How to Make the Best Wooden Sword

It seems like a lot of detail to put onto a piece of wood and most people don't want to begin the arduous process of doing that to a one-time project by hand. There is, however, a far easier method you can follow that gets far better results.

It's faster too!

Equipment you will need;

-Electric planner

-Table saw

-Belt sander/Spindle sander

-Sandpaper

-Bandsaw

-Patience (lots of it, if you want a good blade)

There isn't a set of rules to follow for this. Just go wild, use your imagination.

If you can't, I'm sorry you poor bastard out there who can't imagine for shit, but you will need to.

The process is simple. First, you must obtain a piece of wood. It can be any type (even pine, but really?).

You want a hard wood preferably, for obvious reasons. Don't be a fool and use poplar like I did.

Maple, walnut, cherry, any wood that catches your fancy.

You take that wood and make a long bar from it. The corner-to-corner diameter determines the width of the blade.

If you're feeling fancy and want a two handed blade, make the bar super long. About 5 meter in length and nearly half a foot of corner-to-corner diameter. Otherwise, ignore this (good luck planing that thing).

I originally wanted to pass the bar through the planer on its corner, so the upper corner gets planed neatly. You can probably make a jig from some scrap that holds the bar. I did not test this and don't recommend it. Do this at your own risk, I have no idea what will happen.

What ended up happening was that I cut the bar in half, so you get two long bars of wood that are triangular shaped.

In hindsight, these two bars of wood aren't going to make the full sword. It's merely the blade.

My new method uses 3 separate pieces of wood and sticks it all together with a threaded rod.

That's when the planer comes in use. You plane the top corner of the triangle off, using the flat surface you made with the table saw. You can make your sword super thicc or you can make it really thin depending on how much you plane it.

I have no clue, I haven't tried it.

So you have your triangular bars. Depending on your equipment, those bars aren't going to be even with each other.
That's why you made them super long you dingus, so you can use just one of them. Cut the bars in half width wise and stick them together with wood glue, the bigger flat edges connecting. Preferably with hand vice clamps.

Afterwards, you should have a fairly long blade with no point. Two, if you wanted two swords.

Draw out a triangular point on the tip of the blade piece and grind the excess away with the belt sander.

You've got your blade now, all nice and finished.

It probably looks really sexy and you want to start using it but hold off on that.

You have to make the handle and guard. It doesn't even have to be fancy, like mine.

Just a bar of wood as the guard and a dowel for the handle works, if you're making in solely for training purposes, that is.

You came here for a sexy sword, not some half assessed, dime-a-dozen instructable wooden cut-out.

The handle and hilt are two separate pieces. Its like that to access the hard to reach parts for sanding and it's all connected by a threaded rod.

I thought the whole sword would snap apart from the first swing because of how the rod is directly between the blade parts. Surprisingly, it's quite sturdy. It might bend a little though.

I lied at the beginning about the equipment list, by the way. Sorry. You need a doweling jig too, for the rod hole in the blade, guard and handle.

Using your jig, you make holes in your preliminary blocks of wood that will be your guard and hilt. Do that into the blade too and make sure it lines up evenly because you don't want an ugly sword after all that hard work.

Thankfully, it's wood and wood is a forgiving material to work with if you have experience.

Shape the handle into a round bar with the spindle sander and, if you want to go a step further, add a pommel onto it using the belt sander in conjunction with the spindle sander.

Draw a pattern onto the hilt and sand it out with the spindle sander. Keep it like that or smooth it out, depends on you.

Join the hilt and handle via threaded rod (I used 3/8 of an inch because my holes were 1/4) and sand the joined seam to sleek sexy smoothness.

There really is nothing like a sleek sexy sword that doesn't explode into bits when you swing it.

So by now, you should have a blade with a hole in the base and a handle and hilt with a threaded rod in it.

You need to join the two pieces. It's quite simple, really. Just forcefully screw the rod into the hole of the blade and make the fit snug.

If you manage to do it successfully on your first try, that's swell. Good for you, because I didn't and the fit loosened. Every time I swung the thing, the blade would loosen just a bit and it looked quite ugly.

Rub some gorilla glue into the hole and screw it in. You get a snug fit that doesn't loosen. Voila.

By now, the sword is basically done. Everything is assembled, fit, glued and tested. You can make a sheath for it, you can sharpen the point and edge, make a nicer hilt or add leather grips to the handle.

Go nuts. It's your sword, make the master sword or make Dragon slayer from Berserk.

I own a set of carving chisels at home so I could even engrave the blade if I wanted to.

On the other hand, impress your musically inclined friends by making a guitar out of the damn thing.