Ok, I know it's been a while since I posted anything on my buster sword replica. It's been 2 1/2 years now and, well....it's still not done!
Why, you may ask? The hand guard. The original plan called for a brass guard with an inlaid tin design. The inlay went beautiful on one of them...unfortunately it was a difficult design to standardize and none of the four pieces really looked the same. Plus, everything had to be either soldered or epoxied together (around 6 pieces per corner). All in all, it was shoddy looking when all put together and was prone to falling apart with temperature changes (epoxy) and impact. Therefore, I scrapped it.
The second design was more impressive in that it was raised rather than inlaid. I first tried cutting a channel in the brass and brazing tin in it, but even with flux it wouldn't lay the way I wanted it so I instead took a thick piece of brass and carved the design with a carbide Dremel bit (seen here. However, this again was hard to replicate consistently and required metalworking tools I didn't have access to to put it together correctly. Scrapped once again.
The third design never actually took form. I was going to cut the raised design out of a separate piece and pin it to a backing, but lacked the means to do so.
Which brings us to design number four. Rather than mess around with brass, a media with which I have little experience working and even less means to work it, I turned to something I know quite well: wood. The plan is coming together nicely and I'm planning on being about halfway done tonight. I won't give anything away quite yet but know that it's coming!