade. The blade is pretty floppy at this point so I am going to let it sit over night before I attempt to do anything else to it.

 

[Daniel Nelms]

For reference this is what i have in mind for the pattern on the blade, my guess is that this should be on both sides.

 

[Daniel Nelms]

I've done some more sanding to get the shape I want and etched in the pattern with my dremel.

Marked the pattern with a sharpy:


Etched the pattern in to the blade:


More sanding this time with wet sand paper:

 

[Daniel Nelms]

I put put on a little rub n buff which brings out the little flaws that I need to fix. I think it's looking OK so far.

 

[Kevin Gossett]

Coming along!

 

[Daniel Nelms]

Well I am pretty much done with the blade now. I used some bondo glazing putty to fill in the tiny pin holes. After that cured I sanded it smooth and gave both sides of the blade a clear coat.

I've asked IronManiac to help with the handle. Once that's done I'll make a mold and bang out a few cold cast copies.