Foam Sword

A friend of mine was making a helmet out of EVA foam, so I appropriated the cut-offs to make some weapons and a crown. Here's the short sword.

I glued two layers of foam together, then used an electric carving knife to cut out the basic overall form. Rough shaping was done on a belt sander (foam dust everywhere, whee! Even with the vacuum extractor hooked up. Like seriously, make sure to wear a dust mask if/when you sand foam). The smaller shaping in places where the belt sander couldn't easily get to, like at the base of the blade and around the pommel and crossguard, was done with a sanding drum in a Dremel. After shaping was done, it was primed, painted and varnished, and I glued the gems on because I had some lying around and decided it looked nice.

Next time I'm not varnishing it. Even the super-high-gloss varnish just murdered the chrome paint.

Probably not LARP-safe, and definitely not LARP-durable.

Time: Couple of hours across several days, although probably only about two hours of actual work. The rest of it was spent waiting for glue or paint to dry.

Tools & Materials: 10mm EVA foam floor tile mat thing, liquid latex, electric carving knife, box-cutter, X-acto knife, steel rulers, white gel pen, belt sander, paper towel, Dremel with tiny sanding drums, grey primer, black and chrome spray paint, blue glass gem, clear epoxy.