Finished blade details (Posted 22nd May 2012)

Some of it is blotchy and the end is a bit un-neat, I'll fix this by painting by hand.

Handle detail (Posted 22nd May 2012)

Aluminium foil (the thick kind) folded over, curved round, and sprayed with a mist of black spray paint.

Spraying the final coat of silver (Posted 22nd May 2012)

I stuck some Frog Tape over the black line and sprayed the rest of it silver.

Painting the detail (Posted 22nd May 2012)

As a quick way of getting the black swirly blood groove thing that's happening down the centre of the sword I decided to paint it. I masked off the edges, lightly sprayed it black, masked off the middle and sprayed the rest with a little more black. I used delicate surface Frog Tape for a clean line. Awesome stuff. Truly.

Lengthening the tang (Posted 22nd May 2012)

I had to lengthen the tang because the piece of MDF I used wasn't quite long enough. I glued and taped on strips of steel and slotted in another chunk of MDF at the end.
(The shine of the silver isn't so great here because I had to sort out some cracks that I had just spotted.)

The blade sprayed silver (Posted 22nd May 2012)

After the base coat of black spray paint I sprayed on several layers of metallic silver spray paint.

Testing if the hand guard fits (Posted 22nd May 2012)

I sprayed the whole thing black as a base coat. I did several layers of filler and A LOT of sanding to make it as smooth as possible. I also sanded and fillered when the base coat was on, just to get rid of the cracks I had missed.

Hand guard (Posted 22nd May 2012)

MDF, two pieces stuck together and sanded into the smooth shape, then fillered.

Sanded down edges (Posted 22nd May 2012)

I sanded the edges down with a hand held electric sander.

MDF shape (Posted 22nd May 2012)

I cut the sword's basic shape out of 12mm MDF.