42mm samurai: Weapons

Well, I dug my smithy hat out and made these weapons for my incoming samurai. It took about an hour to make all of them.

The green stuff for the nagikami guard and the hammer head was cut from pieces that had already cured, so there was no extra time waiting for that (this is why you should save green stuff scraps.)

The weapons are, from left, a katana blade (length will be cut to fit when I have the figure in hand); a nagimaki (with a shorter, heavier blade. Nagimaki's didn't have a strict standard, so this should be fine); a regular old yari (spear); a kakeya (heavy wooden mallet); and -- only IF I can pull off my ambitious plan -- a partially unsheathed sword-cane.

That last figure, I'm "iching" to try. But if I "can't see" it coming together, I'll have to "massage" my mind into another idea.

I'm starting to really enjoy making weapons, just as much as painting and converting figures. The original goal in making my own was to provide some weapons that wouldn't get bent or broken off during gameplay. While brass certainly isn't indestructible, it is a lot more durable than pewter or lead.

I've added other materials into weapon construction the past year, including green stuff, copper wire, model kit parts, sewing thread, plastic styrene, and jewelers chain. But my favorite technique will always be the banging away at a sword blade on my little anvil.

Here's a sampling of weapons I've made over the past couple years. These include weapons made for my 54mm apocalators, Qwik players and my primitive Waiteri tribesmen (I'm glad I took the time to carve out those flint spear points- they're among my favorite):