UPDATED: WIP to Completed prop.
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A friend of mine is doing a Thor crossplay, and she asked me if I could build her the signature weapon. Since I can't really say no to a friend, I obliged...
I marinated on the construction for a while but finally settled on building it out of material I have plenty of at the moment, EVA floor mats and foamies. I weighed the options of an all wood build, but honestly, getting that many angles and surfaces uniform with a sander wasn't something I wanted to tackle on this build. There are already so many other great examples of Mjolnir out there, that I really didn't need to reinvent the wheel. I found a drawing on a Wiki page giving the approximate dimensions from the first film and set out to build it to that scale.
First step, cutting out all the pieces and getting them all to the same size.
Went to work with a hot knife with a soldering tip and burned in some details. I cleaned up the deeper grooved areas with a small sanding drum on my Dremel
Next up were the end caps that started life like this...
Then through the magic of a sanding block, some 220 grit paper and a little elbow grease, became this...
A hole was cut for a piece of 1" PVC pipe and an end cap glued on. I taped the other side on to keep it all square while the glue set up.
Then I filled the cavity with some expanding foam so it wouldn't want to collapse onto itself if it got played a little too rough with.
(And thanks to some comments on this build over in the Facebook RPF group, I now want to build another one to use as a Popcorn bowl)
After the foam set up overnight, I shaved down the excess and glued the other cap on. I also started carving out some weathering marks on the handle, as well as digging in small grooves around it every 1" or so to slightly recess the foam strips I would use as the handle's ribbing.
Then it was time to turn my attention to the "carving" around the hammer. some 3mm craft foamies, a little puffy paint and...voila.
Next up were the runes on the top disk. I scaled and printed out the runes to the right approximate size, taped the printed paper onto the disk, then "traced" all the runes with a really sharp X-Acto blade. After some heat was applied, this happens.
(mental note, do this BEFORE you attach it to an area that's already been glued down, otherwise you'll end up melting all the hard work you did getting seams to look good)
Then it was onto the pommel. I realized I'd worked myself into a corner with this but it was too far done at this point to really do anything about it. In hindsight I should have cut the coupler off and added a PVC cap to build onto, but I had an idea in my head when I first thought to use it that turned out to be much more difficult a task than I anticipated with the materials I had on hand. SO...I made something up. Using some Apoxie Sculpt and a little imagination, I came up with this.
Not the crowning jewel in my portfolio, but it gets the job done and my friend loves it, so I guess I can be OK with it....Until i build the next one.
And that's where I ended up with it so far. I need to seal it with a couple coats of Plasti-Dip, fill in some seam areas around the face with caulking and then give it a good coat of filler primer to get it smooth.
Stay tuned.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A friend of mine is doing a Thor crossplay, and she asked me if I could build her the signature weapon. Since I can't really say no to a friend, I obliged...
I marinated on the construction for a while but finally settled on building it out of material I have plenty of at the moment, EVA floor mats and foamies. I weighed the options of an all wood build, but honestly, getting that many angles and surfaces uniform with a sander wasn't something I wanted to tackle on this build. There are already so many other great examples of Mjolnir out there, that I really didn't need to reinvent the wheel. I found a drawing on a Wiki page giving the approximate dimensions from the first film and set out to build it to that scale.
First step, cutting out all the pieces and getting them all to the same size.
Went to work with a hot knife with a soldering tip and burned in some details. I cleaned up the deeper grooved areas with a small sanding drum on my Dremel
Next up were the end caps that started life like this...
Then through the magic of a sanding block, some 220 grit paper and a little elbow grease, became this...
A hole was cut for a piece of 1" PVC pipe and an end cap glued on. I taped the other side on to keep it all square while the glue set up.
Then I filled the cavity with some expanding foam so it wouldn't want to collapse onto itself if it got played a little too rough with.
(And thanks to some comments on this build over in the Facebook RPF group, I now want to build another one to use as a Popcorn bowl)
After the foam set up overnight, I shaved down the excess and glued the other cap on. I also started carving out some weathering marks on the handle, as well as digging in small grooves around it every 1" or so to slightly recess the foam strips I would use as the handle's ribbing.
Then it was time to turn my attention to the "carving" around the hammer. some 3mm craft foamies, a little puffy paint and...voila.
Next up were the runes on the top disk. I scaled and printed out the runes to the right approximate size, taped the printed paper onto the disk, then "traced" all the runes with a really sharp X-Acto blade. After some heat was applied, this happens.
(mental note, do this BEFORE you attach it to an area that's already been glued down, otherwise you'll end up melting all the hard work you did getting seams to look good)
Then it was onto the pommel. I realized I'd worked myself into a corner with this but it was too far done at this point to really do anything about it. In hindsight I should have cut the coupler off and added a PVC cap to build onto, but I had an idea in my head when I first thought to use it that turned out to be much more difficult a task than I anticipated with the materials I had on hand. SO...I made something up. Using some Apoxie Sculpt and a little imagination, I came up with this.
Not the crowning jewel in my portfolio, but it gets the job done and my friend loves it, so I guess I can be OK with it....Until i build the next one.
And that's where I ended up with it so far. I need to seal it with a couple coats of Plasti-Dip, fill in some seam areas around the face with caulking and then give it a good coat of filler primer to get it smooth.
Stay tuned.
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