Coat Research

Starting to focus on the costume element of my project I started to gather images of Eurasian Nomadic clothing, mainly focusing on the coat for now. Being a travelling people well away from the modern world they mostly craft their own clothing from what they have with them such as wool, felt, animal skins, fur, cotton and linen. 

The majority of the jackets that I've come across are very similar shapes to a dressing gown which are fairly simple patterns so shouldn't take too long to construct.

Creating that Vintage Look

Today I was aging my knife prop to hopefully make it appear well used and old. These are some testers I carried out to find the right finish I was going for.

I used blue roll to apply coats of cellulose sanding sealer to my failed hand grips which gave it a shiny varnished finish.

I tried lightly sanding the wood and applying more cellulose sanding sealer.

I feel like it looks too new and light whereas the harsh natural area my character lives in would take a different toll on the wood. Also they wouldn't have access to varnishes only natural oils so I'm straying away from a shiny finish to a more natural dark look.

I applied wood dye to make the grips darker which I found instantly made the wood look older as the dye sat in all of the recesses on the surface of the wood giving it an old dirty worn look.

This is a comparison image of the wood dye on top of the plain wood with the cellulose sanding sealer and it definitely looks more time worn.

I applied the wood dye to the knife prop and left it to dry.

Here's a comparison image of my dyed handle against the natural wood colour.

I found some wood wax and wondered what it would do applied over the top of the wood dye so I took some blue roll and wiped the wax on to my tester.

The wax is on the right and as you can see it is much darker and all the wax has caught in the recesses of the wood creating  a really nice worn texture on the grip.

I was curious how it would look with a coat of cellulose sanding sealer so I applied one layer.

More coats were applied to see what would inevitably happen. It just made it more shiny and going back to what would be available to my character material wise I decided against applying the cellulose sealer to my prop.

I applied the wax to my handle and this was the result. I think it came out very well and it looks a lot more weathered and old.

A quick test of sanding the cellulose sealer.

I rubbed the dye and wax onto the blade to try and create darker areas and this was the result of a small amount of wax. It came out relatively well but everything was very waxy after for obvious reasons and it made it slightly unpleasant to hold as it made my hand waxy.

I quickly sanded some of the wax off using a very fine grit sand paper which fortunately made holding the prop more appealing and comfortable. Over all I'm happy with how it turned out and I may continue to work on it as I progress through my project.

Making

I considered what materials I could use to construct the prop but everything would have needed a very realistic paint job and for a closeup in a film I just don't think I'd be able to achieve a finish I would be happy with so I think I'm going to plasma cut it all out of sheet steel and test my metal working skills.

Soon after researching I made this quick template as a tester for scale, leaving 3mm all the way around the inside as the plasma cutter would rest on the edge so it balances out the size, otherwise it'd come out bigger.

I wasn't completely happy with the previous design so I made some changes and drew it on some thicker card so it would be easier to transfer it onto a sheet of MDF minus 3mm all the way round.

After transferring the design onto MDF I used the band saw in the workshop to cut it out and the sanding wheel to neaten up my edges. 

The template was clamped to the sheet steel and the plasma cutter was moved around the edge to get the shape.

 Using a hand held grinder I neatened up all the excess metal and rough surfaces. I also ground off the colouring on the sheet steel to reveal the natural steel and I ground in a false edge so it looks functional but in reality it's blunt and safe.

I used the pillar drill in the workshop to drill holes down the handle of the knife so that wooden grips could be fixed on with metal pins (nails). I used oil to lubricate the metal whilst drilling.

The metal hand guard was made using the same technique as the knife and I used the pillar drill and various hand files to cut out the small strip in the middle so it would fit over the handle. This was relatively time consuming only due to the filing.

The hand guard was welded to the knife and the excess was again removed using the hand grinder.

I found some scrap wood in the workshop and proceeded to draw and cut out this rough pair of grips to be sanded down and filed.

I drilled holes so I could assemble the whole thing whilst working on the hand grips. I removed them to run them on the belt sander and pillar sander.

Finally using a hack saw I cut down the nails to the appropriate size.

I used super glue to aid in making sure the hand guards wouldn't come off but the super glue set super quickly so my grips dried on slightly wonky so the pins didn't fit. The most crushing moment happened when I had to use a clamp to force off the wood and sand everything down again, sadly the grips were too squashed to be reusable so I quickly made some new ones from the left over spare wood.

I repeated everything and all the same techniques but this time made sure all the parts were in the correct position before applying super glue.

Here is the final prop. I ran the handle and it all through the buffer in the workshop and am currently in search of some varnish to finish the handle to a darker state and I may continue to work on it as I make the rest of the costume.

Prop Research

Decided to finally get started making so I went with the hunting knife given to Little Red Riding Hood, by her mother, belonging to her father. I searched for images of old hunting knives and these are just a few examples of what I found but they were all fairly similar. I wanted to make something slightly over sized as it's her fathers knife and I want it to look plain and practical like it's been well used and capable of cutting off a wolf's paw. Also with it being a large knife I want it to visually show how young and otherwise presumably vulnerable Little Red would be if her mother hadn't taken precautions against the known danger lurking on the journey. 

I'm taking the shape of the blade in the first image as it's the most common shape in all of the images I've seen and I'm going to enlarge it so it looks slightly too big for my model to go with the over sized jacket etc. I'll attach it to a belt using the method I've seen in my previous research with metal loops and chain or some other material like leather.