How to make a Wooden Sword (or Gunblade)
There are plenty of ways to make swords, but this is how I've made swords, and I know it works.
- Find a number of good, clear reference pictures, ideally from different angles.
- Draw the shape of the sword, life-size, on a large piece of paper.
- Cut a piece of pine to the right length, then use a bandsaw to cut out the basic shape of the sword, omitting any fine or fiddly details
- If the handle must be of a separate piece of wood, attach the two pieces by making a joint (so one piece of wood fits inside the other) and using carpenter's glue to make the joint strong
- Carve the blade into the right shape using a pushknife
- Sand the blade smooth, starting with coarse sandpaper and moving to progressively finer grits
- Build up the details of the handle using Paperclay and a Dremel
- Sand everything smooth using extra-fine sandpaper
- Paint entire sword with a few layers of gesso, sanding with extra-fine sandpaper between each layer
- Paint sword with metallic enamel (paint-on or spray), then a few layers of clear enamel/shellac to protect it
Examples of one of my finished swords:
