Raze Lighter - Destiny Sword

[ScoobiJohn]

Started this a while back,

its my favourite sword from destiny (original - no really cool swords in destiny 2) was very satisfying running up and uppercutting bosses (usually dying in the process but it felt very heroic) it was a grind to get it in the game and the real world is proving no different, my quest started with the magic crystal, my first attempt started trying to make one out of clay but never having done much sculpting i tried to do it in 2 halves but as it dried it warped bah long story short by the time i had the second half glued on it was crumbling and cracking and bending, it was an unmitigated disaster.....onto plan b i found the game model online and while much of the texture was missing from the 3d mesh i printed it out and then using an epoxy modelling putty added the missing details and then came my first mold - there is a thread on here somewhere to help me through teething process in the end i got this

this was my first attempt and i put in 2 much mica powder and its completely opaque so i did a second one that much more transparent but it was full of bubbles despite giving it an even more through vacuum degassing anyway resin being expensive i decided to make the best of and ground away the worst of the bubbles and then washed it thoroughly to get the dust out of the little holes and then i sprayed it with laquer which filled the worst of the holes and left it with a nice shiney surface - more on this later

with the crystal largely done (wishful thinking) i started on the blade now using the image up top i traced the outline in ps elements and enlarged it to life sized and printed it out stuck it down on a sheet of 3mm aluminium and cut it out with a jigsaw and i was left with this

now i realised that my low res image and the subsequent enlargement had left me with very thick lines and the sword is too fat! anyway some more time with the jigsaw, angle grinder, files and a little grindy burr type thing for my dremmel for which i made a little collet type thing on my mini lathe so it could run along a guide

and i had this

now starting to look not bad but close up on the grove....argh not great still trying to work out how to get that nice and smooth - might try electro etching but its a big bit of metal to try that for the first time on

anyway back to that crystal i thought was done..... well it was about this time i started to ask how do i attach it to the blade and realised it wasn't gonna work as things stood. i had an idea to fix it and have started to implement it but not taken any pics yet so that can wait until tomorrow

 

[ScoobiJohn]

Ok so the crystal had very little overlap with the blade making joining them tricky ideally i would have though out the shape of the blade more carefully before cutting but i didn't so i was faced either attempting to braze an additional bit of aluminium on on an edge which i figured wouldn't be very strong or i could adjust the crystal

so i took the dremmel and started removing the laquer from the crystal and then dumped it into a plastic cup and poured some more epoxy resin - this looked rather ridiculous but i forgot to photo it - anyway i reshaped it and at this point i decided that the laquer finish was a bit iffy so i went back and removed the rest of it and while dremeling it i took the opertunity to carve some more detail and once done i applied some xtc 3d hoping that should give a better finish

so the added bit doesn't look quite right but fortunately that bit will be hidden by the hilt once its done

anyway onto the next bit the electro etching - the sword blade is rather big so finding a tub largest enough that also didn't require tons of water and salt was almost impossible so i've started 3d printing a trough to do it in - that is going to take some time sadly at least 10 days of printing - not sure if it will sort that grove if not then will have to start another blade which means all that work i just finished on the crystal will be wasted - Might do another crystal at that point but think this one will be the final crystal either way

ok so that things pretty much up to date

 

[ScoobiJohn]

not done much today but did drill the holes and carefully lathed some pins to fit and did a test fitting of the crystal to the blade

 

[ScoobiJohn]

still printing the trough for electro etching the blade - think i'm going to start again on the blade as will make the etching easier and i think do a better job rather than starting from an uneven surface - but i thought it might be fun to add some led's to the crystal sooo........

 

[ScoobiJohn]

ok not sure anyone cares but i shall update my progress - spent an age getting setup to electro etch the blade well a new blade i was going to make - but unlike my small test, on the large sword blank the electro etching was taking forever and really not producing a significant etch at all - guessing my power supply didn't have enough oomph to get the job done - anyway i then tried some ferric chloride acid etching but while i got bubbles and made a mess i didn't have enough to submerge the blade so i was just putting it on the surface manually and it really wasn't that effective either - but after all that wasted time and effort i just ended up using a small sanding drum on my dremel and it worked fine - much more controllable than that ball burr thing i was using at first - went through an obscene number of them but it got the job done - its not perfect but i cant be bothered to do a second blade when this one is "good enough"

so anyway i got the blade grove done and polished the scratches off the blade to 240 grit - gives it a brushed metal look that i like and trying to polish it to a high shine seems to just end up getting other bits scratched (aluminium is ridiculously easy to scuff up) so i wrapped it up to protect it while i do the rest

i took some aluminium pipe to use as the handle and cut the tang of the sword to fit i then used a bit of scrap wood and put it on the lathe and turned it down to the internal diameter of the pipe - then very carefully chopped it in half on my table saw - being round i was expecting this to be impossible but using my pusher to hold it onto the fence then a dowel as the pusher i got it cut into halves - the table saw blade wasn't quite thick enough so hand to sand then down on the belt sander so they would fit into the pipe with the sword tang - then i drilled a whole through the pipe wood and tang and inserted an aluminium rod - poured in some thin ca glue then ground off the ends which almost welded into place

i attached the crystal to the blade this time just using some screws felt it would give a more solid connection than the rods i made for it then again soaked in ca just to be sure - its ugly but its not an area that will be seen once complete

so that leaves me with the hilt and pommel to do

 

[ScoobiJohn]

well finished item isn't hugely accurate but still looks pretty good - hilt proved challenging for numerous reasons so had to improvise a bit anyway

done