...THIS you can trust.
On the heels of my earlier Conan project, I got an urge to make another attempt.
Conan the Barbarian was the first movie I had ever seen where the weapons in the film caught my UNDIVIDED attention. I would buy any magazine I could find that had photos of the swords from that movie. Imagine my elation when Albion Armourers joined forces with Jody Samson to start producing exact replicas of the original swords. Take the "Father's sword" for example:
Now imagine my dismay at the price tag of these edged works of art (from $2,500 to $10,000). Not too say that they aren't worth every penny, but that I cannot justify shelling out that much scratch for something that would amount to a mantle piece. My budget simply will not permit it. Apparently I am "prop small potatoes".
In addition, I found all of the cheaper "Conan swords" that are available EVERYWHERE to be unworthy of purchase. They looked nothing like the originals, & appeared to be shoddily constructed.
Then one day on e-bay I found a sword that was close to looking correct, but still not enough to be interesting to me, despite the very affordable price ($45 + $14 s&h). As I looked at it, suddenly an idea occurred to me, an idea that appealed to my curious nature of owning oddball props that many people (even prop collectors) don't have. So I ordered this fairly reasonable facsimile, & set about taking screencaps of the Father's sword after Conan & Rexor's duel at the Battle of the Mounds:
When my "Father's sword" arrived, it was pretty much what I expected. Incorrect wrap-pattern on the grip (with incorrectly-colored "leather"), Shiny brass-colored pommel & guard, & the inscription was unexpectedly too far away from the elk's head (painted on with a gloss black):
The first thing I had to do was to MOVE the inscription towards the handle. I put masking tape over the inscription, & traced the lettering with a fine-tipped marker. I pulled the tape off & affixed it to a sheet of wax paper. Then with an exacto knife, I cut the letters out by hand. By the way, this turned out to be the biggest pain that I was to experience on this project, since the masking tape did NOT want to come off of the wax paper later on. I had to tear the wax paper off the tape, then pick the pieces of wax paper (between the letters) off of the tape, which took about 2 hours. When I finally got the tape put on the blade in the correct position, I masked everything off & first shot it with self-etching primer, followed by a dark gray primer. Then I had to clean up the edges.
I replaced the grip wrapping with material of a better base color (which was later stained), & in the correct pattern. I sanded the pommel & guard & dry-brushed on some 'Anodized Bronze' paint (to simulate the weathering present in the screencaps), & cut the blade with my Dremel, making the "break" resemble the on-screen version. Then I lightly misted the blade with a 'Cast-coat iron' engine enamel (I just liked the color).
That's about it, so without further ado, here's what I came up with:
I'm pretty pleased with how my 'Thulsa Doom killer' turned out. I'm currently working on the display-stand (will post pix when finished).
Thanks for looking.
On the heels of my earlier Conan project, I got an urge to make another attempt.
Conan the Barbarian was the first movie I had ever seen where the weapons in the film caught my UNDIVIDED attention. I would buy any magazine I could find that had photos of the swords from that movie. Imagine my elation when Albion Armourers joined forces with Jody Samson to start producing exact replicas of the original swords. Take the "Father's sword" for example:
Now imagine my dismay at the price tag of these edged works of art (from $2,500 to $10,000). Not too say that they aren't worth every penny, but that I cannot justify shelling out that much scratch for something that would amount to a mantle piece. My budget simply will not permit it. Apparently I am "prop small potatoes".
In addition, I found all of the cheaper "Conan swords" that are available EVERYWHERE to be unworthy of purchase. They looked nothing like the originals, & appeared to be shoddily constructed.
Then one day on e-bay I found a sword that was close to looking correct, but still not enough to be interesting to me, despite the very affordable price ($45 + $14 s&h). As I looked at it, suddenly an idea occurred to me, an idea that appealed to my curious nature of owning oddball props that many people (even prop collectors) don't have. So I ordered this fairly reasonable facsimile, & set about taking screencaps of the Father's sword after Conan & Rexor's duel at the Battle of the Mounds:
When my "Father's sword" arrived, it was pretty much what I expected. Incorrect wrap-pattern on the grip (with incorrectly-colored "leather"), Shiny brass-colored pommel & guard, & the inscription was unexpectedly too far away from the elk's head (painted on with a gloss black):
The first thing I had to do was to MOVE the inscription towards the handle. I put masking tape over the inscription, & traced the lettering with a fine-tipped marker. I pulled the tape off & affixed it to a sheet of wax paper. Then with an exacto knife, I cut the letters out by hand. By the way, this turned out to be the biggest pain that I was to experience on this project, since the masking tape did NOT want to come off of the wax paper later on. I had to tear the wax paper off the tape, then pick the pieces of wax paper (between the letters) off of the tape, which took about 2 hours. When I finally got the tape put on the blade in the correct position, I masked everything off & first shot it with self-etching primer, followed by a dark gray primer. Then I had to clean up the edges.
I replaced the grip wrapping with material of a better base color (which was later stained), & in the correct pattern. I sanded the pommel & guard & dry-brushed on some 'Anodized Bronze' paint (to simulate the weathering present in the screencaps), & cut the blade with my Dremel, making the "break" resemble the on-screen version. Then I lightly misted the blade with a 'Cast-coat iron' engine enamel (I just liked the color).
That's about it, so without further ado, here's what I came up with:
I'm pretty pleased with how my 'Thulsa Doom killer' turned out. I'm currently working on the display-stand (will post pix when finished).
Thanks for looking.
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