I've been a blacksmith armer for over thirty years. I've created weapons for
over two hundred feature films.
This is Man at Arms.
I purchased the toy from the toy shop just to match up.
I'm making a real weapon and it's proportional to a man's hand as opposed to a child's hand
that the toy sword was made to. So I scaled it up a bit.
Thundercats Sword of Omens was one of the most requested weapons from the fans.
I had Alicia cut out
the thunder cats emblem out of eighteen gauge mild steel. I'm going to dome that
afterwards to match the contour of the glass gemstone.
The grip consists of seven different elements that are stacked together like
a palm tree. I use duplo Lego type blocks to build a custom old frame and
then use room temperature rubber molding compound
I use the duplo blocks because i can build a mold frame of whatever shape I want,
and it goes together relatively quickly.
so we've made one mold than we cast the seven pieces screw those or attach those
to like a wax tree and then i'll be pouring investment which is like plaster
of Paris over the top. When I melt the wax out of their it'll leave a cavity
and I'll be able to poured molten bronze into that cavity
and it'll take on the shape of the original one that I made.
I've cut out the three sixteenths thick individual components for the hilt on
the Sword of Omens and now we're adding the bevels and cleaning up the exterior
of the bezel that holds the stone and the spike that comes off the front
The burnout oven as its name implies
burns out the wax leaving that cavity heat up molten bronze
Imagine a river of molten magma
pouring over the top of this mold, and that's what it is right now.
Investment casting as I call it is also known as lost wax casting
because when i give the wax model the investment
actually disappears finished when I'm finished with it. The mold actually breaks apart.
So it's only one-time use.
The groove down the center of the place is called a fuller, so I heated up the
blade in the forge, brought it over to fly press and squeezed in a fuller.
People used to call it a blood groove the myth is that if you stick it in the
body with a fuller or blood groove in it,
it releases the vacuum so you can clear sort out the body. It's not that at all.
The fuller lightens the blade and adds more rigidity for strength on the blade.
After I fullered the blade using the fly press, I took it to a turbine belt grinder
so I could grind the fullers. After that was done I went back
over to my regular belt grinder and browned the hollow grinds with
a ten inch contact wheel.
After i got the initial bevels on the belt grinder,
I put all the pieces together to see how it looked.
And i'm pretty happy with how it's coming together.
Now I'm cutting the Eye of Thundara from a block of red glass.
I use a water-cooled diamond core drill
I took it to progressively finer wheels and domed it and
polish it up on the felt pad on the other side of the lapidary equipment.
I took the Thundercats embled then domed that into the contour of the red glass stone.
After completing the gem stone and drilling the hole through it
we'd soldered a chicago screw onto the back of the
Thundercats emblem and there will be a screw
help that holds everything together.
The blade is now ground and ready for hardening and the heat treating oven.
I've been refining all the edges on the components for the hilt, and we start tig
welding them together. Make it a homogeneous piece before we weld
that part onto the sword.
This sword is a super elaborate build.
There's probably over fifty or sixty components on it: individual stones, little
fittings on the hilt, with different segments on the grip and pommel.
It's been a lot of work putting together, but i'm really pleased with the final outcome.
All the pieces are together and Thundercats Sword of Omens is complete.
Step aside Lion-O, let a real king take a swing.
Thanks for watching Man at Arms. Be sure to subscribe. next.
Tell me in the comments which weapon you'd like to see next.