Claymore Sword Tutorial Part 1

The construction of my Claymore for my Phantom Miria cosplay is imminent. With this said, I've only worked with wood a few times in my life and I've never made a prop weapon. I've found it quite difficult to find good sword tutorials and even more specifically, any Claymore sword tutorials. Many people, when they think of a claymore envision a long, narrow sword with a v-shaped hand guard. This is not what the swords look like in the Claymore anime, instead this sword's blade is wide at the bottom and tapers to a sharp point at the tip. Along with a different blade shape, it also has a long, narrow hilt and a very intricate hand guard that kind of looks like the Batman symbol. While this might end up being trial and error, I'm going to post my progress here in case anyone would care to use the steps I take to make their own Claymore.

With this said, before I even thought about materials, I decided to make a mock up using cardboard. This serves as a template of sorts, although I won't actually trace the pieces onto the materials I'll use to construct the actual sword. The most important part of the template is the measurements, this is why I made it. It was hard for me to find screenshots or panels where any of the Claymores were actually holding their swords facing down with the tip of the blade on the ground. This made it difficult for me to draw out measurements, but I eventually estimated and drew them out in Illustrator on a picture of a Claire figurine.

Keep in mind that mymeasurements were made to compliment and be proportional to my height of 5'6". When comparing the measurements on the figurine to my own body, here are the measurements I established:

- Blade: 43" long
- Hilt: 19" long
- Hand guard: 3" long by 12" wide
- Other Blade dimensions: 8" wide at bottom, 4" wide at top, 4" long for very top of the blade which will be sculpted into the tip

The blade widths could be used as a standard considering the fact that the lengths should only vary slightly with differing heights (maybe a few inches on the blade and hilt).

Once I made the measurements, I began to think about materials I could use. There are pros and cons to many different materials, but a Claymore is a pretty heavy duty sword, so I figured the stronger the material, the stronger the sword. With this said, I initially though of just using some fiberglass strips and resin to cover my cardboard template. The fiberglass would be able to make the cardboard really sturdy, but it would also tend to be pretty heavy. I also thought of using craft foam, but I realized that it would get gouged and broken pretty easily if I wasn't SUPER careful with it at all times. I'm not a super careful person and neither are people at cons, so that was scratched almost immediately. My best bet, I decided, was to use some sort of semi-light weight wood that would be strong, but also not weigh a ton.

I went to the Lowe's in my neighborhood and perused the lumber yard in search of the prefect wood. Like I said, I needed something that was strong, but not too heavy. I choose pine because it is the lightest, highest quality wood. My recommendation would be the clear or highest quality pine you can find. Because the sword measures at it's largest 43"x8", I bought one piece of 1"x8'x8". I figured that I could just cut the wood in half and sandwich the pieces together in order to avoid using multiple pieces of wood. For the hilt, I was torn because I wanted to use a steel rod, but all Lowe's had was rebar which was definitely not wide enough or the type of texture I was looking for. Instead, I settled for a 7/8"x48" pine dowel. Looks like I'll be developing some pretty strong arms this summer!

So far, most of this information is theoretical, but once I begin the practice of it, I will be able to give more concise and direct information. I'll also be posting a tutorial for the Claymore armor I'm going to be making (I've never made armor before either, but it looks like fun!).