Review: Highlander 2 Hilt Casting

[Hitogiri]

I received my hilt casting from Jason today. These were cast from a production used mold. There are some minor flaws/imperfections:

1. The mane is rough and jagged.

2. There is a seam along the back of the hilt thats rough, but could probably be smoothed out with an xacto knife.

3. While the front dragon coils are pristine, the back of them are flawed. The same line on the back goes through the scales up to the mane.

I'm not sure if these flaws are a result of the casting or the mold itself. The handle was roughed up a bit for the movie to make it look more aged. Some of the detail is clear and some of it is barely visible. I believe this was probably the chief reason in which Albion had them recarved by Jose de Braga. I will see how much of it comes out when I age it slightly.

Project wise right now I am considering 2 options.

1. To mount a blade on it but nothing too fancy, maybe a Chen or an aluminum student blade.

2. To steal an idea from a fellow forumite(sorry Prometheus lol) and just mount a broken blade in it kind of like in H3. More a table top prop.

It is good to have a copy of the real sword used in the movie. Even if it is the movie most fans wish to forget ever happened lol. But it didnt exactly live up to my expectations for the hilt. I don't see myself dropping a good blade in it. But for the price it was worth it.

Any other members get theirs yet? Lets hear your thoughts on them.

 

[nightrider]

Sorry to hear that, but I kinda thought it was going to have issues like that. I know in the pics I saw the detail looked to be very soft, and I'm sure the good side was up.:lol

 

[Hitogiri]

And that accessment is quite accurate lol.

 

[TheGreenMachine]

I'm pretty sure the hilt is intended to have a worn appearance. I.e. that at least some of the imperfections are intentional and are actually a part of the mold itself. The excess resin "artifacts" you see from a worn mold are obviously not original but some of the features have dents and dings which had to be a part of the mold.

I thought part of the reason Albion had Jose resculpt the H2 hilt even though they had a production used cast and mold was because the actual piece didn't quite up to the movie magic expectations and they wanted something a bit more idealized and refined.

It was pretty much what I thought it would be. I was thinking originally I would just stain it and have an H2 display piece to go with my H1 sword from Sal. So as not to try and depart from its origins. But there was too much clean-up to leave it as is. So I cleaned up the excess resin from the deteriorated mold on the head and puttied here and there to fill air bubbles and gaps left from bad seams. But I'm not going overboard to make it look pristine because I'm again trying not to depart as much as I can from its origins. Thats proving tricky since some of the detail is soft. When thats all through I'll paint it and age it.

I gotta say I'm actually a fan of the simplier H2 head design seeing it in person. Though the features may be simpler than H1 and H3 they are well defined and appealing.

- TGM

 

[Hitogiri]

i like the head design aswell. All of the designs they all have a few aspects that appeal to me. I like the mane and scales on the H2, but I like the detail of the H3.

 

[JasonofTigerclaw]

I received my hilt casting from Jason today. These were cast from a production used mold. There are some minor flaws/imperfections:

1. The mane is rough and jagged.

2. There is a seam along the back of the hilt thats rough, but could probably be smoothed out with an xacto knife.

3. While the front dragon coils are pristine, the back of them are flawed. The same line on the back goes through the scales up to the mane.

I'm not sure if these flaws are a result of the casting or the mold itself. The handle was roughed up a bit for the movie to make it look more aged. Some of the detail is clear and some of it is barely visible. I believe this was probably the chief reason in which Albion had them recarved by Jose de Braga. I will see how much of it comes out when I age it slightly.

Project wise right now I am considering 2 options.

1. To mount a blade on it but nothing too fancy, maybe a Chen or an aluminum student blade.

2. To steal an idea from a fellow forumite(sorry Prometheus lol) and just mount a broken blade in it kind of like in H3. More a table top prop.

It is good to have a copy of the real sword used in the movie. Even if it is the movie most fans wish to forget ever happened lol. But it didnt exactly live up to my expectations for the hilt. I don't see myself dropping a good blade in it. But for the price it was worth it.

Any other members get theirs yet? Lets hear your thoughts on them.

Hey Brian,

The flashing on the spine of the grip is caused by the fact that the (16 yr. old) mold has a split down the back. I'm not sure if some of the mold compounds we/I use these days were available back then, but the molds I make for these types of projects don't have seams.

This makes extraction of an original master a little difficult, but it gives a perfect mold without any of of the alignment concerns or flashing of any kind. This type of mold (as I make them) is how Albion's were produce and their supplier is where I had many ideas on how to develop my own methods.

As I mentioned these are pulled from the original studio mold, and the roughness that is found (flashing being discounted and ignored) would be found on any pieces pulled from this mold.

As for the "Better side" being shown in the photo, both sides are actually shown, just at opposing ends, so the close-up details are at opposite sides. I wasn't trying to hide anything, it's just the way I happened to line up the grips for the photo.

As for why Albion ended up having Jose recarve all three, it was mostly because of the outstanding job Jose did on carving the HL3. Howy didn't want to have the ultra-high level of detail on the HL3 look out of character with the worn and soft detailing found in the HL2. Howy felt that they just didn't match.

Howy's always had the motto of making what the movie viewer "thought" he saw, rather than what was actually on screen. To be honest, a lot of the original movie props that I've seen up-close from the 80's and early 90's were pretty crappy. I don't think it was until the industry realized that people were taking screen-captures with their dvd's that they started paying more attention.

We (Albion) had already gotten a number of the restored (by Leif) grips in stock. These can be scene in the photos on the Mas. Memoirs. After Howy saw Jose's work on the original carving that was going to be used as the HL3, he decided to have Jose recarve the HL2 and use the HL2 grip as a base for their HL1.

 

[Hitogiri]

I appreciate the response Jason. Thanks for the info on how these "flaws" came to be. And I agree, I don't think this is what we thought we saw in the movie.

Good points about the mold. Even though I imagined something "cleaner" I still like it, just not sure if I want to invest alot in mounting it. Might just put a stunt aluminum blade in it, if I can find one lol.