Katana Template
Hello everyone,
Today I will present you how I craft my Sanemi katana. First as always I look online for tips and found a good video for a classic katana craft, I downloaded the free template from the Nik's Workshop' video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqf_xsZvks8
The Blade overall shape
To start up I went to my nearby home-center and bought some light wood plank of 2cm thickness , I draw the shape from the template on it and cut it strait ( I only had handsaw at the time so it took me quit a lot of patience and power to cut everything)
The Tsuba (guard)
Once the general shape of the blade was done, I made the template for the tsuba ( guard) myself using compass like a middle school student doing rosette, first on cardboard to adjust the size and verify it can pass through the blade then on a thin wood plank (1cm) that you can find at Daiso (100￥ shop) . with the handsaw we can see that result are not that smooth ( compare to a jigsaw ) but it's good enough for photos and stage (nobody look at your costume wit ha microscope )
The Pommel
For the pommel I cut on thin wood (1cm) from of the pommel pattern that I glue on each side of the blade core with wood glue.
Blade Shape and Smoothing
Then the had work began : cutting the blade in actual blade shape and the pommel in roundish shape with a cutter knife, then as I didn't have a "Dremel" at the time, I used sand paper of different size and file to smoother the blade and give a good shape to the pommel.
Painting
next step is painting, first I got the wave pattern of the blade from a reference image with transparent paper then trace it on the blade, once the pattern was set I painted the blade with the 2 color : green and metallic grey. I also paint the pommel full black.
Cord wrap
Next step is the pommel cord wrap. Since I'm leaving in japan I just order a real katana cord from a katana shop, it's quit expensive but the result is really good, and authentic. to braid the cord , I did it myself following multiple YouTube video and a lot of trial and error.
Final touch
Finally I strapped 2 piece of white cloth around the top and bottom of the pommel, and carve the kanji 惡鬼滅殺 on the blade with a file directly into the wood, then filed it wit silver painting.
For the Scabbard, I didn't had the tool to craft a good one ( without Dremel and jig saw it's really complicated to match both side and smooth everything, have tried and the result was just not good eought ) so I just bought a cheap Toy katana for kids and use the scabbard as a base, add cord, silver layer on the top and scar painting all over it.
and voila my Sanemi katana was done :
