For the past many months, I have been slowly working on a cosplay of gender bent version of Blake Belladonna from RWBY. I truly have a hard time picking just one favorite character in the that. I think almost all of them are. Blake was one I felt like I could put my hand at bending and giving it a go. Since there is not really pre-made versions for guys, I've spent some time looking for pieces that might work, and have come pretty close. The largely last piece is that I wanted to make her weapon prop myself. You can find ones people make, but they are not exactly how I would like them to be and it feels really rewarding to make it yourself (most of the time :D).
So I kind of went on a journey of building her weapon, Gambol Shroud. It's been a lot of learning so far, but a lot of fun at the same time. I decided to make this almost entirely out of wood. I had to get pretty good with a saw. I have this kind of inverted jigsaw. It is a jigsaw blade in a table instead of being handheld. Nice for little crafts like this, though precision is a little difficult.
I played around with drilling holes to make the wood lighter. I probably could have gone to even more extreme and hollowed out a lot more, but has not been a bad decision so far.
I got to get to learn how to use a plane to put an edge to the side I needed. Carefully marking where you want your angle to be, but at where the meets to the point, and where you want it to start is important. I did okay because I did the first part (I marked where they meet), but not where the edge should start going in, so you can see it is a little off.
After that I had lots and lots of gluing and clamping.
And more gluing and clamping! There were some things I should have done before this step, like fine grain sanding of the interior, maybe some padding for the inside of the sheath so pieces don't scrape, and better testing of how the blade fits inside. All hindsight at this point.
Looks pretty good when it is all together. I did not measure as good as I should have. I traced the opposite side from the existing side, but I did it individually for each piece. I think I could have found a better way with a template to line it up better. So I had lots of sanding to get the pieces to fit together.
This one is actually pre-glue, but was the only one I took apparently of the entire piece like this :D Looking pretty sweet though.
So now I am at the painting stage. It was actually the stage I thought would be easy, but it has had lots of little problems. The paint I used is a fusion paint that is primer, paint, and coating all in one. I would not recommend this kind of paint. It is super finicky. Smudges and scratches far too easily until it has dried for a week. But before that it is a pain. Adding new coats do not blend so yo have to paint everything. Just a mess. But I'll talk more on that in the next post I have once I get the painting all finished.
I've been posting on my instagram about it as a go, but thought a post here would be nice. Hope someone thinks this is cool or something!
