Critical Hit Creations

Since finishing my Wolf School Swords, I’ve wanted to create more replicas from the world of the Witcher. The Wolf Medallion is an iconic part of Geralt’s gear, and a great choice for a quick project to test and improve some skills and processes. In the years that this project has been on my backlog, I had planned on using my standard fabrication process of MDF, styrene and Apoxie Sculpt, or sculpting it in modelling clay, but once I began working on it, it made sense to get it 3D printed. I started, as I often do, in Blender, challenging myself to create as high quality a digital replica of the Wolf medallion as possible, using in-game screenshots, renders from the various advertisements and high-definition movie clips, as well as photos of various pieces of merchandise as reference.

Once I was happy with the overall look of the 3D model, I printed a series of blueprints to figure out the scale, sizing off in-game reference and comparing to the hilts and pommels of my Wolf School swords. Normally, I would start fabrication at this point, but going the 3D printing route, I still had digital work to do in Blender. I took some time to figure out how I would mold and cast the piece at this stage. Realizing that the teeth could bind the cast into the mold, and that their delicate nature might lead to issues in molding and casting, I split them from the main medallion, so I could work on them separately once printed. I also made the medallion hollow, with a separate back cover, as I wanted to add some electronics. I modelled circular indents into the medallion and back cover for magnets to hold the two pieces together. With the 3D models split out, and cleaned up to avoid any issues, I had the medallion 3D printed.

The print came out pretty nicely form the Ultimaker 3, though the teeth were so small they lost most of their shape and detail. The most time-consuming part of the project was the process of priming, sanding and filling necessary to remove all the print lines and imperfections. Between the print quality and clean-up process, some of the finer detail was partially lost and had to be re-added with files and a sharp scalpel, such as the nostrils, lines along the snout and the forehead detail. The teeth were fairly rough off the print bed, and took plenty of filing and sanding to achieve their sharp, pointed look.

With everything given a final undercoat, I moved on to molding, making a 2-part block mold for each part, using Smooth-On’s Mold Max 40 as usual. I paid special attention to the vents when making the molds, placing them carefully at every point, particularly for the teeth, which were so small that the resin would not flow down into them without the assistance of venting. The finished molds were dusted with aluminium powder and cold cast using Smooth-Cast 300. The tongue presented an issue, since it trapped air bubbles, and it was in a place where I couldn’t cut a vent. After a few tests, I solved this by pouring some resin into the tongue with the mold open, then quickly sealing it and pouring the rest of the resin.

After casting enough parts for 2 medallions, with some spares, I cleaned up the mold lines and buffed the surfaces with fine steel wool before polishing them with Autosol Metal Polish. I decided to take a slightly different approach to weathering for each of the two medallions. For the first, I mixed black ochre powder with water and painted it into the recesses before wiping most of it off with a cloth. This did a good job of simulating real grime and dirt, and gave a more subtle finish than the second technique, though is less robust – handling the piece can rub off some of the finish. On the second medallion, I used watered-down black acrylic paint, again brushing it into the recesses and wiping it off. The paint leaves a more opaque finish than the gradual fade of the ochre, and the end result looks slightly more tarnished and aged.

In the high definition renders of the medallion, the eyes are red, faceted gemstones, glowing with magical light. Ever the perfectionist, I spent a lot of time searching online before finally sourcing 8x5mm pear-shaped garnets from a jewellers’ supplier. When designing the 3D model, I had left some wiggle room to fit the gems, so when finishing the 3D print for molding, I refined the eye socket shape to fit the garnets.

My original plan was to use the LEDs from flickering LED tea lights to give the piece a magical aura, but the yellow washed out the colour of the garnets, so I switched to standard red LEDs. I had to get a bit creative when fitting the electronics, as there was so little internal space to the piece. I got the smallest toggle switches I could find, and used a coin cell battery to power the single red LED in each medallion. The battery is held in place with neodymium magnets, two of which are used to complete the circuit. The rear cover is attached with two further magnets, and has a small slot cut into the top of it to make it easier to remove. Since I could find no reference for the back surface of the medallion, I took the liberty of modelling a raised “Quen” protection rune from the game.

As with the gems, the chain took some time to source, since most jewellery chain is too fine to match the in-game piece. I eventually found a jewellers site that did heavy, 4mm x 6mm cable chain which was almost a perfect match for my reference. Unsure if the colour was correct, I ordered both silver plated and gunmetal chain, hoping I could figure out some colour-matching techniques. In the end this proved to be a non-issue: buffing and polishing the silver chain using the same method as the medallion darkened it enough to match the cold cast resin; however once the medallion had been weathered, the gunmetal chain was a perfect colour match. All I had to do was size it and attach the clasp.

Thanks for reading,

Terry

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

Creating the molds for the blades was a much more complicated and involved process. Due to the size of the pieces, I decided to make matrix molds with a fibreglass shell. Luckily, both blades are roughly the same shape, so I only needed to create a single shell within which I could pour both molds. I started by laying one of the blades on MDF and claying up the shape of the first shell half around it, including registration for the mold and for the second half of the shell, and pour holes for the rubber. This was sealed and painted with a coat of epoxy, before laying layers of fibreglass and more epoxy coats. When the fibreglass was cured, I removed the clay, flipped it over, sculpted the second half of the shell, then sealed it and applied release agent, and laid down the second half of the fibreglass. I embedded a steel pole into each half of the shell to improve its strength, and once the second half was cured, I cleaned up the excess fibreglass, drilled in holes to bolt the halves together, and added smaller holes to allow air bubbles escape during the molding process.

Unfortunately, fibreglass doesn’t like sharp angles, and when I removed the clay from the finished shell, I discovered that there were a lot of voids and lifted fibreglass on the inside. This added a lot of work time as I had to sand down the fibreglass and fill it with Bondo to redefine the internal shape of the shell. When this was complete, I primed and varnished the interior to make sure there was no bubbles or surfaces for the rubber to get stuck in to.

With the fibreglass jacket complete, I clayed up the first blade and bolted the jacket together. I mixed a large bucket (nearly 4kg) of Mold Max 40 and began slowly pouring this into the shell. As the silicone filled the shell, it pushed air bubbles out through the holes I had drilled, which I patched with clay once silicone started leaking through. The rubber was left to cure, then the jacket flipped, opened, the clay removed, release agent applied, jacket re-sealed and the second half of the silicone mixed and poured. Once the mold for the first blade was finished, it could be safely removed from the jacket, and the second mold made following the same approach.

After finishing all fourteen molds, including the two huge blade molds, it was time to start casting. The casting for the two-part block molds was relatively straightforward, though I did have some curing issues while testing the slower-curing Smooth Cast 305, so I stuck with Smooth Cast 300 for the final pieces. Each mold was dusted with aluminium powder and sealed, part A and part B of the resin was measured out, with a drop of black dye and some additional aluminium powder added to part B (about 50% powder to part B, by weight). I usually mixed enough to pour into two or three of the smaller molds as a time, rotating the molds and tapping them gently to release air bubbles as I poured. It took some time to learn the intricacies of each of the molds, and since I was going for a cold cast finish I couldn’t have any bubbles or imperfections, so it took a few attempts to get a set of castings that I was happy with.

As with the molds themselves, the casting of the blades was a much more difficult process. I knew that I would need to embed a steel rod into the casting to give each blade strength, and that I was working with a 1-2mm tolerance between the rod and the surface of the blade. For my first attempt, I dusted the mold with aluminium powder, sealed the jacket around it and secured it upright, lowering the rod in through the pour spout. I mixed and poured a full batch of Smooth Cast 300 (about 600 grams of plastic), only for most of it to leak out onto the floor due to the pressure exerted by the liquid on the narrow mold. Additionally, when I removed the cured plastic from inside the mold, the steel rod was sticking through the surface.   

The solution to embedding the rod was to start the casting with an open mold. The mold was dusted and the rod carefully suspended over one half of it using thread. The rod was placed close enough to the mold wall so that it wouldn’t rest against either side, but also with enough space to allow the resin flow freely around it. This step was a separate challenge for both blades, as each have a different layout of fullers and centreline that have to be avoided. With the rod in place, half of the resin was poured into the open mold, getting it as close to the edge of the mold as possible while not overflowing. With the rod successfully embedded, it took me a handful of failed attempts before I had a reliable technique for producing high-quality finished castings.

In order to minimise leaking of the resin, I initially attempted doing multiple partial pours into the closed mold once I had completed the open pour to secure the rod. I experimented with quantities and pouring techniques, eventually resolving the leaking. However, I now had streaks and curing inhibition between the separate pours, and each attempt was taking hours, with a lot of wasted resin on every failure. I figured that I could use the initial closed mold pour to coat the surface of the mold, and once it had cured backfill it with additional pours until it was solid.

To produce the final blade castings, I first secured the rod using my open mold technique, then closed the mold and bolted the jacket together. Next, I mixed up a small quantity of Smooth Cast 300 (about 80 grams part A) and poured this into the mold so that it flowed along the steel rod instead of streaking the aluminium powder off the mold surface. As soon as this resin was poured, I quickly and carefully slushed it around the mold so that it completely coated the surface, again taking care not to wash away the aluminium powder. This step required lifting and rolling a four and a half foot long fibreglass monstrosity which held nearly 10Kg of rubber inside it. Once the surface layer was cured, two additional batches of resin were poured to backfill the piece, again using small quantities so that the surface layer wouldn’t deform under the pressure of the liquid. 

Getting away from the dust and mess of fabrication and casting, I began work on the leather covers for the scabbards. Starting with a veg-tanned cow side, I cut a rectangle of leather for each scabbard, long enough to fit into the scabbard’s chape and locket. This leather was wetted and stretched over the scabbard, clamped in place along its centreline. Once it had dried, most of the excess was trimmed away and I laid in the pattern. I cut a hexagonal template in styrene and marked in the centre points of each of the partial circles and the larger circle that surrounds them. I set the template on the dampened leather, then placed my wing divider in each of the centres and scribed the circles, avoiding marking the centre point holes on the leather. The scabbard narrows from top to bottom, so the pattern got smaller, requiring me to reduce the radii and make increasingly smaller styrene templates. Once the pattern was marked onto the leather, I hammered in all of the stitching holes using a mallet and stitching stamp.   

The leather was dyed with Angelus Leather Dye’s Brick dye, buffed and sealed. Next began the time-consuming process of saddle-stitching the pattern for both scabbards. For each part of the pattern (i.e the outer circle and inner flower-like design), two needles were tied to the ends of a piece of thread, and the part was hand-stitched: stitch inner pattern, remove needles, rethread needles, stitch outer pattern. Rinse and repeat for 32 flowers per scabbard! Luckily as the pattern got smaller, the time required to stitch it went down. With the pattern complete, the leather was stitched onto the scabbard. Its edges were trimmed down close to the stitch line, dyed and burnished.

At this point, all of the pieces of the swords were fabricated and ready for finishing and assembly. All of the cold cast parts were cleaned up to remove any mold lines, then buffed with fine steel wool and polished with Autosol Metal Polish. The inner surfaces of the locket and chape were hollowed out slightly to allow them fit over the leather when attached to the scabbard. I used 5-minute epoxy to glue the pieces of the guards together and attach them to the tang. For the grip, I dyed veg-tanned leather cord the appropriate colour (Brick for the Silver Sword, Chocolate for the Steel Sword), and wound it around the grip, securing it in place with leather glue. With the swords assembled, I added some subtle weathering, focussing on the pommels and the base of the blade. I used a black ochre powder as a close approximation of dirt and grime, mixing it with water and painting it into the corners and crevices, then wiping most of it off.

Part of the iconic design of Geralt and the witchers is the pair of swords hanging across their back, hilts sticking over their shoulder. With the swords and scabbards complete, I felt I couldn’t leave the project without attempting to create a harness to achieve this look. While The Witcher 3 does a great job of rendering highly-detailed weapons and armour, it takes some slight liberties with how the swords are hung from Geralt’s back. Most armours in the game are designed with straps and parts to represent the sword harness, but the exact method of mounting the scabbards is not present. With this in mind, I picked my favourite armour design and spent some time figuring out if I could make it work practically to hang the swords over my shoulder.

As with the swords, my favourite armour in the game is the Superior Wolf School set, which has a set of studded shoulder pads and straps worn over the jacket. The shoulder pieces are strapped together across the chest, and have buckled under-arm straps, so the piece can be fabricated and worn separate from the armour. I knew that I’d need two mounting points on this to hang the swords across rather than straight down, and after careful study of the in-game reference, I had a fair idea where these mounting points would be.

I started by drawing out the pattern on cardstock. I did the shoulder pads first, using my scabbards and the metal rivets as scale reference. I drew the straps longer than necessary, then cut out the card and taped it together, resizing it until I was happy that the piece correctly fit my shoulders. Next, I transferred the pattern onto some heavy veg tanned leather, cut it out, and punched in the stitching holes. I temporarily stitched the pieces together and did a test fitting, ensuring that it sat correctly and everything lined up.

At this point, my leather matched the in-game design, but it was missing a way to mount the swords. I cut out two pairs of leather straps and attached buckles to them, sizing them to fit around the top of the scabbards. I tied the straps onto one of the scabbards, and a friend wore the work-in-progress harness while I held the scabbard up to it and marked in where the straps would attach. I stitched on the straps for the first sword, then lay the second scabbard side-by-side to mark its mounting points. The top straps for both swords anchored to one of the shoulder pads, and were stitched together for additional support. For the second scabbard, its lower strap didn’t actually come in to contact with the main harness, so I ended up stitching it to the strap for the first scabbard, and ensuring that this strap was stitched securely enough to the cross-strap of the harness to support both swords.

Confident that the piece fit together and that the swords hung from it correctly, I removed the temporary stitching, labelling each piece so I would know how everything went together once it had been dyed and finished. I punched in the holes for the rivets, and the stitching holes for all the decorative stitching, as well as cutting out strips of thin veg-tanned lambskin to stitch onto the edges of the shoulder pads.

My standard practice for finishing leather is: dye the pieces and let them dry, buff them with a cloth to remove the excess dye, rub olive oil into the grain side and let it dry, brush gum tragacanth onto the edges and flesh side and burnish, and finally seal the grain side with leather finish. For the harness, all of the pieces were dyed with Coffee Angelus Leather Dye.   
  

With the leather pieces finished, I set the rivets and began stitching, taking care with my order of operations. The decorative stitching for the buckled under-arm straps was completed before stitching in the buckles, then the cross-chest straps were stitched before mounting the under-arm straps to them. The edges of the shoulder pads were wrapped with thin lambskin, which was doubled-over and stitched above and below the leather of each pad. Where the shoulder pad meets the cross-strap, I stitched through four layers of leather – the two sides of the lambskin edging, the shoulder pad, and the cross-strap. Once the main harness was complete, the mounting straps were stitched into place and the swords were ready to be attached.  

Thanks for reading,

Terry