Happy Eat Like a Heavy Weapons Guy Day

It's so tiny! OM NOM NOM NOM NOM...

Nothing Says Thanksgiving Like Killing Tools

It's good to be back into the ranks of obscurity again. This week's completely random and forgettable weapon is the Lovekeeper axe from Drakengard 1 for the Playstation2. I liked the weapon for the flavor behind it:

"A young couple, blessed by fortune, were to be wed. But on the night before
the wedding, a small, shining spirit appeared before the young bride.
The ghost whispered in her ear, speaking straight to the weakness in her heart
: "Do you wish to make him all yours? Do you wish to ensure his heart is yours
for all eternity?"
When the girl recovered her senses, she found this gore-splattered axe in her
hand, and before her, the bloody head of her beloved. "Now he is yours
forever..."
Even now, the ghost of the young bride can be seen wandering the village,
garbed in a blood-splattered dress and clutching the sightless head of the
man she was to marry."

-Drakengard Weapon History for the Lovekeeper Axe

Pretty messed up stuff. Glad I have a blog post tag for decapitations. Now, onto the weapon!

I've scaled the axe to 1:6 scale, based on the handle width. It's quite unwieldy for a girl, based on the size of it.
Luckily, the blade fit the face of one Magic card. The axe blade was made by laminating two 2-card-thick outer layers with the decorative bits drawn and cut out onto a 4-card-thick stack. The spike was made from a simple cone, used from my cone maker. The axe-head block was made from many laminated layers of Magic cards, making it a solid piece. Unfortunately, I forgot to cover the blade edge with a layer of printer quality paper to hide the rough layers made visible by sanding.

However, the Lovekeeper isn't this week's highlight. The actual piece of interest is a more-popular weapon, the Bloodberry from No More Heroes. First, I present the schematic for the major portions of the Bloodberry.

The detailing for the Bloodberry is sparse, made sparser by scaling it to 1:6. It's personally not a very challenging item to make, since it's mostly revolved objects. If you're going to use this drawing, keep in mind it's scaled according to a game screenshot, and NOT the concept art floating around. The concept art has a shorter overall length.


Right now, unpainted and devoid of the blade, it's a very unexciting model.

The Bloodberry is held together by a bamboo stick running through the hilt. The only issue so far is rolling a 2mm diameter tube for the Bloodberry's extension rod that extends the tip. That was constructed by straightening out a paper clip, then rolling printer paper around the paperclip rod until it reached 2mm in outer diameter.

Here is the painted and completed Bloodberry. For the blade, I had spent a good deal of time looking for a blue drinking straw to use to create the glow effect. Somewhat worked. I had to use a clear drinking straw covered with a layer of 3M Polyester 8992 heat resistant tape. Except mine was blue. Great what you can find at your workplace, eh? Some elements required some thin sections, best remedied by bending and painting paper clips. Strong, and versatile! The paper clips were attached with some Loc-Tite adhesive. The small point of contact made gluing a tricky ordeal.


The project was fairly simple, but the biggest problem was finding the right way to convey the beam without actually having a blue plastic rod. That alone stalled this project a good month.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll find some winged animals to slice in half with my new toys.

This Weekend's Project: The Ambassador

Still trying to procure parts for another project, but in the meanwhile, here's something that's been on the drafting stage since late August: The Ambassador revolver. With the revolver, I bring forth some additions to the G-43 standard I've been using.

1. The distance from the trigger to the rear of the stock is 55+/- 1 mm.
   
2. The trigger guard is around 10mm long from front to back.
3. The handle width (in the plane of the barrel hole) is a nominal 5mm wide.
4. The grip thickness (in the plane of a side profile) is around 7mm to be "wieldable" by a 1:6 scale figure. Larger sizes render the model un-wieldable, and smaller ones necessitate special features from the user's hand (spring loaded fingers) or extra tooling (rounding of the grip) of the handle.
5. Rifle grip firearm distance from middle of trigger curvature to inner grip shall be 10mm.
   
6. Pistol grip firearm distance from middle of trigger curvature to the back of pistol grip (where the web of the hand sits) shall be 12±0.5mm
   

I haven't made any pistol grip based weapons with the standard, and this will help make things convenient for future endeavors.

I had to re-scale the original draft done in August down by 85% in order to comply with the G-43 standard. The widths depicted on the upper right are still applicable.

Here's some diagrams of the finalized structure, and some idea of how it was assembled. Pretty sure if you're going to make your own, you'll buy a toy revolver, paint it silver and extend the front anyways. Otherwise, the dimensions aren't too relevant for you for this project.


With the size comparison, the revolver is quite massive. It's about 6.5 cm long, making it a monstrous 39 cm long at 1:1 scale.

This piece implements some small components that I was skeptical on successfully implementing. The cylinder swings out and spins. This is made possible by ample Loc-Tite to plastinate the paper and using paper clips to function as axles.


The cylinder is made of seven hollow tubes. Drilling holes into a semi-solid cylinder laminate was not an option. Making pivoting mechanisms using paper clips as an axle requires a bit of knowledge that is easily overlooked: paper clips are rarely round. The smaller ones usually have rectangular cross sections around a 16:19 aspect ratio. This results in a inner cylinder diameter that doesn't fit as tightly around the axle as a cylinder does, and if it does fit tightly, it doesn't spin easily. Also, paper clips are not always uniform in dimensions across multiple brands, so you may need to specially use one supplier source.

I took advantage of the size difference to make cylinders using smaller rods, resulting in a tighter fit when using a slightly larger rod. The bottom of the cylinder arm uses this to prevent it from swinging out freely.

Here's a detail of the individual components. The frame, held together with Loc-Tite, is a bit more sturdy than using regular Elmer's alone. The thin nature of the frame makes it vulnerable to deformation.

Here is the completed Ambassador revolver. Engraving was not a feasible option due to the fine width needed and lack of a solid substrate to implement it on. Printer paper doesn't quite work. The next best thing was to use a 0.30mm art pen and draw lightly. The small size allowed me to approximate the details since it would look quite dark and cluttered if every detail and line was inked in.