That's a wrap!

Well, almost. The blade wrapping is done. I went with yarn to get a heavier, rougher rope look to it. The handle wrapping is 1/8th inch ribbon. I'm about 4 inches of the way into the wrap and have used a whole roll. That's 10 yards or 9.14 meters! I never would have guessed that I'd have to buy another roll.

Hammer-Time!

...hammer finish paint! One good screen capture I made of the battle axe shows the side of the blade with a lot of uneven surface, like it had been through a lot of hammering or rough forging and maybe a few dragon skulls.

All masked off and no place to go...

...except to get a fresh coat of.....

Round 1 ding-ding!

Here, I've round over the the edges of the hook mast, axe shank and axe handle. I made the connection between the handle and shank slightly larger than it needs to be so that I can start the shank wrapping in this area.

Adding sharpness

The sharp blade edges and pick point are hand sanded to the centerline of the axe (shown in red). I started playing around with string to simulate the wrapping around the axe shank, although at this point, I haven't been able to find a good reference for this detail yet. I've sprayed the axe with black primer, just to see where I'm at so far.

Highs and lows

Once the rough sanding is done and the parts are close to their final angle, a grid is drawn on the tapers with a thin line Sharpie marker. That way, I can guage the high and low spots on the tapers as it is sanded by hand with a block and sandpaper. The high points of the plastic are sanded away leaving the gridwork in the lower areas untouched.

Adding the angles

I held the pick and blade sides against the belt sander to remove material to taper them almost to a point. The tapers begin at the handle and stop short of coming together as a sharp edge, leaving a 1/16th thick edge. This is so I can add the blade and point tapers seen later in picture #5.