Making of Gin Ichimaru's Shinso sword

Hi!

So a few days ago my stepfather told me I could make Gin's handguard (aka tsuba) out of this 9 mm thick plywood we had lying at home. So I did. I drew the design and he was kind enough to cut it out for me since it's quite a difficult design, yay! I went outside to sand it down afterwards and oh my lord, my hands were so sore after that. I remember cursing because of its shape – it was so hard to get inside those stupid.. ugh, what's the English word for it? ._. You probably understand what I mean by looking at the photo, lol.

Test fitting the handguard.

Under a week left until Desucon Frostbite and I still have to fill in all the cracks where the top layer of the plywood chipped off. The sword I'm using as a base is a shoto sword (a martial arts training sword), an inexpensive red oak one to be more precise; I just figured it's easier to modify something close enough than to make it from scratch because I'm short on time and besides, I knew I would stress with it anyway. xD I made this thing in five days omg.

Handguard fillered up.

A white-ish putty filler thingy was used to fill in the cracks. He's too kind. Stepdad told me to wait until the following day before coating everything in a white base paint, although it seemed like the one I had used before (for other projects) had been used up and yeah, I had to use another one that was slightly glossy... and he said I have to sand it after coating.

Worst paint ever. 8C
Had to let them dry in the sink to not stain everything...

This was one of the most unpleasant paints I've ever had the displeasure of using. Seriously, it's sticky as fuck, it takes forever to dry (and hair dryers doesn't help), it smells like crap and it's also impossible to wash away no matter if you use soap three times and scrub it with a harsh brush. I tried to get it off my own hands and it just smeared further the more I tried to get it off! I've never worked with a paint that made me this frustrated before lol. It stuck to literally everything – every loose hair strand and every surface it touched for less than a second. I even got some on this high leather stool that I've been sitting on and it won't come off no matter what I do. Mom's gonna be mad...

I learned soon after that it was some kind of oil-based paint and yeah, that checks out. It hadn't really crossed my mind that any other paints existed except for water-based ones because that's what I had been exlusively using up to this point. It was a nightmare to work with without the correct equipment and yeah, I lost my cool and was positively raging during the worst moments – stress-induced meltdowns anyone? I had to toss a paint brush I really liked because it got ruined. :c

Thankfully the rest of the progress should be a breeze to do, I just needed to spray paint everything and then do the tsukamaki handle wrapping. Or well, spray painting outside in northern Finland during the worst winter months isn't exactly optimal timing but whatever, you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.

Well, in theory it was easy. In practice it was not.
So I was outside spray painting Shinso and err.. the cold was a real problem. I needed to do a second coating because the paint dried so slowly it got stuck on the work station I used (I hate when that happens adfsgagf) and these annoying bubbles appeared and made the surface all kinds of ugly. It was like the paint froze before it had time to set? I ended up having to sand the bubbly surface layer down and repaint the whole thing. Yet somehow I managed to salvage the situation. 

Finished Shinso, full view.

All misfortunes considered I'm very happy with how this rush job turned out. In fact I'm very happy, I didn't think it would come together as well as it did in the end. :D I'm not making a sheath for now and who knows if I will at some point but ehh, it's fully usable as-is.
Can't wait to cosplay Gin soon, it's gonna be fun to be part of that upcoming Bleach cosplay group!

Thank you for reading! 
Shiro Samurai out~