Originally posted on the RPF.

I really like the design of the Assassins in the Assassin’s Creed games. They all share common design features that tie to the central assassin/eagle/hunter imagery: the beaked hood, the red tabard, the talon-like hidden blade, whites, reds and the stylised “A” that looks like the profile of the hooded assassin. These features are cleverly blended into period-appropriate styles for each assassin, from Altair’s monk robes to Connor’s mix of colonist and Native American clothing. Connor’s tomahawk exemplifies this design approach, taking a traditional weapon and adding the trademark Assassins’ red and “A” logo for the axe head.

When I started working on my Skyrim War Axe, I decided that I’d need some way of testing molding and cold casting methods without wasting lots of materials. Rather than simply molding and casting some scrap plastic, I figured that Connor’s Tomahawk would be small enough to test these techniques, and I ended up working on two projects at the same time! 

The axe head was made in three pieces, the blade, “block” and “spike” and were designed to slot together. The basic shape of each piece was built out of styrene, with the blade and the bevels on the spike sculpted using Apoxie Sculpt. Once the Apoxie cured, I spent some time sanding the blade to achieve a concave slope and to define the lines.

Each piece of the axe head was molded separately (using Smooth On Mold Max 40) and cold cast with aluminium powder (using Smooth On Smooth-Cast 300). The blade mold caused some problems when casting, as the resin ran down the mold walls and left streaks in the aluminium powder I had dusted into the mold. I eventually resolved this by pouring resin into half of the open mold, slowly and at a shallow angle so it didn’t lift the powder, then quickly sealing the mold and pouring the second half on top of the resin already inside.

The axe haft was cut from a 2’x4’ and shaped with my Dremel and palm sander. It took a lot of trial and error to get the colour of the wood right, as every varnish I applied was either the wrong shade or didn’t cure properly. I eventually got a finish I was happy with, and gave the haft a few coats of polyurethane, sanding with fine grit sandpaper in-between coats. When fully cured, I drew the diamond insignia on a piece of masking tape which I used as a stencil to cut the shape into the wood, being careful to only remove the outer stained layer and expose the raw wood underneath. I gave the whole haft a final coat of polyurethane to seal it. 

 

The brown leather grip was cut from a vegetable tanned hide, while the red wrap was a length of leather lace. Both were dyed, soaked and stretched around the haft, then glued in place, with brass pins fitted along the grip. I sourced some glass beads that matched those in renders of the axe, and trimmed and shaped a feather found in the garden.