After quite a long time I've decided to revisit this idea, being a spade tip on a tail. A lot of art of dragons depicts things like this, and from time to time I'll get a commissioner who asks about it. In fact, the very first tail I made for myself (of which I don't believe any photos were ever taken) had a diamond-shaped spade tip made out of scales, but it didn't work out very well.

But I've decided to give it a shot again. The next person on my commission queue had asked about it, so I'm taking this as an excuse to take some time and work this out.

Basically I'm trying out a method of attaching a leather piece to the tip of the tail. It's held in place by a couple clips (3 currently), so it will be removable (which I think is advantageous for a few reasons). This one was a hand-cut quick and dirty prototype. I'll be adjusting the dimensions of the attachment a bit more, as the top holes here were a bit too far apart and are pulling the clips outwards more than I'd like. But I think this'll turn out pretty nicely.