Hei's Daggers - Darker Than Black: Part 4

You might wonder how these daggers turned out. Unfortunately, the person who commissioned me never paid their final payment, and thus I ended up sitting around waiting to see how it would resolve before I did my final post on them. I never did end up getting paid, so these daggers are going up for sale.

 This is the dagger from the previous mold out of the sander. With my client wanting the blades as thin as they were, I was coming up against a few major problems. Mostly, my cast was not perfect mirror image of itself, and I was having to handle that. I continued sanding it down, and gave them a fast coat of some boring black matte paint just so I could see the imperfections of the blades.

Clearly not perfected yet, but I showed them to the client. He was unhappy with them, so I offered to recast them and give it another shot. I also wanted to try a different method of putting the blades together, hoping for a smoother make.

You can see here the top blade is put together using a very strong adhesive, and sanded, while the bottom is the same adhesive, not sanded. So, after more sanding, I was finally happy enough with them to give them their first spray coat.

Problem: the spray coat bubbled. Oi, seriously? So, while the daggers looked better, I had to strip off most of the coat and go at it again.

The stripped coating and reapply turned out better. I started to edge them in silver.

Here are the basic final daggers. They're sitting sullenly waiting for an owner now, due to my commisioner not paying for the final payment. They've been sitting for about four months now, so I plan to touch them up. You can see how thin the blades turned out in the end, but I think that was part of what made this all so difficult to do. With a thicker blade, a little less accurate, I think it would have been easier to work with. In fact, I actually made FIVE daggers. One broke because the blade was so thin. You can see the difference between the final pair (on top) and the first pair (bottom). Final pair has the proper paint and final sanding while the bottom pair does not.

As always, I put my thoughts on the pieces. Well, first thought, is I would not do these out of resin if I did them again. I would do them out of wood like I had originally desired to. It was an interesting experience to go down though. Resin molding definitely has its advantages, but I think in other circumstances than what I tried to do with it. I think the biggest problem was the thinness of the blades the client wanted. It made for quite a few difficulities. I also think I would go at it more with a detail sander than the belt sander. All in all, the daggers look good in photographs, they have an excellent weight, and myself and everyone who's come into contact with them loves posing and playing around with them.

If you wish to purchase them, please email me at the email above and we'll come to a price. I'm willing to go fairly good on the price as these aren't made to anyone's specific needs and I'm only trying to get back what was lost due to lack of payment from the client. I'd also be willing to sell the first pair, but I would need to finish them off (final sanding and painting). They are a little thicker, a little heavier, and a little more sturdy than the final pair.