MH4U Eldaora's Taus Hunting Horn cosplay prop [part 3]

Hello cosplay fans and monster hunters alike!

Here comes the third part of my Monster Hunter cosplay project. I'm building a Hunting Horn weapon prop from scratch as part of a big school project. I've been a major fan of the MonHun games for years and I thought that it would be high time that I made a costume to make my love for the games visible, haha. The Hunting Horn that I'm making is the Eldaora's Taus from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and, if you missed the previous parts of this project, you can find them here and here. ^_^

Note: this project is split into several parts because otherwise it would turn into a kilometer post; I need to document my progress carefully (many photos etc) since it's a school project. 

Let's get to crafting this thing!

Starting position. I know that the end knob
is crooked but it was unavoidable. I will
hopefully fix it later.

Okay, so I left off last time with my Hunting Horn looking like a sleeping foam mummy. I had run out of the two extra cans of PU-foam (aka expanding foam) that I fetched from Säästötex earlier and, meanwhile I was busy with school since I left, mom actually went and bought more of the sale cans for me. Once I got back to mom's on 4th June five cans of foam were waiting for me. The sale 5 cans for 10 € was still available, God bless. 

I continued applying expanding foam to the build, mainly the knob at the end of the shaft, the back of the "horse head" and the thickest part of the shaft's backside. I left it to dry for some hours and when I came back I noticed that the foam had hardened but it wasn't ready to be cut. I checked the knob and noticed that the foam had indeed fallen off and was partly stuck to the ground (thanks gravity) and so I separated it from the floor –which thankfully I had covered in plastic before, for protection– and decided to turn the prop so that it laid on its side, to allow for the "inside" of the knob to dry. You see, where the foam had fused with the ground it actually was all wet on the inside, and when I turned it I accidentally grabbed on that non-hardened spot and my fingers just sank into the sticky goo. Eww. Protip: if you ever get PU-foam residue on your hands (it sticks like a second skin and feels like really sticky glue that won't go away) you can get rid of it by applying nail polish remover onto a cotton pad and swiping the affected areas with it. It's important that the remover contains acetone.

The following day I returned to start shaping it. I started off with the back half of the mane and just cut it somewhat into its general shape. I noticed at some point that I'd need to to make each of the mane hairs (there would need to be 7 +1 on the back of the final product) deeper.

Started carving out the back mane.

While I was working I suddenly caught a sniff of that strong distinct smell of fresh PU-foam. I stopped in my tracks and checked where the smell was coming from – it didn't take many seconds before I noticed that some thick, yellowish and unhardened foam was bubbling up from the inside! It was all gooey and sticky and I used whatever scrap pieces I had at hand to wipe it off, but it just kept coming out slowly but steadily. I was just standing there like "oh come on..." because it had gotten about 24 hours to dry but it was still, seemingly, not enough.

Red arrow points to the fresh foam bubbling out.
(note: this was taken directly after I noticed it, it grew a lot more since then)

No can do but put the carving on hold until it has completely hardened. What a bummer, I don't have so much time to finish this project.
During the remainder of the day I went out a couple times to check on it and there had formed a pillar of foam! It was probably close to 10 cm in height and had this weird I've-kinda-hardened-on-the-surface-but-still-gooey-on-the-inside consistency – like I could touch it without making a sticky mess but I was sure that my finger would crush the surface if I applied even a small amount of pressure, aka I could feel it give in under my fingers. I decided to rip off the protruding pillar of foam (using tools and not my own hands) to make sure that, if anything else would flow out later, it would be able to come freely.

The next day I checked the hole that the foam had been flowing out of; it had hardened and so I continued work. I continued to shape the "hair bananas" in the back, aka the back mane. :) As I've mentioned before I'm not even trying to make this thing 100% accurate to the game (which would be a pain in the butt because of all the symmetry) and so all the mane bulks are free-handed; I kinda wanted them to have a natural "flow" to them, if that makes sense. I did make sure that there were 7 of them though – and I'll add the small pointy tip one later.

Mane carving in progress.

Once the back mane was somewhat in shape I decided to test out the papier-maché ears that I had made in school earlier – turned out indeed that they were a tad too big. :/ It's really hard to get the size right when you don't have the head there to compare with and have to go by memory and a note.
I quickly made some new ear bases out of chicken wire, slightly smaller.

Comparing old ear(s) to the head.

Comparing new ear(s) to the head.

I decided to skip the papier-maché approach on the new ears because I don't have the equipment for it and I think I might get better end results with the foam anyway, since the whole build is covered in expanding foam. I'll save the old ears for another project so they won't go to waste.

New and old ear side by side. For size comparison.

I didn't attach the ears yet and instead continued on carving out the shaft (handle, whatever you want to call it) of the Hunting Horn. I thought that this would be easier to do than the manes but lolnope. :') So yeah, I started carving as usual and then, at some point, I realized that those separating lines (showing where each of the three levels end) didn't meet! It was really annoying to notice it after I had already done a majority of the work. Even the slightest difference would add up and then when you had spun the thing around completely the separating lines, at worst, had more than a 10 cm difference. -_- It was impossible to keep track on if the line was straight or not because of the foam's bumpiness and the circular shape, aka I had to constantly rotate it to do any progress and thus couldn't get a good grip on if I was cutting it straight or not. I had to improvise a lot and it's not perfect nor symmetrical – good thing it's not super noticeable because of the shape.

Started carving out the shape for the shaft.

I took the can of foam and filled in some uneven spots on the manes, on the shaft and wherever else there wasn't enough foam. Meanwhile it was drying I made the horns in the same way as I made the ears. They had to be 50 centimeters long each.

Horn bases done.

You might notice that the horn sketch is under and that the curve on it is different. I can say that I drew the reference image way too big for the paper (common mistake that I do, lol) and thus the proportions were off (I had to fit it in); I wasn't planning on doing strictly the same shape anyway, just drew it to get a general idea and as a reference for details, once I get to painting the horns.

I left the horns for later and left the Horn (hihi) for drying overnight. The following morning I continued carving – this time doing the rest of the shaft, except for the end knob. Now it's starting to look like something!

Shaft carved out and new foam added to uneven spots + end knob.

I can't help but think that it looks like an oversized fancy chess piece. It's quite noticeable that it's not exactly like in the games and yeah, I had to make it different for a number of reasons and hey, taking some artistic liberties every now and then is fine~! The main difference is the shape of the upper neck (where the head attaches to the shaft) and thus the head's position, as well as the position and shape of the manes. It just ended up differently and I don't even mind – I made it my own and it will still be easily recognizable. It's like, maybe 85% accurate, haha.
I have used so much money on this that I don't want to butcher half of my hard work just to correct some proportions and/or placements. I can't change the shape of the head/neck part anyway (which is the only thing that slightly even bothers me) because it's a placement miss that happened so early on, aka already at the cardboard base. Because of that, and how I started with the front mane hairs, the head is pretty much doomed to be almost stuck to the neck instead of being more up and free like in the game. No can do and no big deal – it will be awesome anyway! 

Before I left it for the day I added some foam to even out the end knob and to patch up some small spots on the shaft that were uneven. The following morning I went out to carve the end knob and oh boy, it was a pain in the ass! I was thinking all along that "it can't be so hard" but I swear this was the most frustrating part of the project – by far.
I quickly gave up on trying to get the knob to be identical on all angles because it was flat out impossible! Every time it looked good, when viewed from a particular angle, I would spin it around and then the opposing side looked like a case of "end my misery". The more I tried to correct one side the more it messed up when viewed from a different angle... or when compared with another side; it basically needed to have the exact same angles on all four sides to be perfect. It just wouldn't line up nicely no matter what I did and I ended up losing my patience, which is rare. Yeah, I was at the verge of ragequitting.

Fuck this shit, let's call it close enough. 8C

So yeah, the knob is far from symmetrical and it's obviously tilting more towards one side than to the other but oh well, I did what I could. It's not bad enough to be a complete eyesore but it does trigger my perfectionist side a bit, lol. It could be worse though – at least that's a consolation!

That's all for this part and next time I'll get to start on the surface treatment! Be sure to follow my blog if you don't want to miss it. ;)

~ Shiro Samurai out.

MH4U Eldaora's Taus Hunting Horn cosplay prop [part 2]

Hello hunters and cosplay fans!

If you've been following my blog or social media accounts you know that I'm currently working on a big and challenging project, namely my first Monster Hunter cosplay prop! I've been a huge fan of the games for years now and as part of a big school project I'm now making the Eldaora's Taus (aka Rusted Kushala Daora one) Hunting Horn from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I will eventually make a full MonHun armor as well, to go with this Hunting Horn, but for now I'm focusing on making the weapon prop first!

And, in case you missed it, I highly recommend that you take a look at part 1 of this cosplay build to know what I did before this post! ;)

Note: this project is split into several parts because otherwise it would turn into a kilometer post; I need to document my progress carefully (many photos etc) since it's a school project. 

Let's get to the prop making!

Above are some additional reference photos of the Hunting Horn in question, seen from different angles. Enjoy my hunter in his undies! These have been my main references while I've been working on this project. I'm not aiming to make it perfectly identical to the in-game version (that would be really hard when it comes to symmetry) seeing how I'm making the whole thing by hand and with materials that I'm new to.

Continuing from where I left off I went to school's art classroom to work with chicken wire. This is a material that I've barely working with before and so my art teacher –and supervisor for this project– showed me how to work with the chicken wire. At first it was a bit hard to get the net to do what I wanted but once you got the hang of it it was actually quite easy! Save for accidentally poking yourself with it – use gloves, people. I needed to fill some gaps on one of the ears with steel wire, which basically meant just "sewing" it closed.

Wire base for the ears.

I was supposed to make the ears about 10 cm long but I ended up making them almost the double, oops. When I made these I thought that 10 cm looked ridiculously small, to be honest. Now to hope that the ears aren't too big once I get to the part that I'll attach them to the head. Before starting putting papier-maché around the whole thing I wrapped it in masking tape, for extra sturdiness and to even out any bigger gaps.

Ears left to dry after first two layers.

I returned to the art classroom on several days to add papier-maché layers to the ears. The problem with papier-maché is that once the wet paper dries it sinks in a bit and, unless you have enough layers built up, the hollows left by the chicken wire's hexagonal (or whatever size you have) patterns will show through. I did over 5 layers to get it to be somewhat smooth.

Reference sketch for the horn's general shape.

I sketched some references for the horns but I didn't start building them on the same day. Instead on the weekend I went back to mom's to continue working on the main body of the Hunting Horn in the garage – which mainly meant adding a lot of PU-foam to the back and sides.
The thing is that I had to add PU-foam (aka expanding foam) in layers and move the head around every time I wanted to get to a different area because otherwise gravity would do its job and I'd waste foam. Learn from your mistakes.

Backside unfoamed.

Added some foam to the back.

I kept spraying on some foam, waited for it to expand and dry and then came back, turned the thing around, rinse and repeat. It's time-consuming but it's better than messing up and I'd rather be patient and not take risks.

Once both halves of the backside had gotten their fair amount of foam I started building the shaft. After having worked with the ears I figured that I could try my luck at using chicken wire for building the main body. I must admit that I hesitated but ultimately went with a yolo mindset. Half the time I was not sure what I was doing because yeah, it was a complete trial and error episode. Good thing Sacchan was with me and so she provided a pair of extra hands for holding things in place meanwhile I secured the nets to each other with steel wire etc – it's convenient to have friends around when you're working on large-scale builds.

Base for the main body done.

Same as above but from a different angle.

I'm actually surprised how well it turned out! It took some hours but it was worth the effort. It's satisfying to see things for once in a while turn out well, even though you went at it looking like a big question mark. I just hope that I'm gonna be disaster-safe until the end, lol.

Close-up of the front of the shaft.

Same as above but the backside.

Now the next part was to cover the whole thing with something and my first thought was to use expanding foam as well, but I wasn't sure if it would actually work. I was afraid that while the foam was fresh it would fall through the wire's structure but once I stared applying it onto the chicken wire it actually stayed on top – good! It seemed to stick just fine (then again, my stepdad said that it has some glue in the contents anyway, hence why it's a bitch to get off if you get it on your clothes etc) and I left it to dry for some hours. Once I came back the foam was still on, now expanded and hard.

Started spraying expanding foam on the wire parts.

Knowing that the foam method works I continued to apply PU-foam all over the build. I had to go out and buy some more cans because yeah, my spare can ran out before I knew it. Luck was on my side and Tamperen Säästötex in town had big cans of expanding foam for dirt cheap because the best before date had recently passed. I bought two cans (different brand than the one I used before) and happily went home to continue the project. For anyone interested the cans were 2,50 € each and you got 5 for 10 €!

Almost done foaming. It looks like a sleeping mummy horse... :'D

I'll need to add even more foam later, especially to the back of the head and to the little end knob, but I'll see what it looks (and weights) like once I start carving out the details.

I'll end the second part here and next time I'll continue adding foam to the back, carving the main body of the Hunting Horn, start making the horns and more! Stay tuned for part 3!

~ Shiro Samurai out.

MH4U Eldaora's Taus Hunting Horn cosplay prop [part 1]

Hello geeks and fellow hunters!

I've wanted to do a Monster Hunter costume for years now (I'm a huge fan of the games!) but I've been hesitant to start because of the difficulty level of the designs. I finally got the push that I much needed when a major school project came up and I wanted to make something big and impressive for it. I thought that I could start by making a weapon from the games and save the armor for later.
After going through a lot of weapon candidates from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, I decided on making a Hunting Horn. It's one of my main weapons in several of the installments, one that I use a fair lot and enjoy playing with, especially in multiplayer hunts. So yeah, once I had decided on that I wanted to try my hands at making a Hunting Horn I only had to figure out which one – there's a lot to choose from! I soon came to the conclusion that the Eldaora's Taus (aka Rusted Kushala Daora one) would be a fun challenge to make and it looks really pretty too!
Also, I want to mention that this is my first time making a cosplay prop of this caliber –and difficulty– and also my first time using PU-foam for a bigger project; I've only used expanding foam previously for small stuff like a spearhead etc. There will be a lot of learning involved.

Note: this project is split into several parts because otherwise it would turn into a kilometer post; I need to document my progress carefully (many photos etc) since it's a school project. Some photos in this post are taken with my SLR camera, while others are taken using my crummy cellphone camera. This is why the photo quality varies, sorry about it. 

Let's do this!

I couldn't find any references of said Hunting Horn, the Eldaora's Taus, on the internet so I had to start my own game and take some photos of it myself. My camera had a really hard time trying to capture the colors accurately from the screen, but the photos above are as close as I could get.
 

Around the end of last year (November something) I started this project. The first step was finding a wooden pole that I could use for the base. I found one in my school's garage that had a broken tip, most likely it had been a broom before and the broom part had broken off. It didn't matter to me that the top was broken because it would be covered inside the bulk of the weapon anyway – aka the "horse head". I know it's not really a horse with the horns and all but yeah, during the early stages of my work some other students and my teacher asked me what I was making and, well, it's so much easier to just say "oversized hobby horse" instead of starting to explain that I'm making a huge-ass monster slaying cosplay prop to people that don't even know what cosplay is...

I needed to make a base for the general shape of the head part. I asked Sacchan for help with cutting out two identical horse-shaped heads out of thick cardboard that I had saved over the years. I hoard things that I think might be useful for cosplay purposes later on. I then taped them together but made sure to tape the whole thing in a V-shape to give it a bit more dimension and depth.

Cardboard base cut-out on wooden pole.

I realized afterwards that the ears were misplaced –and thus useless– but luckily it doesn't really affect anything because the whole thing was to be covered in expanding foam (PU-foam) and then carved into shape anyway. I couldn't have placed the ears right anyway because my cardboard is only 2D while the prop is 3D, if that makes sense...

I started adding foam to the build. I had to take turns spraying each side to try to get them as even as possible, which proved to be hard since the foam expands so much. This part of the process is really slow and it's better to be patient and careful than try to foam many different spots at the same time
– I did this mistake and ended up being unable to find a position that I could put/balance my work to dry (too many fresh spots on both sides of the horse head) that would keep all the newly foamed areas from shifting positions because of gravity. So yeah, I could only watch as the foam either fell off or moved significantly and thus I wasted half a big can of PU-foam. Needless to say I was really mad at myself and wanted to throw the whole thing out of the window...

First layer of PU-foam.

3 big cans of foam later... #epämääräinenmöykky

You might notice on the photo above that there's something white on the pole – it's filler that I tried experimenting with to see if I could thicken the upcoming shaft for the Hunting Horn. Turned out that it's really annoying to work with but it does stick to the wood after some careful application. I did realize halfway through that it's too tedious and time-consuming, especially considering how little thickness it adds and how much I need, and so I stopped putting filler and waited for a better idea to show up. 

Started test carving the head.

I started carving with a mora knife to get an idea of if I had enough foam or not. Turned out that some spots needed more and I had to use a fourth can of foam. I also had to use some foam to cover up carving mistakes...

This (school) project stood still for some months meanwhile I changed schools, which meant that I couldn't work in the garage anymore and had to take my project elsewhere – which meant that the only possible other place was to take it to mom's car garage, or well, that little work room in the back of it. I also had to figure out some things regarding my school change and what teacher would be my supervisor for this project. Luckily my new art teacher was also willing to take up this project as well! The reason I opted to ask the art teacher out of all possible teachers I could have asked is simply because this is a creative project duh and I thought that an art teacher would understand it the best and be able to help me with any issues along the way, material choices if I got stuck etc. My supervising teacher was awesome enough to lend me a full roll of chicken wire –and tools for working with it– when I said that I'd need to use some to make the base support for the horns and some other parts later, score!

This is the "stand-by" state that it was in for months.

On 8th April I went to mom's to celebrate Easter with my family. On the same go I took with me my creation, along with a shitlot of primer sprays, spray paints and whatever else I had lying around in my apartment that I might need for this project. I mean, I got a car ride to mom's so of course I'd bring with me all the stuff that I might potentially need to finish this MonHun prop!

A couple days later I continued to shape the other side of the "horse head". I had a hard time carving it because of pains so I didn't progress a lot on that day. At least stepdad had given me another tool option instead of the ordinary mora knife – a really handy saw! I don't know what it's proper name is in English but it was a godsend.

My carving tool options. (middle one is just the knife sheath)

The head's general shape is starting to look like something...

I returned to work on this project after approximately a month, on the Mother's Day weekend in Finland (aka this weekend). I continued by carving out the head in more detail and to slim it down. It was important to get the head as ready as possible so that I could measure it and make the horns and ears separately at school the next week. It's too cumbersome to move this large prop around and, to be honest, it might not fit into a car once the horns are attached... 

Head slimmed down and details added.

I didn't notice it at first but I accidentally measured the eye placement wrong (I only used eye measure, pun not intended) and so one eye was higher up than the other. Good thing it's only foam so I could easily cover up the faulty eye hole with more foam and carve it out again in the right spot.

Once the head was more or less finished (for now) I continued to make the mane/hair/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. This was a bit tricky because there's quite some depth going on and I needed to plan it and think in "layers" before I started sawing off big chunks randomly. I started by carving out the upper bulk of the mane on one side and then carefully mapped it out in my head where the lower one would be.

Started shaping the mane... or whatever you want to call it.

Once one side was in good shape I turned around and made the other side. Too bad I only managed to make the upper mane bulk on the remaining side before I noticed that there's not enough foam – the mistake earlier (when I put too much foam and it slided etc) had made it so that the sides were not of the same thickness. Good thing I had a spare can of PU-foam lying around, waiting to be used – I knew that I would need it. Ennakoi, tiedät kyllä miksi. :D

Put the prop on the garage floor, plastic underneath for protection.

Added PU-foam to the lower mane half.

I left it on the floor to dry. I must say that I'm actually a bit surprised by how well it's turning out so far, despite the errors along the way. Can't wait to get more progress done!
I will need to come back later to carve out the lower mane on the side that I foamed and then add some more foam to the tip, to get it similar to the side that I already made. Wow, now that sounded clumsy. Once that's done I can move on to foam the backside of the head, to make it big enough to carve out the back mane – but I'll get to that later.

Next up I'll continue with carving the lower remaining bulk of the mane, as well as go and start progress on the horns and ears. Keep your eyes peeled for the second part!

~ Shiro Samurai out.

Tsurumaru Kuninaga sword WIP – part.1

Hello geeks!

So for my coming-later-this-year Tsurumaru Kuninaga cosplay from Touken Ranbu I wanted to start by making his sword, in good time. Technically he is a sword himself so... yo dawg. x) But yeah, you get the point...
I decided to split my progress in several parts to avoid a text wall. I also want to mention that this first part, the beginning, mostly consists of me being a disaster master – everything that can go wrong went wrong, basically. Can't succeed every time. I never do anyway, who am I fooling? trolololo.

Reference image.

What I did was that this time I decided to do things a bit differently. You see, previously I've always made wooden swords from scratch but this time I decided to try the "let's modify a toy sword" approach. With that said I bought a cheapo toy katana from Partajshop and I must admit that I was quite surprised with the quality of the thing – I was expecting something really flimsy and low-end with all the parts glued on but yeah, what I got was an extremely modification-friendly plastic sword that had all the parts easily removable by just pulling them out. Said store gets both my thumbs up for their cosplay-friendly fake samurai swords! ヽ(^o^)丿

So yeah, what I started with is your generic plastic toy katana:

This is what the sword looks like straight out of the package.

This is the naked sword, all removable parts removed.

I noticed afterwards that it's for the better that I keep the part that is the "mouth" of the sheath since it provides support for when the blade glides back in. I thought I'll just cover it with worbla because it looks otherwise really cheap and fake with that overly golden color...

The sheath comes with these two "hanging loops" on each end.
I cut them off with a scissor and then sanded them flat.

I don't know how visible it is on the photos but the sword's handle came without any kind of wrappings which is a good thing because yeah, on toy katanas the wrapping always looks like complete and utter shit. No handle wrapping (aka tsukamaki) makes life easier for me because I don't have to start undoing it and neither do I have to worry about ugly glue remains. :)

I started by making the tsuba. I decided to try my hands at the sandwich method and I must say that it... didn't go quite as planned. I almost ruined my work twice but, by some miracle, I managed to save it. I want to say a few things about it because I ended up with a hilarious fail. xD You see, at first I started heating the bottom worbla piece on my freezer's lid. I had no idea what was a suitable working space for worbla because the damn tutorial didn't say a word about it so yeah, I thought that plastic shouldn't be all that bad – WRONG. My worbla stuck to it like hell (even though glue side was up) and I had to rip it off with force, to the point the whole thing got deformed, bumpy and almost tore. Seriously, don't do the same mistake.
My second thought was to use a metallic surface. The idea was good and I was on the right track but yeah, much to my disappointment I had no worbla-friendly metallic surface to work on; the closest would have been the sink/stove area on my mini kitchen but the problem was that it's way too uneven to work on. As desperate as I was I went to the common kitchen and dug through the closets and then I found a... metallic tray. It had some intricate designs on it but because it was flat I didn't think much more about it – BAD IDEA.
So, well, I did the other side of my worbla piece and –while it didn't stick as horribly to it as with the freezer– the tray had another surprise up its sleeve...

OH MY FUCKING SHIZZLE DRIZZLE .........

I swear that when I saw that the worbla had stolen the tray's print nyysijä!worbla with it I was laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. xD Thank god that it's from my apartment house's common kitchen and not my mom's – mom would soooooo have killed me. I don't think anyone even uses this tray so I should be safe, lol...
Later on it finally hit me that aluminium foil might be the best surface to work on and... guess what? Of course that's what I don't have at home. So yeah, I had to call Sacchan to fetch some for me since she was coming over to my place anyway.
I need to say that I was right – tin foil is by far the best surface to work on that I've tried so far. The worbla doesn't stick to it! I guess you learn from your mistakes. But seriously, my mishaps didn't end there, no no. You see, because I did a layered design on the craft foam I had the stupid idea that I wouldn't need to glue the detail layer onto the main piece... I guess I don't need to even say that it was a bad idea too. :) Needless to say that when I had done one side (all nicely for a change) the other side moved and the second layer (detail layer) fucked up during the bonding process. I ended up with a tsuba that is not identical on both sides and thus, because the edges don't meet, it looks like shit. I tried to save it the best I could but nothing's gonna make it identical so I just have to suck it up. Oh and guess what? I also got a horrible king-size air bubble inside the damn thing too!! I did get rid of the air bubble but I had to really press down on it with my full palm, whole body weight and use protection gloves (warm worbla is warm). The problem is that because I've used my gloves for woodwork they're damaged on the surface from all the sanding etc and yeah, of course this shit caught onto the worbla and gave it a dirty and knobbly surface. HOW MUCH BAD LUCK CAN YOU HAVE IN ONE GO? щ(ºДºщ)
Note to self: fucking glue the craft foam details onto the main foam piece before using worbla on it. It will save you from raging and screwing up your project.

My first sandwiched worbla piece done.
It's fugly but it'll suffice... I guess.

Because my apartment has no spray paint friendly area shower doesn't count and because it's cold as all hell outside I couldn't paint at home; I had to wait until I had my furniture makeover & redesign class in school on Thursdays. During said class we work in a garage and yes, my teacher totally approves that I do cosplays in school, lol. So yeah, I bought some glossy white spray paint and started spraying the sheath white. I did several coatings but –because I'm horribly impatient with waiting for spray paint to dry– I ended up with a less-than-perfectly-even surface. Oh well, I have a fair chance of getting the ugliest spots covered by random details later anyway.

My creative "where to put it to dry" solutions.

With the sheath turned white it was time to add some worbla details on it. No, just kidding – I decided to start working on the handle first. Oh boy, I need to say that I was up for some serious shit... as if it wasn't bad enough already.

Read ahead for a disastrous PU-foam story. Learn from my mistake and fucking don't do it yourself, okay? Thanks. Oh, and warning for foul language ahead. 

Okay, so after some brainstorming with my teacher and one of the, err, I guess he counts as an extra teacher/helper, we came to the solution that I should use PU-foam (aka expanding foam) to fill out the gaps of the handle. I had taken with me my barely used can of PU-foam and started shaking it and preparing it for use. But yeah, as you know my luck is as shitty as that of Donald Duck so of course nothing came out when I pressed down on the "trigger" on the straw piece that I had screwed in place. Nothing. Nada. Nope. I started twisting and turning the straw and heard some soft clicking sound and hoped that it was the "turn the nozzle to activate it" sound but nope, still no foam came. At this point I started getting both frustrated and confused so I just kept turning the plastic straw around until it fucking locked itself on the can's screwable plastic mouth piece. Fuck me. :) Now I got even more irked and because I was ashamed to go ask someone for help at this point, for such a simple thing, I decided to try and do it myself and oh lordy lord do I hate myself when I catch myself thinking like this – things never end well when I don't ask for help, especially when my gut feeling tells me that I should.

Okay so, I seriously got so frustrated that I just thought that it would be a good idea to start from the beginning and so I tried to pull off the straw from its attachment point on the mouth of the can. Horrible idea, okay – I accidentally ripped up the whole damn straw, with the can mouth/dispenser still attached to it. >_> They were really inseparable, lol...
Now I just had the black rubbery pipe-like thing still standing and if I peeked into it I could see the foam in the can, oops. I just felt so lost and so infuriatingly stupid and self-hating that I had no choice but to ask the extra teacher what the fuck I should do now. He just casually told me that it's possible to buy a new mouth part for the can. He also wanted to check if the foam hadn't hardened already since he said it does that after a while and, well, I had had mine for over half a year. He looked at me and said: "you can also do like this – take something thin and stick it to the can! :D".

...

...

JUMALAUTA.

EI HELVETTI.

PERKELE.

KULMIKAS VITTUSAATANA.

I kid you not – as soon as he poked whatever thin object into the can a loud explosion was heard across the whole garage, followed by "PFFFSSSSSCHHH" and then foam started gushing out of the can in all possible directions! It flowed so rapidly that it was uncontrollable and it ended up on the floor, into open cardboard boxes, tables, walls etc – fucking everywhere, basically.
It was like trying to stop the goddamn Niagara Falls, except that it was Foamgara Falls.

Remember doing shit similar to this during chemistry class in school?
– Yeah, something like that.

I swear every goddamn inch of foam came out like a mad erupting volcano from hell and it felt like it would never end. The teacher assistant guy was running around with the foam fountain in his hands and I followed after; neither of us had expected that the foam would be so, err, explosive, and we both were, quite frankly, panicking. When it finally ceased (it seriously took several minutes) I was surrounded by a sticky mess. When I looked around it finally hit me that around me were the scattered remains of my almost filled can of expanding foam; my almost unused can was all wasted and that, I tell you, made me feel wasted – that was material for several cosplay projects down the drain. My jeans ended up being a sacrifice to the angry foam gods and so did my expensive winter shoes and, almost, my Sonata Arctica hoodie as well (thank god I had rolled up my sleeves!!).

This is what the can looked like once the foam explosion finally ended...

I spent several hours after class trying to salvage at least my shoes from the grip of the sticky goop of hell. I first tried to wash it with soap and water and scrubbing vigorously with one of those more robust brushes but lolnope, it didn't do shit – the brush seriously went and died before even a centimeter of the foam came off. I also got some of the foam residue on my fingers and I washed my hands thoroughly with soap 3 times during the first 15 minutes (countless times afterwards too) and rubbed my hands like no tomorrow and it barely did anything; I swear the foam residue stuck to my fingers so hard it felt like a second skin (especially when trying to peel it off), except a lot tackier – this crap is impossible to get rid off.
Regarding my shoes I sat for over an hour with a blade from an exacto knife just carving off the fucking foam, painstakingly slow, from my shoes. I was so angry I was gritting teeth and just wanted to kill something. No wait, correction – I wanted to drown something in PU-foam.  
Do you know that feeling when a stupid disaster happens, that ends up costing you a lot (both in materials and time), and you just try to joke/laugh it off with your classmates but inside you are about to break down and start crying/screaming because you hate your life and your fucking constant shit luck so fucking much? That's exactly how I felt.

I got some foam where it was intended at least... very overkill though.

I think I'll gladly just end this post here because it's starting to get way too infused with my deluxe bad luck. (ﾉ_ _)ﾉ Maybe things will go better in the next episode of this project... or at least I goddamn hope so. I'm getting really sick of this Donald Duck curse that's been plaguing me for the last few cosplays, ughh.

Thanks for reading my... err... explosive foam experiences and unintentional worbla prints, I guess? xD If nothing else I hope you won't need to experience these mishaps yourself, lol.
...

I also guess it would be uplifting to hear about the not-so-successful cosplay making stories of others, so feel free to share your bad luck adventures with me so that I don't have to feel all alone in this misery, huaah.  ╮(─▽─)╭

~ Shiro Samurai out.

Sanosuke Harada's spear from Hakuouki!

Hallo!

First off, I started in a new school on 2nd february and while I'm there I'll be attending this one furniture renovation & redesign course. Thing is, I'm not limited to just working with furniture on this course –even though that's the norm– so I'm free to do anything, as long as it involves woodwork and being creative. And well, I quickly learned that there's another guy making a viking shield so why the heck wouldn't I make cosplay props then? :'D Yeah, so I had my first redesign class on the 4th February and I got a sudden urge to make a spear – Harada's spear!

This is gonna be a lengthy post –mostly because of photos– but I originally planned to separate it into two parts, but then stuff got in the way and, in the end, I thought it better to just keep it as a single longer post – from beginning to end. Enjoy!

I went to check some references and I came to the conclusion that I wanted to make the game version of his spear –aka yari– instead of the anime version. There seem to be a slight difference and I personally think the game version looked nicer.
Yes, this totally means that I will cosplay Harada in the future! ;)

Oh, and I decided not to make the spear in any super authentic way because this is just for cosplay and as long as it looks the part –and isn't too heavy to carry around a whole con day– then I'm happy!

This dude here is Harada and that's the spear I'm making!

We're building our stuff in a garage, a short walk from the school building. I went there to check what stuff there was but didn't find any wooden poles. Luckily that could easily be fixed – the teacher drove me and some other guys to K-Rauta store in town during class time, booyah! o/ 

There I bought a two meter long wooden pole and a can of PU-foam. I finally get to use PU-foam, ouyeah I've been waiting for this! 8D

My pole, notice the length.
(and don't notice the messy background.. xD)

PU-foam in a can.

The following day I drafted the spear's blade onto some thin cardboard I had lying around. I did some quick research online and came to the conclusion that a 30 cm blade should be fine and it seemed to be the right size for Harada's spear too, at least compared to the length of my wooden pole – aka what is to be the shaft.

Spearhead pattern.

I cut out my blade pattern and compared its width next to the pole, it looked right! But I did realize that I will need to cut the pole 30 cm shorter or it will be too long to keep upright in most indoor locations; the spear would exceed 2 meters. Sure that spears are long in general –and Harada's spear definitely seems to be longer than what he is– but I need to take into account how convenient or cumbersome it will be to carry around something this long in a convention. Not practical, almost hazard. :'D So yeah, my spear shall be 2 meters in total, not much more than that.

That's not exactly a short stick to poke with, nope nope! ~

On 4th March I could finally continue the process. Yes, I got sick. I waited patiently for my class to start on Wednesday afternoon and then I took my stuff (pole and PU-foam) and walked to the garage with the rest of the class. While there I marked my pole and cut it shorter. Easy peasy.

My pole shortened ~

After that it was time to start working on the spearhead. I took a sheet of plywood, drafted my pattern over onto it and cut it out with your usual hand saw. After that I sanded and filed it down a bit so that it wouldn't be so rough and shit. The curves I did with the file.

Man, I cut so damn straight! :-DDDDD

After some filing and sanding – ready for the foam!

 Next up was my first encounter with using PU-foam, expanding foam. Luckily it's super easy to use so no poops happened; I just sprayed it around until the whole area of the spear was covered, as evenly as possible. I left the thinnest part of the blade untouched because this part will be inserted into the pole, through a notch, that I'll saw on the pole's end later.

One side recently PU-foamed.

I couldn't do so much else for the day so I left home and came back the following morning. The foam had expanded as it should and well, it had also glued itself to the table. Oops!Luckily it was a working table –and thus not precious– so I just took whatever sharp and handy object I could find in the garage and slid it under the foam, in a repeated cutting motion, to free my piece of work.

Stuck foam monster and my rescue tool.

With my spearhead freed from the table it was time to put foam on the other side too.

Unfoamed...

... and foamed.
(the wooden blocks are for support so that the thing wouldn't roll over)

The progress didn't go forward in a week or so because I got sick again but on 18th March I had class again and it was time to start carving my spearhead into shape! Sure that I did have a quite ridiculous amount of PU-foam on the thing, but rather too much than not enough.

I used the same knife I had used to free my creation from the table earlier (photo above) and started cutting away! I had never done this before so it was all a new learning process for me; I quickly got the hang or it and figured out what worked best. 

Around maybe 30 minutes later I had a start:

At this point I could only see one thing – KEBAB ROLL. :-D

I kept on cutting the PU-foam for the next 2 hours non-stop. It was a fun thing to do, I enjoyed it very much. But you need to be careful so that you don't cut too much at a time... or your fingers, hence why I used gloves.

I made sure to try to get both sides as identical as possible but it wasn't the easiest task at times – always when I thought that one side was of perfect thickness and then, when I tried to make the other side have the same thickness, my precision would derp and I'd cut off more than what I had intended. Luckily I never cut too much and in the end the finished product turned out nothing short of fine.

Carving finished!

Looking at the foam's surface I definitely wanted to even it out and fill in the holes and such. My school had a big can of putty lying around so I fetched it, a putty knife and started spreading a layer of the gray goo on my spearhead; both sides of it.

Putty added!

I then couldn't do much more for the day except leaving it to dry. In one of the "rooms" in the garage I work in during class –aka where all the wood and saws, tools etc are– there was an sturdy iron clamp. I spun it open, put my putty-fied spearhead on it, closed it and went.

Drying time, drying time... ~

The following day I had class again so I returned to check up on my project. The putty had dried but when I started sanding it I quickly noticed that at some parts the foam's structure was peeking through and well, even though most of the holes were filled you could still easily spot the outlines of them as well. It didn't look very good so I just went ahead and put a second layer of putty on this – this time plenty.

No regrets – there's more than enough this time!

I left it to dry and returned the following Wednesday. Of course I sanded it again and this time it looked more promising; I didn't get a perfectly smooth and even surface but it was much better than the previous time. I decided to leave it with some minor imperfections to give the spearhead a more used/rugged look because hey, after all it is a battle weapon!
With the sanding done I took my can of gesso and started coating the shit white. I think I applied five coatings in total before I called it a day and, of course, I let it dry the recommended 30 minutes between each layer.

All layers gesso'd.

Oh, and a fun thing! At the garage where I'm working there was nowhere to put water. Well, at least we even had water in a specific room... I obviously needed water for the gesso so that I could clean my pencil between the coatings and such. But hey, when there is no bottle or anything to put water in you take one of those big plastic cans that normally carry random car wash products and shit and yeah, you take a big knife and massacre the top of it brutally so that you get an oversized water-container! *thumbs up*

My gorgeous water can! :'D

Errr.. yeah. Back to business.
So after all the gesso layers had dried I just had left to paint the whole shebang. For this I had silver spraypaint ready at home; I went to pick up my spearhead from the school's garage and sprayed it at home. This went without any issues this time, except that I noticed after painting one side that the brush strokes showed up a bit more than I had thought. I tried sanding down the gesso on the unpainted side but in the end the difference was so minor that I didn't bother repainting the other side. Or I was too impatient...?

Sprayed side with non-sanded gesso under.

The following day –on 8th April– I went to school again to continue my progress. This time the first thing to do was to saw the notch into the top of the pole head, so that I could fit my spearhead into it. It needed to be 4,5 cm deep and actually my teacher did the sawing (by hand) while I held the pole still. He ended up cutting his finger a bit but nothing serious, thankfully. :'( The sawing was quickly done although hazard and then I spent maybe around 20 minutes sanding the notch wider with some folded sand paper. After a while I could finally fit my blade into the notch and it actually held in place securely, just like that!

Spearhead inserted into the notch.

But obviously it wouldn't stay like this – I needed to add the golden part that connects the blade with the spear's body. I first thought about making this golden piece the same way I made the spearhead – foam and putty. But then my teacher showed up and suggested using metal instead; I thought "why not?", I mean, that would be a new experience!
I left the golden part for a while and checked on my references again – Harada had this kind of round end on the other end of the pole. I immediately thought about using some kind of wooden door knob and that's exactly what I found lying around in the garage too, yes!

Hello wooden knob!

The one I decided to use had this kind of bottom that was almost the perfect size to just be fitted on top of my spear. I just needed to saw off the little protruding part on top so that it would be smooth. Easily done!

Protruding part cut off and bottom quickly sanded.

I ended up accidentally doing some sawing marks –where I didn't want any– and so I took some putty to fill them in. I left the knob to dry in the garage and took the spear with me home to paint it.

Putty added on top.

At home I put one layer of gesso on the pole and let it dry. Before going home I had purchased a can of black spray paint but on the following day when I returned to school to spray the thing I noticed that my spray can was defective! No matter how much I pressed the nozzle down nothing came out and no, there was no security thing still left on that I would have needed to remove prior to usage – it just plain didn't work. Luckily the store was close to my school so I just went over there, told the guy that I bought this one from them yesterday and that it didn't work. Even though I actually didn't have the purchase receipt with me the guy still gave me a new and functioning one in exchange. Thank god for small shops; it was the same guy at the counter who sold me the defective one the day before so he recognized me, phew!
But hey, actually, before I sprayed my pole, I did figure out that it was still too long and so I cut off 30 cm more from it. It was 210 cm long before I shortened it once more, and this was without attaching the spearhead, which would have made the whole beast a whopping 240 cm! Luckily I did realize that it was still too long before I started spray painting it, because otherwise it would have been annoying. Well, seeing how the spear barely fit into my apartment and the elevator then yeah, it would have been a hazard at the event because of its size, oops.
So yeah, I just shortened it again and then I had to do some measuring and put marks, with masking tape, to mark what parts of the spear would be black and what would be red. When that was done I just went outside the garage to spray two layers of black paint on both ends.

Pole coated with gesso. There are masking tape marks around it.

Black parts sprayed.

I had also sanded down the dried putty on the knob and put a layer of gesso on it which actually ended up in me accidentally dropping the whole knob in the gesso jar, shit.

15th April I'm back in class again! I started by painting half of the knob with golden spray paint (half because I had to hold it somewhere) and while it was drying I went and sprayed the red middle part of the spear. Of course, before painting, I needed to protect the already painted black parts from getting red paint on them and so I covered them with masking tape.
At first I thought that I'd make the red color completely even but then, when I was actually painting, I started thinking that having uneven color with more or less 'blotches' varying in darkness from dark to lighter red looked really cool! I don't know, it just made it look more lively, real, gave more depth or whatever you want to call it – it just looked awesome so I kept it like that.

Red part sprayed.

Wooden knob finished.

I left them both to dry a while and when the knob had dried enough I painted the other half of it gold. Yes, I played the waiting game quite much this day. Oh well, when that was done I turned my focus to the golden piece –aka gyakuwa– that would be fitted where the spearhead starts. Earlier I had mentioned this to my teacher and he had suggested metal and well, guess what he actually brought with him on the morning to me? Yeah, this.

Tadaaaah!

After I had gotten past the initial "what the heck? xD" surprise I actually thought that it was a very clever material to use – I mean, it looks like metal and it was easily bendable too! Gotta love recycling haha. I just bent the piece around my spear, to get an idea of how it would look, and it looked pretty damn good. But I noticed that I had to paint the very top part of where the notch was so that it would be gold as well and yeah, so I did. I accidentally got some golden paint on the black part (of course where I hadn't put masking tape -.-) and so I had to re-apply a coating of black spray paint to get rid of the extra glitter effect.

Now I had things drying everywhere and I was kinda stuck, so I asked permission to finish class earlier and went to check for gyakuwa references on one of the school computers in the actual school building. Because who has internet access in a garage, anyway?

The following day I started by turning my spear into a mummy package – yes, I put masking tape over mostly all of the already painted areas so that I could do the small golden 'circles' around that separate the red parts from the black. This took a while but when it was finally done I took my gold spray paint and started spraying.

Masking tape all over the place...
(the brightest white spot will be sprayed gold)

I let them dry meanwhile I undid the tape on the parts that wouldn't need to be covered anymore and, while doing so, I came across a few areas where I had put tape previously and then forgotten about it; which meant that the white gesso coating was still showing under. Oh well, some quick fixes here and there wasn't really a problem and soon enough the golden parts had dried too. Of course some of the paint had leaked under the masking tape over onto the other color's area and this would need to be fixed with small paint brushes later, but I thought I'd do it at home because in the garage we had no fitting brushes.
Oh well, I then took the gold metallic piece again, wrapped it around the spear, took a marker and started sketching the shape I wanted it to be. I cut it with scissors.

Shape sketching done!

Now there was not much left, except for reclaiming back my spear from the mummy world and taking it home with me to fix the small paint spills. The weather was nice on the 21st so that was the day when I fixed the leaked spots – I basically just sprayed some paint on a plastic surface, from a very close distance, and then just brushed it on the faulty spots with a thin paint brush. Obviously the spray paint dries quickly, so I had someone spraying the paint on the plastic while I applied it on my spear, to save time.. and paint.

Example of the spray paint having leaked
under the masking tape during the painting process...

On 22h April I finished the spear! *badamtssh*
What was left to do was gluing the knob in place (with hot glue!) and gluing the gold metal piece with universal glue, aka Karlssons Klister – which was my Swedish choice. After gluing the metal piece I had to press and hold it tightly until the glue stuck to it properly; it took a while and I had to glue it in parts (first "around" it to make it stick to the right place and then glue the overlapping end) but in the end it worked out.

Gyakuwa glued and tied in place.

I tied a small string around to keep the glued overlap of the metal piece tight, so that it wouldn't lift and thus undo the gluing before it had dried completely. Blah blah blah...

But now, have some photos of the finished spear!

I apologize because these photos don't really do justice to it but oh well, you'll get to see it in action when I cosplay Harada. ;)

This is just to show the spear's height.

I'm happy with it, even though I know that I could have done a neater and more advanced job – I just got a bit lazy. x) I also skipped a very small detail, the 'ring' around the gyakuwa's mouth; I couldn't be bothered lol. Psst, it's the very first time I made a polearm type of weapon, woop! o/

Oh, and by "more advanced" I mean that I could, for example, have made the spear's body be of different thicknesses in the different painted areas; I thought it wasn't that necessary though, and maybe a bit too much trouble anyway for something that won't really be noticed on photos...

That's all for this time! Now to start planning for my summer cosplays! 

See ya!