These you see are the second attempts at the weapons - I got a far as cementing the first tries together before I restarted.

So. Once I was back from ECCC I had roughly a week and a half before I would leave again to head up to Toronto for Furnal Equinox. Plenty of time, thought I, to try and make some more LARP-y kind of weapons rather than boffers! Stuff that wouldn't stand up to Amtgard or be safe enough to full force into someones chest but for standing around and posing? Maybe some light contact? Sure!

Also I will say again I really shouldn't have tried to do two conventions so close together. But I did. And I'll probably do it again.

That of course assumed I got it right first try. Which I did not. But hey! I did get them finished in time! Maybe down to 10 hours before my flight but pfft! Semantics! I had a rough idea of what I wanted them to look like and the biggest hurdle I thought would come up would be making the Skaven halberd. Which is really more of a glaive but nothing for it but to try! So try I did. All of them are mainly made out of these Neoprene floor mats from Harbor Freight;
https://www.harborfreight.com/safet.....set-94635.html
As thats a good amount of dense tough foam for ten bucks! Similar to what I made my all foam small shields out of. The Halberd blade is made out of this but the rest of it is pipe insulation to cover the 'top' and then a three piece (three 2 foot sections you screw together) of a plastic exercise pole that is lightly padded. While the sword and dagger are entirely cut out of the foam itself.

The first hurdle I came across is it was really hard to cut two pieces of foam out so the shapes would line up. Even before I tried to carve out a channel of the foam for the fiberglass fence pole to sit inside so the foam would glue together flush. This I eventually fixed by taping the two foam sheets together and just cutting both parts out at once. I felt like a fool for not thinking of that earlier but hey - you never know the fastest way till your done!

Next was trying to cut enough out of the foam for the fence pole to sit inside without cutting through too far that I would accidently cut through the foam itself. This was moderatly successful as I did poke through a few spots. But thats what the strapping tape (you can see it on the halberd in the third picture) was good for covering up to try and keep the interior of the foam safe. Then it was just contact cement on both ends and trying hard to line them up well before pressing down and hoping. Went ok - will do better next time. I also added two extra bits to the sword handle to add some width so it wasn't all flat. Something easier to hold.

With the shapes cut out and now glued together it was time to cut out the 'blade' for the dagger and sword and then the teeth and notch on the halberd. With my days winding down I ended up just cutting them out with the same blade you see sticking out of the first picture and hoping for the best. It worked but note for myself later on sand the edges more. A lot more. All the small bumps and jagged parts made painting the blades a /real/ pain as there were so many time holes and gaps that the paint just did not want to slide into.

Then it was time to attach the Halberd blade to the head. After putting on my standard by this point googly eye 'rivets'. Thankfully the pipe insulation - the same I use for boffers, come with glue already applied I just needed to carefully, hard to do alone, take off the tape covering the glue, put the blade where I want it, and then squeeze them together to try to have it stick. It did indeed stick and holds it pretty good! But unfortunately during this process the halberd head gained two inches. Which sucked as I had tried to measure it to fit inside the case I was taking but far too late I realized that it was now too long. So the top third of the pole I would have to take on the plane with me to Canada. So I covered it with a bag and just hoped as the TSA did not get back to be in time about if foam covered plastic was fine to take on a plane. When they finally did it was a useless boilerplate response that did not answer my questions but whatever. No-one asked me until I was at customs in Canada what it even was. And only on the way back did they want to see it. They thought it was cool. But with the top glued in I then added some strapping tape just as extra structure and then it was time to plastidip it all and try to paint it.

The painting itself went ok EXCEPT for the gods damned yellow on the sword. For some reason that just never /ever/ wanted to actually stay yellow and not run. It took easily double the coats of all the other colors and even then its still the worst color on that by far. Its so frustrating. Something to try to figure out for if/when I make these again but better for Drachenfest. I also wish I had taken off the tape that you can see on the sword which I used to try and close up the foam a little as the cement had a few gaps but realized too late. If anyone noticed at FE they didn't say anything which is nice I guess. But they all survived the trip there and back woo hoo. I even took them out to park where they unfortunately got wet. And the paint started to run a little. So for sure need to clear coat the next versions for sure to try and prevent that. The Halberd I was holding the most - as it didn't have a holder on my belt or person, and you can see the paint is starting to rub off from just my hands on it. So clear coat is for sure something to do for further use of that. I may use the same staff but make a new head.

But hey - for my second try, Grizzles knife being the first, I'm happy with this. Great learning and lessons from it to take forward! The orange tape is the safety tape that Con security put on so others would know I got these OK-ed with them and they are not dangerous. I tried to make the sword a bigger version of Grizzles knife hence the same guard with a fancy little pommel just because. While the dagger I modeled after this fantastic model;
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/R3m2Jr
I even tried to make the same kind of cloth-y handle which went alright. But I think for my next set I need to find a way to make the silver 'metal' less uniform and clean. Its Skaven weapons - need it to be more rough with a hint of rust-blood! Or at least have a darker color for the blade body and save the shiny for the edge itself.

But thats things to work on for later attempts. FE pictures to come soon :)