Strange request... sheet of crystal?

3Tripnip

Sr Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
I need the help of the great RPF. :D

I am wanting to do a prop from a video game I've been playing. It's a sword, with a blade made from crystal. So, I need a sheet of crystal, about 0.25" thick, and 24"x12" roughly in size. I'm thinking there should be a place where I can buy quartz or something, but haven't found anything so far. Any thoughts? All help is MUCH appreciated.
 
You could pour a sheet of clear resin out and cut it from there. There are some really good liquid acrylics you can pour out and let harden and then cut from there.
 
A sheet of "crystal" of that size will likely be very difficult to come by since crystals grow in well crystals and not sheets. ;)

What aspect of crystal exactly are you looking to replicate? The crystal texture? The crystal structure?

Depending on what exactly your looking to replicate a sheet of plexiglass or acrylic might also suffice.

If your willing let folks know what sord you are trying to replicate. That might also help stimulate some suggestions as to alternatives.

- TGM
 
A sheet of "crystal" of that size will likely be very difficult to come by since crystals grow in well crystals and not sheets. ;)

What aspect of crystal exactly are you looking to replicate? The crystal texture? The crystal structure?

Depending on what exactly your looking to replicate a sheet of plexiglass or acrylic might also suffice.

If your willing let folks know what sord you are trying to replicate. That might also help stimulate some suggestions as to alternatives.

- TGM

I understand they don't grow in sheets, but I've seen some HUGE quartz quarreys though. As for the sword, it's the Crystalline Sword from Guild Wars:

http://images.wikia.com/gw/images/a/a4/Crystalline_Sword.jpg

The handle and everything are taken care of, I can get that machined from brass or something (my machinist buddy owes me some favors ;) ). The blade is what I'm trying to figure out. Thanks for the help!
 
Hmmm... that is a bit tough to discern.

The sword model has a relatively low polycount and the blade it self is pretty well flat. It is tough to tell how exactly the blade should be textured since the low poly model has the crystal image which appears to have some texture mapped onto the flat blade model. Is there a drawn reference by any chance?

Regardless you could probably get away with a flat acrylic blade like what the game essentially does and just paint/airbrush the crystal texture onto it. Obviously you woudn't paint it completely so that the clear blade was opaque.

Otherwise if you were feeling ambitious you sculpt the blade portion and then do as Tripoli suggested cast it in a clear resin.

I've even seen something inbetween that where someone sculpted pieces and combined that with a clear acrylic blade(cut from a sheet) and tied them together with a clever paint job.

Just some thoughts.

- TGM
 
I learned the hard way. You want to go with acrylic.

You can make a knife pretty easy with crystal, but something that big would snap under it's own weight. While it is pretty strong stuff, it is basically glass in different forms.

Something that big/thin would snap off the handle pretty quick. Acrylic/plexi would work fairly well though. It's a LOT more "bouncy" than glass.
 
If you made a mold and poured it, you could pour half then imbed the "texture" into the middle before you poured the other half.

Paint or maybe sand/score areas to give you the crystal texture.

Maybe even get some thin Mica pieces imbedded to give you the crys
tal look.

Not something I've ever tried, but it sounds like it could work.:confused

Hope to see the final product no matter how you do it. That would be a nice piece.
 
What Hydin said.
Acrylic sheet is the way to go, you don't even need to paint it, you could simply "wetsand" it randomly to match the look of a crystal... also a glossy clearcoat, even a crystal clear resin, with lot of bubbles, could give it an interesting look!
:)
 
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