hey everybody adam savage here in my cave with a show-and-tell and today's show-and-tell
has to do with well we're going to narnia okay we're not going to narnia we are going to
uh what a workshop's version of narnia um because a few a few months ago i think it's a few months
ago i picked up a lovely new piece for my collection and you know i love swords i have
probably over a hundred i've got them on display in my office at home i've got them on display here
and i love all sorts of swords i love real swords i love fake swords i love stunt swords and i
might love stunt swords most of all uh and our friends at weta workshop richard taylor's amazing
uh wonderland of of the possible uh have made thousands of swords for movies
over the years they made weapons for mulan for uh warcraft for everything and they made all
the weapons for narnia and yeah a few months ago i was able to pick up one of their swords
built for the narnia films and i want to walk you through this piece because it's
a lovely and amazing piece and it's it's um its hidden qualities are worth crawling over because
this is the kind of effort that a great shop puts into a narrative uh so this is uh this is a sword
built for the narnia one of the narnia films i'm not sure which one um and as you can see it's got
the very narnia iconography from the design of the film this beautiful handle with the wire wrapped
and a decorative scabbard you can also see that it's quite beat up you can see that it's like
this thing has a lot of production use and to my mind that only increases its beauty the shape
down here all this entire scabbard is actually a monolithically cast piece and i'm not even
sure what it's cast out of but let's just take a look at the scabbard first and foremost um this
scabbard is i believe cast in polyurea it feels that durable it's super flexible you can't break
it it's absolutely indestructible it wouldn't have sucked if i banged it on the workbench and just
separated into two pieces that could have happened but it didn't um they've got some beautiful
metallic silver treatment on the decorations here and yeah if you look really look i mean
i i'd like to joke that when movies went from normal resolution to 4k weta is one of the only
shops that didn't freak out because they were already building things to this level of detail
and it's portal here i don't i think they must have cast this with a plug inside of it that they
pull out but i'm not sure how that works i mean i guess i could call them and they would tell me
but i haven't gotten around to it uh everything about this is great there's a leather texture
cast into it and while this looks like i mean from one foot away i could believe that this was
metal and leather and yet it's cast as one piece so this is the way a shop like what is able to
do thousands of weapons for a film because they can reach these efficiencies and a shop like weta
in fact every major effect shop has all of these different ways in which they
achieve economies of scale to build many things for a film like this because you know it might
cost a thousand bucks to make one hero sword but there's no way if you have 200 swords that
the producer is going to give you 200 000 bucks to make that now you got to make them cheaper
um this is a great way in which the economy of scale also just makes the whole thing look
even more convincing uh that it's all the way it weathers really it's just stunning okay so
we've got the the leather pieces that hold this on the belt of the wearer there's the scabbard
and again there's no metal on this scabbard at all it's just one piece of plastic and now
here is the sword and this is uh this is very much a stunt sword from stunt
battle scenes in the film that means a stunt person held onto this thing and whacked into
whacked into other stunt people's swords with it and you know how i know because look at the
leading edge of this blade look at this yeah oh that shine in the back is neat um this thing has
seen some action um but it was built to see action so check out how thick it is on its
leading on its leading edge it is really almost probably four millimeters yeah yeah easily three
or four millimeters thick which means that it's not gonna it's not going to uh shatter or dent
so much you can't use it anymore this is meant for big i keep hitting the thing above me okay
in a big battle scene where people are swinging at each other you need the swords to be light you
don't want them to be dangerous well that's why you had them stunned people so they don't kill
each other with them but it's also got to be able to take the abuse and this blade has been designed
uh through and through with the goal to take the abuse of filming uh it has this beautiful etched
detail uh if i'm right that was etched with ferric chloride which is peter lyon's favorite
acid for aluminum i'm going to guess this is not standard 6061 aluminum because it's got a really
nice spring to it i think it's a it's a different alloy and now here let's take a look at the handle
and the grip and this is this is gorgeous work the chain you can see there's no bubbles in this it
really looks like a chain and it's not this whole thing is cast as one piece in fact it's a stunt
sword so all of this is meant to be able to bend out of your way my guess is that the sword has a
rat tail that comes out to about here and maybe a fatter part here so they can cast it i'm not sure
you might not need that you might just drill some holes in here and then when you put this in the
mold and do a casting here it all just becomes one piece and again this isn't a whole bunch of
sword smithing this is one mold done once and you have the whole thing like that's really cool to me
i i don't often come across uh stunt pieces like this like background stunt stuff but when i do
i love adding it to my collection because i i like seeing the use i like imagining
a bunch of grown-ups in costume beating each other with these things because
they're having a great time come on how could you not put on like a miniature costume and
grab a sword and just start smacking away at each other that's got to be great i watched
the behind the scenes lord of the rings material i know that viggo loved beating the crap out of
all the morty stunt men and they loved beating the crap out of him that's fabulous to me that
is that's that like that sounds like the best kind of fantasy camp it's something i'd really
like to try one day um anyway thanks for walking through my beautiful workshop made narnia sword
with me it is a proud piece in my collection and i'm delighted to share it with you thank you guys
i'll see you next time thanks for watching that video if you'd like to support us further you can
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