Looks awesome
That is drop dead gorgeous! Hard to believe it’s entirely wood!
I still have some black 3.0, but I wanted the grain to be (subtly) visible. My thinking was that paint would have obscured that. I like that you can tell that the entire thing is made of wood on close inspection.
Ah! Makes sense. The finish does look pretty great.
not that i expect your nephew to be dueling with it, but the ink won’t chip off the way paint might. i would consider that an extra bonus.
Yeah if it came to it and the blade did chip or otherwise get damaged, he could use a sharpie to touch up the black and then hit it with a tiny bit of wipe on urethane. It seems that it survived the party with no damage though, so no need to go down that path yet.
As for duelling, he’s the same nephew that has the Xiphos-style sword too. He’s pretty sensible though, so I think we’re mostly safe? The two swords are pretty similar in length, but Telikos has a 3-layer blade and is significantly more massive and sturdy. I would go with that one if it were my duel
Props to the uncle for making a great prop! That sword is terrific.
Lord and Lady Briarwood would be proud!
The sword pictured with them, shows the true size (no banana here). What an intricate and elegant design!
What craftmanship… well done!
That had better be Lord and lady Briarwood cosplays!!!
Yeah that was their couples Halloween costume
Holy smokes! That turned out to be way bigger than I thought it was. Super nice job on that, the design details remind me of Weta Workshop. Love the costumes, they work so well with the sword.
Amazing. Off to blacksmith school with you already! You need to work with cold hard steel
Love it! And great use of gluing up multiple layers!
It’s huge! The inlay is beautiful!!!
Epic! Our family watched the cartoon on Amazon Prime - they’re going to love this.
Hey check it out, a comparison of black stains/inks
the india ink had the best coverage of all. but most of those woods have heavy grain in them, which i’m not a fan of (oak, birch, pine, even poplar a little).
and looking at those, i’m reminded of how poorly (for my taste) birch (and baltic birch in particular for me) stain. india ink is the only one that didn’t look like crap to me. i’d rather see that less-than-attractive grain hidden.
In the sword’s case, I liked the grain because it added a little sort of “damascus” to the whole thing. It’s very subtle because the ink had good coverage but it’s there. Kind of a fun little detail, and important in terms of my intent because I wanted it to be obvious that it was wood on close inspection.
I’m definitely going to source some India ink though, I want to try that.