How to: weapons from chicken wire and paper ;-D

Ok well recently moved into my new home, started getting my stuff in order and looking around for stuff left behind that could be usefull for modelling. So today I went to the bottom of the garden and fount some chicken wire that had been used in a fence but the person who put is there forgot to cut the excess off but hey now I'm using it :-D

Ok I can imagine that many of the things that are included in this how to have already been used by the people viewing this blog but for those that don't know these methods here is a tutorial. It is mainly to show how to make swords out of chicken wire and paper but I have included how this method can be adapted for making a cross bow and how to make a sword without the paper... In another tutorial I will explain how to add other details to these weapons :-D but for now here is the basics...

You will need... Chicken wire, scissors, plires, wire cutters, normal paper, PVA glue, Plastic glue a hammer (not shown), newspaper, paint, a hard surface (prefrebly an anvil (not shown, or owned) and paint.

Step 1: cut the chichen wire into pieces, using the wire cutter, these pices should be a rough representation of the weapon you want to make. i.e Swords like in this case should be like little crosses.

Like this one :-D

Step 2: Make sure it is to scale. I feel that it is so moving on then...

These next few steps include a technique I got off Paul! It is essencialy his how to make a paper halbard but adapted for swords.

Step 3:Right if you have seen Pauls tutorial you just need to look at the images if not...
Cut  out a bit of paper ,  fold  in half, open it up and put the "Blade" in the middle of one of the halves, take the blade out and apply a bit of wood glue to the paper, put the blade back fold the paper over again, press halves together, wait for glue to dry and cut into this shape.

Step 4: Bath in plastic glue and stand it up, I stuck it in news paper but I imagine foam or cork is good. Leave it to dry, you will find when it's dry it is rock hard this is thanks to the plastic glue. 

The sword is now complete all you need to do is paint. :-D nice and simple, for those of you want something more complex I will add another "How to" in which I will discuss who to add details, and basicaly complicate the whole thing :-P But here is a few variations...
Cross bow

The edges os the wire are only slightly even so it is easy to make a cross bow
1. Cut out a T shaped bit of wire
2 Bend the top of the T to make it look like a bow
3 cut out a piece of paper and fold it over the main part of the cross bow.
4 Put some PVA on the paper and then fold it over the bow. I recomend you try add another bit of paper just so you double the thickness this is mainly for aesthetical/proportional reasons.
5 Leave to dry.
6 Once dry cut to shape if you don't know what this is look at an illistration of a cross bow.
7 Bath is plastic glue and leave to dry solid.
8 Paint and add bow strings ( I will hopefully include a tutorial on that in the next post).

Sword without the paper

To make this just follow the first 2 steps for making the other sword then these
Step 3: put blade on a hard surface, I recomend an anvil.(I used concrete :-P)
Step 4: Hammer the blade flat, do this on both sides.
Step 5: Straiten the blade out with plires.
Step 6: Use the wire cutters to make the blades point.
Step 7: Paint :-D

Ok here they all are side by side so that you may compare them.

From Left to Right... Paper and wire cross bow, just wire sword (its at an odd angle :-( ), paper and wire sword , paper and wire sword

And there you have it an easy and cheap way to mass produce weapons :-) I will include another tutorial to explain how to make these more detailed and how to combine both methods of making swords to get the best results.