Heaven Sword project update II

I was able to do more work on the sword yesterday.

Also, I finally got to use a decent camera for pictures of my progress!

I tested out my idea of using a sanding disc attached to my power drill to shape and carve the foam of the sword on the prototype I messed up on, and I'm glad to say that my ideas work.
Here is an example of how I shaped the prototype with only a few minutes of work with the drill:

 This is just a rough mock-up, the final prop will be shaped by drill, and hand-sanded to final shape.

I filled in the holes in the top and bottom of the sword with expanding foam in a can, and started another project with it.  I have to wait for 24 hours for the foam to cure, but I still could mark out where I'm going to cut the shape of the sword.

I've put a source picture and my marked sword next to each other to compare the dimensions.  You can see where I had to remark the prop to move the guard, by sanding off most of the old marks.  Here is a close up of the markings for the guard and hilt.

I'm going to make the guard collars from Milliput or other air-cure epoxy or clay.  I have some left over from my Hellboy halloween costume from a few years back, but I'm not sure if its still good.

Once the foam is cured, I'll be able to start carving the blade and hilt and then to final shaping of the piece.

In other projects, here is a beginning picture of my next project:

  

These are the raw foam forms I will be carving into a pair of Satyr horns, using a technique I picked up from another costuming/propmaking blog called Kamui Cosplay.  This should yield a pair of lightweight horns I can glue to my head and wear around all day.  I used a similar technique to make Hellboy's horn-stubs, but I used paper-clay and liquid latex to glue them to my forehead, and it worked beautifully!

Cheers for now!

~W