My Dumb Projects
Friday, May 05, 2006
Stormbreaker: Beta Ray Bill's Hammer
After building Mjolnir, I decided to build Beta Ray Bill's hammer Stormbreaker. This hammer was designed By Walt Simonson in his brilliant run on the Thor comic book in the late 80's.
The story is collected in a trade paperback "The Ballad Of Beta Ray Bill". Cool story and great Simonson art..a Must Read!
The title page of the trade paperback has a nice line drawing of the hammer and I used this as the template for my replica and scaled it to my Mjolnir. For your convenience, here is the PDF.
Template
For the handle I used a 18" long 1.5"(measured by inner dimension) PVC pipe with end cap
The end cap was cut to a height of 1.375" and a .25" bevel was sanded on the edge with the belt sander.
I cut out all the profiles from 3/4" MDF. Half the head profiles have a 1.75" hole drilled into them for the handle.
Two disks of MDF were glued together and then sanded down to a thickness of 1". I sanded a 15º bevel to the side.
The head profiles were glued together and the sanded smooth.
I drew a 4.5" circle where the striking surface will attached and then sanded edges to change the square profile to a circle. It's easy to draw, not so easy to make...
More sanding on the transition.
I sanded the axe edge on the other end.
More sanding to round the head.
Smoother still...
More sanding and shaping on the axe end.
I cut a 5.25" disk with a 15º bevel and screwed it to the head.
I applied Bondo to smooth out the surface and cover the seams.
As you can see, I am now building multiples and keeping the best one.
Stormbreaker has 3 rings at the point where the handle meets the head. I cut 2.5" disks from MDF and then cut 1.75" holes in them.
The rings were all rounded on the sander. Here they are on the handle.
The rings were Bondo'ed, sanded and primered.
The rings and handle were glued on with 5-minute epoxy.
The spike on top was sanded from a 1.5" wooden dowel.
The spike was cut off to length of 2" to fit into a hole routered into the top.
After MANY coats of automotive primer, I painted all the parts with Rustoleum Gold paint. Unfortunately the metallic gold is very prone to scuffing so I coated it with Dupli-color automotive Clear Coat. It dulled the finish a bit but not too badly.
The strap was made with the same method as Mjolnir....two strips of vinyl contact cemented back to back to form a loop.
Here you can see the lamination and the extra overlap that I included at the spot where it gets attached to the hammer.
I stained the vinyl with acrylic Burnt Sienna and black washes to get a more realistic leather.
A .625" dowel was screwed onto the cap (before it was glued on) and the the strap was epoxied to the dowel. I painted an upholstery tack with the same gold paint and attached it to the inside.
The final hammer. This turned out to be MUCH more difficult than I thought it would be but it looks good next to Mjolnir!
The handle of Stormbreaker is surprisingly short in comparison to Mjolnir. It seems that there's just enough room for Bill to get both his giant space-monster hands on the handle!
¶ 10:57 PM 2 comments
The story is collected in a trade paperback "The Ballad Of Beta Ray Bill". Cool story and great Simonson art..a Must Read!
The title page of the trade paperback has a nice line drawing of the hammer and I used this as the template for my replica and scaled it to my Mjolnir. For your convenience, here is the PDF.
Template
For the handle I used a 18" long 1.5"(measured by inner dimension) PVC pipe with end cap
The end cap was cut to a height of 1.375" and a .25" bevel was sanded on the edge with the belt sander.
I cut out all the profiles from 3/4" MDF. Half the head profiles have a 1.75" hole drilled into them for the handle.
Two disks of MDF were glued together and then sanded down to a thickness of 1". I sanded a 15º bevel to the side.
The head profiles were glued together and the sanded smooth.
I drew a 4.5" circle where the striking surface will attached and then sanded edges to change the square profile to a circle. It's easy to draw, not so easy to make...
More sanding on the transition.
I sanded the axe edge on the other end.
More sanding to round the head.
Smoother still...
More sanding and shaping on the axe end.
I cut a 5.25" disk with a 15º bevel and screwed it to the head.
I applied Bondo to smooth out the surface and cover the seams.
As you can see, I am now building multiples and keeping the best one.
Stormbreaker has 3 rings at the point where the handle meets the head. I cut 2.5" disks from MDF and then cut 1.75" holes in them.
The rings were all rounded on the sander. Here they are on the handle.
The rings were Bondo'ed, sanded and primered.
The rings and handle were glued on with 5-minute epoxy.
The spike on top was sanded from a 1.5" wooden dowel.
The spike was cut off to length of 2" to fit into a hole routered into the top.
After MANY coats of automotive primer, I painted all the parts with Rustoleum Gold paint. Unfortunately the metallic gold is very prone to scuffing so I coated it with Dupli-color automotive Clear Coat. It dulled the finish a bit but not too badly.
The strap was made with the same method as Mjolnir....two strips of vinyl contact cemented back to back to form a loop.
Here you can see the lamination and the extra overlap that I included at the spot where it gets attached to the hammer.
I stained the vinyl with acrylic Burnt Sienna and black washes to get a more realistic leather.
A .625" dowel was screwed onto the cap (before it was glued on) and the the strap was epoxied to the dowel. I painted an upholstery tack with the same gold paint and attached it to the inside.
The final hammer. This turned out to be MUCH more difficult than I thought it would be but it looks good next to Mjolnir!
The handle of Stormbreaker is surprisingly short in comparison to Mjolnir. It seems that there's just enough room for Bill to get both his giant space-monster hands on the handle!
¶ 10:57 PM 2 comments
