Final Blog Post
If you could make anything from any movie, what would you make? For the past 5 years, I’ve been making prop replicas from my favorite movies, shows, and video games. For my project, I decided to make replicas of Inosuke’s swords from demon slayer. Usually, for most of my projects, I like to use either insolation foam or EVA foam but this time I decided to try something new and work with wood. Using wood was definitely a big learning experience and is I will not be using wood frequently in the future.
One of the challenges I had when working with the wood was getting the groves perfectly carved out. When using the jigsaw to cut out the big pieces of the wood, I wasn’t able to get as close as I had wanted to. That left me to cut it using the hand saw which still gave me problems because of how strong and unbending the wood is compared to the foam which I usually work with. Maybe if I had taken more time with the hand saw I could have gotten the perfect cut that I wanted. Or I probably could have used my Dremel to try and sand the groves.
Another challenge I faced was painting the wood. Typically when I paint my props I start with a liquid rubber coating and then paint using either hand-painted acrylic or airbrush. But when using wood I had to take a different approach because the liquid rubber would peel easily. So instead I painted straight onto the wood and I quickly ran out of spray paint because I realized that if I wanted an even paint job I would have to use lots of thin layers. I then switched to acrylic and had to rematch the paint and finish the final coats. If I ever use wood again I will definitely keep what I’ve learned with this project in mind.
Finally, my favorite part about making the swords was using my new bench belt sander. It was super satisfying to watch it carve both sides of the blade exactly how I wanted it to. The way a bench belt sander works is that it has a sandpaper conver belt that moves very fast to sand down any kind of surface. This is definitely one of my new favorite tools because ill also is able to use it on foams too. Getting to learn more about this tool will help me a ton in the future.
In the end, this project was a big learning experience and curve because of the new adventures I had in woodworking. But all in all, it was super fun and I’m pretty proud of how they turned out.