Master Sword

My dad and I worked on making Link's Master Sword this week.  I'm finally posting some pictures!

We first cut out a very rough cut of the sword to get a rough idea of how big we wanted it.

I got this picture from a cosplayer who posted an amazing tutorial on Instructables.com, I highly recommend looking at it.  However, all the measurements were in centimeters so I converted them into inches.  This sketch was made for a normal sized male, while I am a much shorter female.  Therefore, when making the sword I scaled it down to fit my 5' frame.  Therefore, most of the measurements stayed the same but the blade is at least 5 inches shorter. Also, the sword is made out of plywood.

Here is a rough beginning drawing for the handle.  Due to lack of certain tools, it lacks the large circle that sits above the horns and the pommel is slightly different.  However the pommel could easily be cut differently. 

 Once we had the rough design sketched, we started cutting it out.

 To make the sword thick enough we made two pieces, both copies of each other, and then glue them together.

 We then traced out the wing design.  This was all free handed.  The piece of wood we traced it on is exactly a foot long.

Below, you can see the two pieces of the sword and the wing piece cut out. We left one of the sword cutouts complete to retain strength, but the second piece we cut in two to allow us to fit in the wing piece.

 Below are the measurements of the wing piece.

 Below is from the top left "horn" to to right "horn". About 8 inches.

 Below is the distance from one indent of the wing to the other.  5 1/4 inch

 Here is the wing fitted in with the rest of the sword.  Below are the two cut out pieces.

 To make the wing piece as thick as the rest of the sword, we made the same piece again but cut out the middle so it would fit snug against the uncut sword piece.

 Here you can see how it will fit together.  The second cut up wing piece will be glued onto the full one to give it the thickness needed, but to retain strength.

 Here we clamped the pieces together with wood glue.

 Here is the sword being sanded down.

 Here you can see it glued and put together.  Kinda like a puzzle :)

 We used every clamp we had!  All the small pieces are now put together and glued in place.

 This is after the glue has dried.  The handle and blade has been rounded out a lot with a sander.

And that's all for now!