Tales of Vesperia- Second Star

Yuri Lowell's sword, Second Star.

I originally intended for this to be a remake of my Pantera sword [link] but decided to make it into Second Star instead. Just like my sword Shuusui [link] , this can come apart too.

The sword itself was made of poplar and a little bit of craft plywood for the details on the guard. I shaped the blade with a belt sander and then a palm sander. The habaki is 2 pieces of wood carved out on the insides, glued together and then shaped. The bo-hi on the blade was done with an engraving bit on my dremel and then sanded down with various grits of sandpaper wrapped around a dowel. For the tempered edge on the blade, I cut out the wavy patterns on a bunch of pieces of painters tape, masked off the rest of the sword and spraypainted it on. The sword is kept together by two dowels, you'll notice the holes for those stand out from the rest on the handle.

The endcap on the handle is 2 pieces of half inch poplar shaped accordingly. All the shallow holes I did with a drill press which made it a hell of alot easier than using a hand drill.

The sheath is made from 2 pieces of 3/4 inch thick hollowed out with a router, lined with fabric and then glued together. After that I brought down the thickness with a planer and a belt sander. Any parts that I took off too much wood, I used bondo to strengthen. After that I shaped it with a belt sander. The golden raised details were made out of styrene then shaped over the sheath with a heat gun. Any uneven parts of that I got with my drenel and it's sanding piece, then touched up with more bondo. The circles were glued onto the sheath after the painting was done but before it was wetsanded and clearcoated. The wrap is just some leftover bias tape with 2 styrofoam balls that I painted.

This is the first prop I painted in the winter which presented me with alot of problems. My grandpa has a workshop that I heated and painted this in but most of the time it was way too cold out to even heat the workshop to make it warm enough for spraypainting. For the sheath and the whiteness on the handle what I did was spraypaint into some glass jars and hand painted. For clearcoating I used only one coat Future acrylic floor polish. It works pretty good but is kinda runny so you have to be careful with it.

Feel like making one yourself? Get the guard template here: [link]