WIP Rivers of London WW2 British Army Wizard's Staff

[Douglascraig]

I've started work on a replica of Hugh Oswalds ww2 staffs from the Rivers of London book series. They're described in pretty clear detail several times so I feel like I can make a good job of replacaing them resonably accurately.

In Foxglove Summer the staff is descirbed as half a meter long, roughly the size and shape of a pickaxe handle. The top and bottom are capped in steel, it has a leather and canvas wrapped handle with a leather wrist strap. An army service number and sons of weyland logo are branded onto the wood. I don't have the book handy but i'm pretty sure that's all the main points. I looked at WW2 era pickaxes and trench equipment like this to get an idea of the astetic that I wanted to recreate.

I started with a wooden pickaxe handle which I chopped down to 50cm, and cut up some chunks of 1mm aluminium to bend round and make the end caps. Soldered them together and then screwed into the handle with wood screws. This is where im up to so far.

Next is adding a few more metal details, then paint the aluminium black. I'm going to varnish the wood with beeswax - because of Oswalds weird beehives, the book describes the vesitgia of buzzing bees and the smell of honey coming from the staffs, so I figured beeswax will be a nice little extra easter egg just for me.

More to follow once I get a bit further with it. I'd also love to add a steel rod through the middle at somepoint, as cannonically thats how the staff is made and how it gets it's power, but I have no idea how i'd go about drilling in a straight line through 50cm of wood with the tools that i've got acess to.

 

[neophyl]

Great project idea. Peter needs a new one anyway

 

[Douglascraig]

Update: I've pretty much finished this build now. I added an extral layer to the top metal cap, so it looks a little bit more brutal and club like, I think. Then I sprayed the metal parts black and weathere them with files, hammer and sandpaper so they look worn and beat up. I varnished the handle in beeswax for the colour and to give it the honey smelled vestigia. I branded in the service number with steel punches, but I decided that I would rather have the logo in metal than branded into the wood, as described in the book. I figuered that the Sons of Weyland were blacksmiths, if theyre going to mark their work, theyre far more likely to do it in metal than in wood. Thats my excuse anyway, I just think it looks cooler. I cut the logo out by hand in aluminum sheet and roughed it up with a ballburr before curving it and screwing it in place.

Last was the leather wrap, which I roughed up a bit with a penknife and some acrylic paints, but i'm not totally happy with the finish yet. I may go abck and add more dirt onto the leather to make it look a bit less new, and maybe some on the rest of the staff to tie it all togther a bit. Initially I experimented with doing a canvas wrap on the grip, but I decided to go with the leather in the end.