I’m a big fan of the Witcher series, and the Witcher 3 is currently one of my favourite games, having spent countless hours playing it since it came out. I’m very impressed with the graphics and the attention to detail, and love the medieval design of the world and its characters. When I found myself studying the stitching patterns on Geralt’s leather armour and scabbards, I knew I had to make some witcher gear. As is often the case, I made some incorrect assumptions as to the complexity of the project when I was first idly thinking about it, but by the time I started looking into it seriously, I’d already convinced myself that I had to do this project! So here we are, over a year later, after countless hours of work, using a range of interesting materials and techniques, with replicas of a pair of Geralt’s Superior Wolf School swords and their carrying harness.      

The Steel sword has a relatively traditional broad-bladed longsword shape, but the double fullers and curved guard arms give it a distinctive style. The Silver sword is a more unusual design, with a longer, thinner blade that flares outwards near the guard. I had to take some slight liberties with the design of the Silver sword, as in the game these flared “wings” intersect with the geometry of the scabbard, making it impractical in the real world. To get around this, I widened the scabbard slightly to allow the wings fit inside, which required me to also widen the elliptical block piece of the guard so that it would align with the locket.

Once I was happy with the 3D models, I printed the blueprints and began fabrication. I cut two copies of each sword shape out of 6mm MDF, sandwiching 1mm styrene sheets between the layers to give me the centreline of the cutting edge. After laminating the layers together for the Steel sword, I realised that the sword blank was bending because the MDF wasn’t able to support its weight over such a long, thin piece. To resolve this, I cut a channel down the length of the blade and glued a steel rod into it, then filled it with Bondo (Isopon here in Ireland). Luckily I hadn’t glued the Silver sword at this point, so I was able to embed a steel rod in the centre and avoid the Bondo patch-up.

I drew the centre line onto the sword blanks, then shaped them using a rough sanding drum on my Dremel and low grit sandpaper on the palm sander, using the centre sheet of styrene as a guide while grinding the edge. Once I had marked out the fullers on each blade, I used narrow radius sanding drums and sandpaper wrapped around a wooden dowel to hollow out the channels. After all this sanding, the MDF was getting knobbly and hard to work with, so I brushed on a layer of Smooth-Cast 300 resin to give me a better surface for sanding and finishing.   

With the basic shape of the blades complete, I decided to make the scabbard next so that I could align the blades and ensure their cross guards would fit correctly when the swords were sheathed. My initial plan was to shape a half scabbard from MDF and mold and cast it, but I quickly realised that this would not be feasible with the tight tolerances I was working within. I always try to use each project as an opportunity to learn new skills, so I considered a variety of solutions for the scabbard material: vacuformed styrene, heat-formed thermoplastic, fibreglass. I had previously used fibreglass for making matrix molds, so I did some research into similar materials, and settled on carbon fibre as my material. It fit all my criteria: thin enough to use within tight tolerances, and strong enough to retain rigidity over the long, thin length of the scabbard, while also protecting the blades within, and cleaner to work with than fibreglass.

Once I had decided on my material, I started work on the scabbard by shaping a buck out of MDF over which to form the carbon fibre. I cut a second sheet of MDF with the same outline as the scabbard half and pinned it to the back of the buck, so that I could allow excess carbon fibre to overhang when I was stretching it over the buck. The buck and this baseplate were sanded, primed and sealed, then covered in release agent to prepare it for the carbon fibre layup.    

A coat of epoxy was painted onto the buck and allowed to start curing before laying down the initial layer of carbon fibre. Two additional layers were added, with a coat of epoxy painted on between each. I clamped tongue depressors along the edges of the baseplate to stretch the material and pull it evenly over the buck. Once the epoxy was cured, I was able to separate the buck from the baseplate, then run the Dremel with a cutting disk along the back of it to remove the excess material and get a consistent line for the half scabbard. Unfortunately, I had some problems with releasing the carbon fibre from the buck, and after trying varnish, polyurethane and epoxy to seal the buck, and using a variety of release agents, small parts of the buck were still tearing off each time. I didn’t mind sanding the excess material off the carbon fibre, as the pieces were structural and wouldn’t be visible in the final prop, but the damage to the buck required patching with Bondo, sanding, priming and sealing each time.     

Once I had completed the two halves for each scabbard, I lined them with various thicknesses of foam and foam tape so that each one would cushion their corresponding blade. The halves were then clamped together and prepared for a final carbon fibre layup along the join. I first sealed the join with aluminium tape to prevent any epoxy dripping through and soaking into the foam, then coated it with epoxy and laid a thin strip of carbon fibre along the rounded edge of the scabbard. After applying two or three layers, the carbon fibre was lifting due to the curve of the shape I was trying it adhere it to. I grabbed a roll of plastic sheeting and stretched it over the scabbard, holding the carbon fibre in place, and thankfully was easy to remove once the epoxy had cured.

With the major parts of the props complete, I focused my attention on sculpting and fabricating all of the smaller pieces, including guards, pommels and scabbard hardware. I unfortunately don’t have any work in progress photos for these parts, but the general approach was to cut the profile out of styrene, then bulk it out with either MDF or Apoxie sculpt and sand it to the final shape. This method was used for the blocks and arms of the guards, and for the fluted grip. To create the chape and locket of the scabbard, I covered the top and bottom of the scabbard in painters tape, and sculpted over it with Apoxie Sculpt.

I used different sculpting techniques for each of the pommels. The bottom of an empty spray can was used as the base for the rounded concave shape of the Steel sword’s pommel. The can was held upside-down with the nozzle clamped down to drain the propellant, a hole was drilled to pour out any remaining liquid, then the base was cut out using a steel cutting disc on the Dremel. I cut and glued thin layers of styrene into the concave piece to define the basic shape of the wolf head. The details were then sculpted over this using a blend (about 60/40) of Games Workshop’s Green Stuff and Milliput Superfine White epoxy putties that I find useful for sculpting miniatures and smaller parts.

Many of the swords’ pieces were either symmetrical or required two identical copies to make the finished piece. For symmetrical pieces, including the locket and the central ring part of the grip, I only sculpted half the shape, then created quick temporary molds to mirror the piece. Two casts were pulled from each mold, the halves glued together, and the gaps filled to form the final master. A similar approach was taken for the pommels, with one wolf head of each style being sculpted, molded and cast twice, with additional sculpting and fabrication to incorporate the castings into the finished pommel master.

Once I had all of the hardware finished, I checked the fit of all the pieces, filling gaps and ensuring that everything was correctly aligned when the guard and pommel were attached to the tang and the blade placed in the scabbard. I did a final pass on the blades to finish the outline and sharpen up the centreline, then every piece went through the prime, sand, repeat process until I was happy with the quality. Every part was sanded up to 600 grit and given a final layer of black acrylic spray paint. In order to make the blades look as realistic as possible, I wanted to cold cast every piece, which meant starting by making lots of molds. 

I stocked up on Smooth-On’s Mold Max 40 and clayed up the hardware pieces. These were mostly straightforward two-part box molds, though the scabbard hardware was slightly more complicated as the scabbard needed to fit fully through the locket and partially through the chape. The locket (above, bottom left image) had separate internal and external mold lines defined in clay, so that one half of the mold captured the exterior detail, while the other half became a plug to define the scabbard’s shape.

Continued in: Part 2