BeetsCreations
New Member
I’ve been watching adventure time for a few years now and I’ve loved it since the beginning. So in light of my love of the show and its I decided to create the Finn Sword. I'm very happy with how it turned out so I decided to show my process along with seeing what you think.
Below is my detailed process of its creation.
I started off by choosing a more rigid material than foam. In this case wood (mostly pine).
Once I had my material in mind I went back to the reference material to help design my template. I did this by taking lots of screenshots of the sword from Adventure Time.
The hardest part about this was getting the right measurements from these references. Cartoons are generally hand drawn so the sizes of things can be inconsistent. I came up with this template by making a lot of educated guesses based on proportions of Finn compared to the sword, and doing some research about swords in real life.
The two wooden boards that I had selected were glued together with opposing grains facing each other to prevent warping. I clamped them down with tons of clamps to insure that the bond would be as strong as possible.
After a day, the glue was fully set, so I took the board and cut it to the length of the blade. It was then run through my table saw to create the angles of the blade, along with cutting the point on my bandsaw.
I marked the point of the sword at one end of my newly formed blade and sanded it down to shape.
I took the leftover pieces from the original boards I glued together, and glued them side to side to build the “cross-gaurd” of the blade
I then transferred the design from the template to the wooden block. It was then cut out to the basic shape.
Using a router, it was then rounded down on the side of of the cross-guard.
The cross-guard and the blade were then drilled so that they could be fitted together with a dowel. I also created a smaller test piece to check the fit, and also as a reference while sanding down the cross-guard.
Then, I cut the blade portion of the cross-guard to shape with a coping saw, and sanded it the rest of the way. Along with increasing the size of the bevel because I wasn’t quite happy with the shape.
Taking a 2×4 and cutting it in half, I rounded the edges and put it on my lathe. This would become the grip and the pommel of the sword. I made a template of the hilt based off of my original template, and divided it up into sections. I transferred these sections onto the hilt I was turning. Using calipers I constantly checked to make sure the size of the hilt matched up with the template.
Both the hilt and cross-guard were drilled so they could be connected by dowels. All the components were taken and glued together to create one solid piece.
From there, wood filler was applied to some of the seams and then sanded down. It still wasn’t perfect, so some Bondo was added and sanded again. Bondo works a bit nicer with my workflow because it sands down smoother, and also dries much faster.
I had to find something for the gem, so I decided to go with a croquet ball. It worked out pretty well, but if I were to make this sword again, I might have tried to find something made out of a softer wood because sanding it was very tough due to its hardness. Because the ball was obviously round, cutting it while still getting two even halves would be difficult so I build a jig to help me out.
Using wood glue, the ball was glued to the cross guard of the sword.
I used another layer of Bondo to fix all the surfaces, and blended some of the edges on the ball. That helped everything look like one piece. I started the priming and sanding process (with 320 and 400 grit) to smooth everything out after adding an I-hook to the pommel.
After going on a trip to Reynolds Advanced Materials, I had acquired some “free form air” which is a two part epoxy/putty that Smooth-On makes. Realizing the gem wasn’t looking quite right, I sculpted around it with the free form air, and made the gem look inset, which really made the sword come together.
I continued the priming and sanding process until all the defects were removed. The sword was painted glossy back, and sanded with 1000 and 1500 grit sandpaper. After this process was repeated many times, the sword was buffed, and prepped for casting.
I started by building a mold box out of laminated fiber board. The lamination is nice because nothing sticks to it. This took a while to figure out how to build due to all the angles but in the end saved material so proved to be worth it.
I put some insulation foam in the bottom to save on the amount of clay I needed, and then began by surrounding the bottom half of the blade in clay. I used medium harness sulphur free clay, although I would probably recommend soft clay instead because the medium stuff was still too hard. I ended up having to microwave it for a few seconds making it more malleable. Once the clay was nice and smooth, I put registration marks in by using a wire sculpting tool to create the wavy lines and the back of a paint brush for the dots.
I was then ready to pour. I used Mold Max 40 from Smooth-on.
Because the gem was the highest point on the sword, I built inserts to save on material. Keeping this in mind I poured the silicone up to the gem. After curing I rested the inserts on top and then poured the rest. This was time consuming but saved me a ton of material.
After curing I flipped it and did the same to the other side. I also added a pour spout out of clay so I could fill it with resin later. After the whole thing was cured I demolded it and I am pretty proud of how it turned out.
I applied mold release on both sides of the mold, then ratchet strapped the mold in between two boards and poured the resin. I used smooth cast 321 also from smooth-on.
There were a few imperfections that I had to fix, but nothing bondo and sanding couldn’t fix. I then primed and added a base coat of silver, then gloss white, followed by a pearl white. I also masked off the gem portion and painted it silver as a base and then metalic blue on top. Finally I wrapped the handle with paracord.
I’m really happy with how this project turned out comparing it to my last attempt shows how much I’ve grown as a prop maker. Check out a few more pictures on my portfolio, here.
Thank you everyone for your support and thanks for reading!
Below is my detailed process of its creation.
I started off by choosing a more rigid material than foam. In this case wood (mostly pine).
Once I had my material in mind I went back to the reference material to help design my template. I did this by taking lots of screenshots of the sword from Adventure Time.
The hardest part about this was getting the right measurements from these references. Cartoons are generally hand drawn so the sizes of things can be inconsistent. I came up with this template by making a lot of educated guesses based on proportions of Finn compared to the sword, and doing some research about swords in real life.
The two wooden boards that I had selected were glued together with opposing grains facing each other to prevent warping. I clamped them down with tons of clamps to insure that the bond would be as strong as possible.
After a day, the glue was fully set, so I took the board and cut it to the length of the blade. It was then run through my table saw to create the angles of the blade, along with cutting the point on my bandsaw.
I marked the point of the sword at one end of my newly formed blade and sanded it down to shape.
I took the leftover pieces from the original boards I glued together, and glued them side to side to build the “cross-gaurd” of the blade
I then transferred the design from the template to the wooden block. It was then cut out to the basic shape.
Using a router, it was then rounded down on the side of of the cross-guard.
The cross-guard and the blade were then drilled so that they could be fitted together with a dowel. I also created a smaller test piece to check the fit, and also as a reference while sanding down the cross-guard.
Then, I cut the blade portion of the cross-guard to shape with a coping saw, and sanded it the rest of the way. Along with increasing the size of the bevel because I wasn’t quite happy with the shape.
Taking a 2×4 and cutting it in half, I rounded the edges and put it on my lathe. This would become the grip and the pommel of the sword. I made a template of the hilt based off of my original template, and divided it up into sections. I transferred these sections onto the hilt I was turning. Using calipers I constantly checked to make sure the size of the hilt matched up with the template.
Both the hilt and cross-guard were drilled so they could be connected by dowels. All the components were taken and glued together to create one solid piece.
From there, wood filler was applied to some of the seams and then sanded down. It still wasn’t perfect, so some Bondo was added and sanded again. Bondo works a bit nicer with my workflow because it sands down smoother, and also dries much faster.
I had to find something for the gem, so I decided to go with a croquet ball. It worked out pretty well, but if I were to make this sword again, I might have tried to find something made out of a softer wood because sanding it was very tough due to its hardness. Because the ball was obviously round, cutting it while still getting two even halves would be difficult so I build a jig to help me out.
Using wood glue, the ball was glued to the cross guard of the sword.
I used another layer of Bondo to fix all the surfaces, and blended some of the edges on the ball. That helped everything look like one piece. I started the priming and sanding process (with 320 and 400 grit) to smooth everything out after adding an I-hook to the pommel.
After going on a trip to Reynolds Advanced Materials, I had acquired some “free form air” which is a two part epoxy/putty that Smooth-On makes. Realizing the gem wasn’t looking quite right, I sculpted around it with the free form air, and made the gem look inset, which really made the sword come together.
I continued the priming and sanding process until all the defects were removed. The sword was painted glossy back, and sanded with 1000 and 1500 grit sandpaper. After this process was repeated many times, the sword was buffed, and prepped for casting.
I started by building a mold box out of laminated fiber board. The lamination is nice because nothing sticks to it. This took a while to figure out how to build due to all the angles but in the end saved material so proved to be worth it.
I put some insulation foam in the bottom to save on the amount of clay I needed, and then began by surrounding the bottom half of the blade in clay. I used medium harness sulphur free clay, although I would probably recommend soft clay instead because the medium stuff was still too hard. I ended up having to microwave it for a few seconds making it more malleable. Once the clay was nice and smooth, I put registration marks in by using a wire sculpting tool to create the wavy lines and the back of a paint brush for the dots.
I was then ready to pour. I used Mold Max 40 from Smooth-on.
Because the gem was the highest point on the sword, I built inserts to save on material. Keeping this in mind I poured the silicone up to the gem. After curing I rested the inserts on top and then poured the rest. This was time consuming but saved me a ton of material.
After curing I flipped it and did the same to the other side. I also added a pour spout out of clay so I could fill it with resin later. After the whole thing was cured I demolded it and I am pretty proud of how it turned out.
I applied mold release on both sides of the mold, then ratchet strapped the mold in between two boards and poured the resin. I used smooth cast 321 also from smooth-on.
There were a few imperfections that I had to fix, but nothing bondo and sanding couldn’t fix. I then primed and added a base coat of silver, then gloss white, followed by a pearl white. I also masked off the gem portion and painted it silver as a base and then metalic blue on top. Finally I wrapped the handle with paracord.
I’m really happy with how this project turned out comparing it to my last attempt shows how much I’ve grown as a prop maker. Check out a few more pictures on my portfolio, here.
Thank you everyone for your support and thanks for reading!
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