Slayer's Scabbard Project
Jul 13, 2009 0:08:28 GMT
Post by SlayerofDarkness on Jul 13, 2009 0:08:28 GMT
I almost titled this thread, "Creating a fine custom scabbard to house the illustrious and deadly fabled Fableblade, the elven-wielded Sword of Garrigal", but I figured that might be a tad fancy. ;D 'Scabbard Project' works too, don't ya know!
This project is focused around the illustri- YOWCH! Fine, fine... The Sword of Garrigal, made by Brendan of FableBlades. You can see it on his site here: www.fableblades.com/Fantasy%20Leaf%20Sword.html
Well, my new favorite sword, the Sword of Garrigal, desperately needed a quality scabbard to sheathe it in. I couldn't just stick it in a cheap $20 fake leather piece of junk, and I certainly hadn't the money to have a custom one made to suit it, so I took the task of making one upon myself. After a few threads here, and a LOT of sifting around through old threads on multiple forums for any help, I found one tutorial that seemed both excellent AND, more importantly, actually easy enough that I could do it. Now, I'm a 14 year old guy with little to no experience making ANYTHING, let alone something useful, so that was a big deal for me.
It just so happened that this fine tutorial was written by none other than our very own yeoldegaffer, who's really NOT all that 'olde' and quite the fine guy to deal with. He's been extremely helpful and kind, certainly befitting the spirit of this board. 3 cheers for him! ;D
Here's a link to his tutorial, which I am following. I'm using the second one down: yeoldegaffers.com/project_scabbard.asp
Firstly, I had to get the wood and some tools, since I had NOTHING that I would need, and I wanted to do this right. It ended up being a fair amount, totaling up to nearly $125, but if you were just buying the materials with no tools, I doubt that the price would exceed $40, if that.
I got two 1/4" x 2.5" x 3' poplar boards for the 'walls' of the scabbard, as well as a 1/4" x 1.5" x 3' board that I intend to split in half down the middle for the small 'fillers' along the sides. (am I making sense? )
The first step, in my mind, was to cut out a 'V' shaped recess at the end of the two larger planks for the guard to fit into.
This turned out to be a bit more difficult than I imagined, as it was hard to get the shape of the 'V' in a form that I could trace it onto the wood. To make it a bit harder, the guard is not perfectly symmetrical so I had to get each side's shape individually.
All I really had to work with was these, along with a few files and, of course, a hammer.
As such, there was definitely a 'learning curve', and I did horribly on my first try.
I had tried to remove the wood with metal files, which didn't work very well (as you can see!), but after this try, a friend of mine that has some experience with wood suggested using chisels. Luckily, my dad has a few, and I was in business. ;D
No worries, though, as my poplar planks were about 6" longer than necessary. I really had 2 tries on each board, but luckily I didn't mess up that badly again. ;D
The end of the boards started as this:
After a bit of work with the chisels and a hammer, the results were acceptable. They don't fit perfectly, but they're close enough that I'm pleased.
After a little bit of required sanding with 60 grit sandpaper, the parts that will form the 'mouth' of the scabbard were acceptable as well.
I fiddled around a bit trying both pieces (since they aren't identical) on both sides of the Garrigal's guard (since those are slightly different from each other as well). It took awhile, but I finally figured out which one fit's which side the best. It's hard when both of the poplar planks look nearly identical! LOL
Here's what I ended up with... each pic is of a different side, obviously.
Side 1 with board 1:
Side 2 with board 2:
Also, this doesn't really tie into anything here, but here's a photo showing the length of the boards versus the length of the sword of Garrigal's blade.
A few other relevent images...
The two pieces fitted the sword well enough, though not perfectly.
Next, I need to split the smaller board to create the 'side pieces' shown here. (Picture is from yeoldegaffers.com, thanks for the great tutorial man!)
This is the single piece I had to work with.
You know the drill, 1 divided by 2 equals two 1/2s. Right? Right.
I started by drawing two lines down the length of the board, marking out where I'd have to cut to end up with two 1/2" wide strips, plus a bit of extra. After painstakingly making sure the lines were correct and perfectly straight (well, straight enough. ;D), I tried cutting it with a saw. Not a powered saw, just... a saw. That didn't work, so I tried a hacksaw. Again, I met with no success. After half an hour's work, this is what I had done:
Major failure, lol. I sought the council of my friend who has some small experience with wood, and he suggested using the chisels for this task as well. His advice was to just go slow. It'll take awhile, but it should work. A table saw would have made this step SO much easier, but well, I don't HAVE a tablesaw, lol. I also don't know anyone who does, so the chisels it is. This time around, I decided to forego making two seperate 'cuts', and just splitting it straight down the middle. I can sand off the extra later. Besides, this gives me a bit of a margin for error. Currently, I stopped working on that to type this, but I'll update with pictures soon.
Any and all advice is welcome. This is a work in progress, obviously, but I hope that it should be of some small help to someone.
To be continued... ;D
-Slayer
This project is focused around the illustri- YOWCH! Fine, fine... The Sword of Garrigal, made by Brendan of FableBlades. You can see it on his site here: www.fableblades.com/Fantasy%20Leaf%20Sword.html
Well, my new favorite sword, the Sword of Garrigal, desperately needed a quality scabbard to sheathe it in. I couldn't just stick it in a cheap $20 fake leather piece of junk, and I certainly hadn't the money to have a custom one made to suit it, so I took the task of making one upon myself. After a few threads here, and a LOT of sifting around through old threads on multiple forums for any help, I found one tutorial that seemed both excellent AND, more importantly, actually easy enough that I could do it. Now, I'm a 14 year old guy with little to no experience making ANYTHING, let alone something useful, so that was a big deal for me.
It just so happened that this fine tutorial was written by none other than our very own yeoldegaffer, who's really NOT all that 'olde' and quite the fine guy to deal with. He's been extremely helpful and kind, certainly befitting the spirit of this board. 3 cheers for him! ;D
Here's a link to his tutorial, which I am following. I'm using the second one down: yeoldegaffers.com/project_scabbard.asp
Firstly, I had to get the wood and some tools, since I had NOTHING that I would need, and I wanted to do this right. It ended up being a fair amount, totaling up to nearly $125, but if you were just buying the materials with no tools, I doubt that the price would exceed $40, if that.
I got two 1/4" x 2.5" x 3' poplar boards for the 'walls' of the scabbard, as well as a 1/4" x 1.5" x 3' board that I intend to split in half down the middle for the small 'fillers' along the sides. (am I making sense? )
The first step, in my mind, was to cut out a 'V' shaped recess at the end of the two larger planks for the guard to fit into.
This turned out to be a bit more difficult than I imagined, as it was hard to get the shape of the 'V' in a form that I could trace it onto the wood. To make it a bit harder, the guard is not perfectly symmetrical so I had to get each side's shape individually.
All I really had to work with was these, along with a few files and, of course, a hammer.
As such, there was definitely a 'learning curve', and I did horribly on my first try.
I had tried to remove the wood with metal files, which didn't work very well (as you can see!), but after this try, a friend of mine that has some experience with wood suggested using chisels. Luckily, my dad has a few, and I was in business. ;D
No worries, though, as my poplar planks were about 6" longer than necessary. I really had 2 tries on each board, but luckily I didn't mess up that badly again. ;D
The end of the boards started as this:
After a bit of work with the chisels and a hammer, the results were acceptable. They don't fit perfectly, but they're close enough that I'm pleased.
After a little bit of required sanding with 60 grit sandpaper, the parts that will form the 'mouth' of the scabbard were acceptable as well.
I fiddled around a bit trying both pieces (since they aren't identical) on both sides of the Garrigal's guard (since those are slightly different from each other as well). It took awhile, but I finally figured out which one fit's which side the best. It's hard when both of the poplar planks look nearly identical! LOL
Here's what I ended up with... each pic is of a different side, obviously.
Side 1 with board 1:
Side 2 with board 2:
Also, this doesn't really tie into anything here, but here's a photo showing the length of the boards versus the length of the sword of Garrigal's blade.
A few other relevent images...
The two pieces fitted the sword well enough, though not perfectly.
Next, I need to split the smaller board to create the 'side pieces' shown here. (Picture is from yeoldegaffers.com, thanks for the great tutorial man!)
This is the single piece I had to work with.
You know the drill, 1 divided by 2 equals two 1/2s. Right? Right.
I started by drawing two lines down the length of the board, marking out where I'd have to cut to end up with two 1/2" wide strips, plus a bit of extra. After painstakingly making sure the lines were correct and perfectly straight (well, straight enough. ;D), I tried cutting it with a saw. Not a powered saw, just... a saw. That didn't work, so I tried a hacksaw. Again, I met with no success. After half an hour's work, this is what I had done:
Major failure, lol. I sought the council of my friend who has some small experience with wood, and he suggested using the chisels for this task as well. His advice was to just go slow. It'll take awhile, but it should work. A table saw would have made this step SO much easier, but well, I don't HAVE a tablesaw, lol. I also don't know anyone who does, so the chisels it is. This time around, I decided to forego making two seperate 'cuts', and just splitting it straight down the middle. I can sand off the extra later. Besides, this gives me a bit of a margin for error. Currently, I stopped working on that to type this, but I'll update with pictures soon.
Any and all advice is welcome. This is a work in progress, obviously, but I hope that it should be of some small help to someone.
To be continued... ;D
-Slayer