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At the time of making this, references were pretty scarce. A few leaked images before the official release of the ACIII trailer were floating around, and I based mine mostly on this one
The first step was to make the handle, I had an old walking stick laying around, so I cut it down, and shaved it to the shape and thickness I wanted.
The stick was stained, then sealed.
The axe head was made from MDF (medium density fiberboard).The darker areas are where the MDF was slicked with crazy glue. The bit on the dremel is a tngsten carbide grinder, which Is one of my favorite bits. It'll leave thngs rough though!
The bevel on the inside was further refined using sandpaper. This was again slicked with crazy glue, and sanded to a smooth finish.
To secure the blade and the point to the handle, I drilled holes though the widest part of the handle and back point. The holes were offset so I could screw both sides on.
.. and there we go.. after screwing the blade in, i unscrewed it a little so I screw the tip on, then rotated the blade back into posistion.
They were epoxied into place to strengthen it.
Time to break out the bondo!
bondo bondo sand bondo sand bondo sand
* After the build, I wasn't happy with the head shape (wanted to make the AC logo a little more pronounced since finding better references), so a few days later, I went back and modified the axe head. bondo bondo sand bondo sand bondo sand
I also thought I'd leave the piece a little more rough.
After masking the handle, I laid down a couple coats of Krylon Satin black.
When it was reasonably dry, but not FULLY dry (a quick tap with a finger doesn't stick), I rubbed aluminum metallic powder onto the surface to give it a more worn metal look. I've been using powders from www.glandmp.com
After going through tons of different clear sealers, looking for one that doesn't completely dull out silver (or turn it grey), I found Testors Metallizer sealer (item 1459) actually works, with minimal dulling. Its a pain to get though, comes in tiny bottles, and isn't cheap around me unfortunately. I *do* like it though. An alternative is future floor polish.
I went back with a little more powder and rubbed it in to give it a pretty chrome looking finish. Surprised it worked as well as it did!
Blahhhhh. beading. I quickly discovered that there was a BIG difference between the lower quality and higher quality beads!In addition to the colors being more vibrant and more consistent shape, they were much easier to string. Spent a half dozen hours watching Supernatural and Archer on Netflix while working on it. After each row, I looped the string under the previous and tacked it with crazy glue. Once the beading was done, I added more crazy glue in there, to make sure the beads don't wiggle around or pop off.
Partway through stringing the things, i discovered that its not a bad idea to slick the first inch or so of the string with crazy glue so it gets stiff an acts like a needle of sorts. when the tip frays or gets bent up, I glued a little further down and snipped off the damaged string.
There was leather wrapping, and the tacks (I used halves of chicago screws because I couldn't find the bag of furniture tacks), and snagging some feathers, and done!
AC Fix.
Check.
