Benihime Sword Prop

Back in 2007, my friend came to me with a ticket for Phoenix Comic-con saying his sister couldn't make it. I gladly accepted but it turns out the con was in a day. That's not exactly the kind of news you want to hear when you are a cosplayer.

Luckily, I had some leftover wood from another build and decided to put together a Kisuke Urahara costume with some older martial arts gear I had lying around and a store bought Urahara hat. Being pressed for time, I didn't really have any time to make this as nice as I wanted or take any pictures of production.

I started the build by drawing the sword's outline onto 1/2 inch MDF I had in the garage, and drawing the hilt on 1/4 inch MDF. I cut these out with a jigsaw, and made a duplicate of the hilt. Using wood glue, I sandwiched the 1/2 inch MDF between the two hilt pieces and clamped it to dry. After it dried, a little power sanding was used to dull the edges and round the grip enough so it was comfortable to hold.

After the sword was built, I cut the designs and hilt flourishes out of craft foam and glued them in place. When that was dry two coats of black gesso was painted on. In any other case, I might have added another coat of black paint, but the gesso turned out just fine. I masked off the hilt and blade to paint the silver and gold touches on the sword.

The rest of the details were pretty simple as well, especially in a pinch like this. The tassel was a red curtain tassel I found at a craft store attached with a gold eye screw. The loop at the top of the grip was made of braided red needlepoint thread, and the gold triangle chain was made by folding paper footballs and painting them gold. They are attached with fishing line under the red loop.