Pieter’s Airbrushed Metallic Blades

Pieter from Arcana is back at it again: these swords were shaped using a belt sander with 80 grit. He notes that this left the surface to coarse and looking a bit pitted. Higher grit sandpaper might leave the surface smoother, and heat treating the foam could potentially get rid of the last bumps, but Pieter hasn’t tested that theory yet.

The swords are first painted with black latex and then sealed using plastidip. After this sealing, the swords were primed for any available kind of paint. In this case Pieter airbrushed heavily diluted silver and bronze metallic model paint. Then the swords were sealed again with plastidip.

Ready for battle
Ready for battle
Another view of the sword
Another view of the sword
Leather frog!
Leather frog!
Matching sidearm!
Matching sidearm!
The airbushed blades
The airbushed blades

LED-Nocked Arrows

LED Larp Arrows

 

Pieter from Arcana in the Netherlands presents his luminescent arrows. Since Arcana sometimes hosts for 48 hours straight, there’s combat at night and arrows can get lost. It’s much easier to find these arrows on the ground, because they have light-up nocks.

The light in the arrow is courtesy of a light-up-nock, commercially available, luckily not too expensive ($2 – $5). There’s a very simple LED and battery configuration in a clear plastic nock. There are several types of light-up-nocks most of them are usually bow string operated.  The one thing you should pay special attention to is size, most light-up-nocks are 6.2 mm in diameter and arrows come in different cross-sections. Luckily most arrow shafts that have a insert to accommodate the changing of the arrow head are of this size.

The arrow head, is a commercial available prefab foam arrowhead for archery tag ($3 – $5). It screws in the arrow shaft via the insert. And can be made extra safe with some glue. The arrow is a carbon fiber 31 inch compound hunting bow arrow and comes complete with a changeable arrow head and real feathers($2 – $3).

The build is very simple, replace the arrowhead and replace the nock. The one thing that isn’t in the picture that I have bound the feathers with a string (white) so it looks just a bit better.

One arrow costs Pieter something between $7 – $13 and looks a lot better than the commercial rubber feathered larp arrows that will cost something like $16.