Welcome back! Time to tackle Hornet's (massive) Needle and boy was it an adventure. In this guide I will cover the following steps:
1. Make a paper template
2. Materials used
3. Construction
4. Sealing/priming/painting
Make a Paper Template
For this I used my favorite free program Inkscape. I gather these two reference images for the basis of my drawing and my scale.
I used my height as a baseline and used measurements from the right picture to get an idea of the correct proportions. The design itself is pretty standard so nothing crazy here.
After this is all done, I printed it out in actual size on cardstock to place it against me to double check scale. I printed it out in two different sizes to be sure.
As you can see on the left, Needle looks too short. After looking at the reference again, I figured the base of the handle needed to come up around my shoulder (with heels on). To make sure the handle wasn't too long after scaling it up, I shortened the handle so the top of the circle would be about the middle of my helmet horn.
Materials Used
The materials were pretty simple for this build as well. I generally buy items that I would use on multiple builds in larger orders. I ordered my foam for Hornet and my upcoming Cassandra cosplay at the same time. Also, some of these materials I had left over from either my Okami cosplay or my Vi, so I did not have to purchase them again.
3 layers of 10mm EVA foam (TNT Cosplay Supply)
-- 1 sheet from TNT was enough
3 10mm EVA triangle dowels (TNT Cosplay Supply)
A portion of EVA-70 High density 2mm foam (TNT Cosplay Supply)
-- only comes in 1 size
1 round foam dowel (TNT Cosplay Supply)
Rapid Fill (TNT Cosplay Supply)
Fine Finish (TNT Cosplay Supply)
C4 Foam Clay (TNT Cosplay Supply)
4 n52 magents (ebay)
1 2ft long x 3/4 inch "PVC Riser" (Home Depot)
1 "riser to PVC pipe adapter" (Home Depot)
1 2ft long x 3/4 inch PVC pipe (Home Depot)
1 aluminum rod (Home Depot)
Spatz Ultimate Mirror Chrome (Amazon)
Black Gloss spray paint (Home Depot)
Alclad II Gloss Klear Kote (Amazon)
400 & 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper (Home Depot)
Barge (Amazon)
Kwik Seal Plus (Home Depot)
The tools I used: Dremel, belt sander, and a box cutter.
Construction
First thing I did was take my paper template and trace out the main body of the blade onto foam. I ignored the handle, since that would be later wrapped in 2mm foam on the PVC riser. To know how many layers I needed, I first cut out two then sandwiched the riser in between to see if I was happy with the shape. It appeared to me that I would need a middle piece to better support the PVC support pipe so I cut out a third layer, leaving space for the PVC pipe to lay.
Next I took my PVC pipe and figured out where it would lay along with the adapter that would allow me to screw in the handle. Around the middle of the blade, the sword became too narrow to fit a PVC pipe for support. So instead I used an aluminum rod in the lower portion that I would later separate for ease of storage/transportation. To have something for the metal rod to slip into, I drilled a hole into a foam round dowel I had and glued that in place of the "top" portion of the blade (see below right).
I wasn't too concerned with these ugly edges since they were all going to get sanded anyways, but I still tried to match them. Also some of the edges slipped back and created big, ugly voids in the general shape of the blade. To fix this, I filled those voids with some foam clay I had on hand (see above left). After 48 hours, it was dried out and I could sand it flat like normal. To make these two pieces stay connected, I used 4 n52 magnets on the inside where the two pieces meet. I used the same technique as my Hornet helmet where I dremeled a hole the size of the magnet, filled with super glue, put in the magnet, and covered with painters tape.
I used 3 layers of 10mm foam because I wanted to sand a large bevel from the center of the blade to the edge with the edge being around 10mm thick. So I used my belt sander to get as close as possible primarily using 80 grit then 120 grit belts. I then scratched up the pvc handle and wrapped it in 2mm EVA foam with barge. For the top circle piece, I just used the same size EVA foam dowel, glued it in a circle, and sanded/attached a piece for it to sit on out of a piece of the same size dowel. This fit perfectly into the top of the handle. To secure it, I hot glued it in place.
This is what it looked like. As you can see the surface is pretty uneven and fuzzy. Also, the edges were not as "sharp" looking as I wanted. The problem with trying to sand it down was once it became super thin, the sander would tear the foam. So instead I chose to attach 10mm triangle foam dowels to the edges and skin the entire blade with 2mm foam. This would give me a smooth gradient look for the middle "peak" and make the edges look sharper. I put barge on both sides and cut away excess foam where the triangle dowel meets the main blade.
I found the foam dowels to be very easily "dented" on the edge. Take care to avoid bumping the edge into things before it is all sealed. It gets stronger once the primer is applied.
Glue only one side at a time! Barge is very tacky and it would have been very difficult if I tried to put glue on both sides of the blade at the same time.
After it is all skinned, I took my dremel and carefully refined the edge of the skin to be as thin as possible by the triangle dowel. Then I cut the skin where the bottom portion separates from the top portion of the blade. This gave me the cleanest possible seam for the two pieces. Now I moved on to sealing, priming, and painting.
Sealing, Priming, and Painting
I sealed the edges where the triangles met with the 2 mm foam and any other visible seam, including on the handle and where the triangle dowels were glued to each other.
To prime, I used Rapid Fill and Fine Finish. Same process as the helmet, 2-3 layers of Rapid Fill followed by a light sanding, then 2 good layers of fine finish followed by gentle wet sanding with 400 then 600 grit.
To paint I used a glossy black base coat followed by a chrome mirror airbrush paint and sealed with Alclad's Klear Kote which is also applied with an airbrush.
I highly recommend the Alclad II Klear Kote for the final clear coat because it did not dull the chrome AT ALL! That being said, the chrome paint itself was pretty temperamental when it came to being handled after being dry, so if you have a way to spray it while hanging or being supported without having to move it around too much, that would be ideal. However, since I do not have such capabilities in my garage, I had to spray one side at a time.
It took about 3 light coats of the chrome to get the effect I was looking for.
Done!
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