Little Re-Wrapping over the weekend.
Aug 25, 2014 2:58:05 GMT
Post by nddave on Aug 25, 2014 2:58:05 GMT
Hi Everybody.
So over the weekend I decided to re-wrap the handle of my Hanwei Mercenary. It was already customized by it's original owner our global mod William Swiger who gifted it to me a few years ago. I liked the sword and his original wrap, what I didn't like was the stock handle shape which was fat and round. I sanded it down by hand to where it's 3 3/4" at the guard and tapers down to around 2 3/4" at the pommel. If any of you own or have handled the Mercenary you should well know just how fat that handle is.
William's original wrap
So after all than manual sanding (I do not own any power tools :x ) I was ready to wrap. I first wrapped it around last winter with some cheap upholstry leather I got off the back of a old cheap swivel chair we had. Point of reference, don't use upholstry leather (especially cheap upholstry leather) to wrap handles. The backing doesn't want to stick and it rips and flakes pretty easy with handling. You can see the black dissapointment in a pic in my Hero's Warsword review if you're interested.
Anyway after I stripped that and sanded off all the excess I got the opportunity to head down to Tandy in Boise, ID to search through their scrap pile. Sadly not very much in the scrap pile that will service a 9" handle... Luckily my grandpa who lives down in the area had an old torn Italian leather jacket just lying around he offered. So after cutting out a nice piece out of the arm and purchasing some 3mm leather cord from a local crafts shop, I started step one as seen here.
Believe me when I tell you,it ain't easy wrapping a 9" handle with a 36" blade and 12" S-Guard in the way. Somehow though I managed, better than my first attempt and came up with a pretty nice re-wrap thanks to the step by step on SMG done by Brenno (which I used for my H/T Bastard handle too). Let me know what you all think.
Thanks, D
So over the weekend I decided to re-wrap the handle of my Hanwei Mercenary. It was already customized by it's original owner our global mod William Swiger who gifted it to me a few years ago. I liked the sword and his original wrap, what I didn't like was the stock handle shape which was fat and round. I sanded it down by hand to where it's 3 3/4" at the guard and tapers down to around 2 3/4" at the pommel. If any of you own or have handled the Mercenary you should well know just how fat that handle is.
William's original wrap
So after all than manual sanding (I do not own any power tools :x ) I was ready to wrap. I first wrapped it around last winter with some cheap upholstry leather I got off the back of a old cheap swivel chair we had. Point of reference, don't use upholstry leather (especially cheap upholstry leather) to wrap handles. The backing doesn't want to stick and it rips and flakes pretty easy with handling. You can see the black dissapointment in a pic in my Hero's Warsword review if you're interested.
Anyway after I stripped that and sanded off all the excess I got the opportunity to head down to Tandy in Boise, ID to search through their scrap pile. Sadly not very much in the scrap pile that will service a 9" handle... Luckily my grandpa who lives down in the area had an old torn Italian leather jacket just lying around he offered. So after cutting out a nice piece out of the arm and purchasing some 3mm leather cord from a local crafts shop, I started step one as seen here.
Believe me when I tell you,it ain't easy wrapping a 9" handle with a 36" blade and 12" S-Guard in the way. Somehow though I managed, better than my first attempt and came up with a pretty nice re-wrap thanks to the step by step on SMG done by Brenno (which I used for my H/T Bastard handle too). Let me know what you all think.
Thanks, D