I decided to create a Zangetsu sword out of sheer boredom a couple of months ago. I had stumbled across a plank of pine in my garage that was perfect size for the sword, so I got to work. I tried my hardest to make it as accurate as possible, but all of the good reference pictures I had gathered all varied, so I combined all of the variations into a sketch. Also, I've seen the handle have an hour glass-esque shape, and wanted to create that shape initially. But for the purpose of structural integrity, I had to make it perfectly straight.

What I did in a nutshell, was draw the shape in Illustrator, blew up the image to scale, and had a large printout done. I traced it onto the square plank and cut the piece out from the pine plank. I sanded all of the edges by hand, and then used a belt sander on the sharp edge of the blade as well as the flat surfaces.

Once that was done, I took two pieces of oak and glued them to the handle. This was done to keep the very narrow part of the blade (where the blade meets the handle) from snapping off. When the pieces were attached, I sanded them down to a circular shape, and then glued and nailed them to the handle. Then, I began to paint.

For painting, I drew a line where the gray part would be, and covered it with newspaper held on by pinstripe tape you'd use on a car (I wouldn't recommended this, since it left a residue afterward) and painted about five coats of the initial black on the rest, including the handle. When all five coats were done, I did the same with the other side for the gray. For the finishing touch, I wrapped the handle with medical tape, and applied a velcro-removable piece of cloth. Overall, it turned out very well for my first anime prop, and it hangs on the wall of my bedroom.

Here's some additional pictures:

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