hey everyone steve here at sks props
today we're gonna make my version of Harley Quinn's mallet welcome to the shop in today's video
we're gonna be putting together harley quinn's mallet
at least my version of it now this is a very iconic weapon and it's synonymous
with the character so there are a ton of different iterations of it
i just wanted to put together my particular spin now this of course is
made all out of my hd foam which you guys can find over at blick art
materials so that means that it's both lightweight
and con safe now this is going to be a two-part video
series part one is going to go over all of the fabrication techniques
including all of the wood grain that i have going on here and of course
the leather wrapped handle part two is going to go over all the paintings so
we're going to take this from a raw weapon
to a fully finished work of art we've got a lot to do to put this together so
let's go ahead and get started i want my version of the
mallet to be one-handed and not overly big so i'm using an 11 by 17 template on
10 millimeter hd foam i'm going to use my heat gun and of
course i have my respirator i'm going to lightly heat the foam this is going to
make it easier to manipulate i'm going to roll the foam one direction
by hand and then back on itself this is going to give the foam a subtle
curve i'm going to be using contact cement to adhere the two sides together
while the contact cement is drying i add a little more heat just so the foam
doesn't flatten out i'm adding a little bit of super glue
for my double adhesive method i do need this seam to be pretty strong
each side is carefully lined up and firmly pressed together you want to make
sure that this seam is as tight as possible even though we're going to
cover it up down the road i need to make caps for both sides so i
take my ruler and measure the diameter of the end of the mallet
looks like it's going to be right under six inches so i break out my circle jig
for my bandsaw and cut out two circles just under that size after the circles
have been cut out contact cement is once again used to adhere the pieces to
either side of the cylinder i break out my dremel rotary tool to
clean up some of the edges and i start to also detail some of the sides using my rotary tool i start to carve in
the rings on the face of the mallet now this is very important you don't want
them to be perfectly round or symmetrical you want them to have an
organic look you can also help vary this look by how
hard you press into the foam the more details added to the face of
this mallet the rings are going to get smaller and smaller so next up we're
going to be using a stone bit this is going to allow me to get very clean
crisp lines all the way around and for my final pass i'm going to be
using a wood burning tool set to the highest temperature
it is important to move quick with this tool and make sure that you're always
wearing your respirator i just want to take a minute to thank
all of my patreon supporters and those of you that have been purchasing my line
of hd foam now if you guys are buying my phone from
blick art materials be sure to go through my website or the links below
first because i do receive a vendor affiliate and that allows me to continue
to do what i do which means more videos for you guys
more tips and tricks for prop and costume fabrication
thank you guys so much for your continued support more videos are
on the way using a cloth tape measure i figure out the middle of the mallet this
is where the handle is going to go through
to make sure i have perfect holes for my cardboard tube i use a forstner bit and
drill from the bottom and the top i lightly mark on the tube with a pencil
exactly where my adhesive needs to go and i go ahead and use some super glue
along with some accelerator this next step is what's going to
separate this mallet from a lot of the other ones that are out there
this is going to have a very detailed bark section all the way around the
outside of this mallet to achieve this look i'm going to
randomly cut strips of six millimeter and 10 millimeter foam
not thinking about the shapes at all later on i'll puzzle piece these pieces
together and that's what's going to give it that organic look
i would recommend to cut out more of these than you need because a lot of
them you're going to whittle down to fill in the gaps
the main thing here is i'm going to just eyeball where they go but before i glue
them down i want to take my rotary tool and clean up the sides
i'm doing this step now because it'll make it easier to clean up these pieces
later on because i'm covering a lot of the
surface area i'm going to be using contact cement once again
it's going to be applied to the sides of the mallet and to the back of each one
of these pieces i've cut out once the contact cement is dry to the
touch it's literally me just going through my pile of scraps and seeing
what pieces will work and where here's where i can see where a piece
might work but it's a little too long so i go ahead and cut it off and then just
add in smaller sections if you get to a spot that just doesn't
work go ahead and cut some more foam or just bend one to shape the main thing
here is just varying the differences of the six millimeter and ten millimeter
foam all the way around the surface this is
what's going to give us that really organic look using a medium grit sanding drum on my
dremel rotary tool i start to add in some of the grooves that will make up
the basic look of this bark now at this point i'm not trying to add
a bunch of details this is just a road map for the direction of the piece
just like the face of the mallet i switch over to the small stone bit this
will help me sharpen and start to define some of these lines so i've got the gouges in the phone but
the bark is still looking pretty flat that's why this next step is crucial to
the look the sides of every single piece of six
millimeter and 10 millimeter hd foam is trimmed
almost all the way down to the sides of the original mallet this allows the
phone to take on a ton of texture and really get that organic bark look i mean it's a night and day difference
between the side i haven't worked on yet once you've got that finished up go
ahead and hit it with a heat gun to seal off all the foam next up i'm going to be working on the
leather wrapped handle in this case i'm using two millimeter hd foam
now for the hand section i want it to have a checkered pattern basket weave
look so to do this i'm going to have one inch
strips of the two millimeter foam and these each are going to be nine inches
long i'm going to start at one end and the
nine inch strips are glued on either side of this piece
after those had set up additional strips are woven in one on top of the other and
those are glued into place this will give the handle a little more
texture and i think just visually make it more appealing this woven foam is then cut to fit and
marked on the handle with a pencil because this is going to be a heavy wear
area contact cement is once again going to be used to adhere the foam to the
handle once the handle had been pressed firmly
all the way around additional adhesive was used to close the gap now for the top of the handle i'm not
going to have it as ornate i'm just going to use a very long strip of two
millimeter hd foam and spiral that down the cardboard
this strip of foam is just tacked into place using super glue when designing this mallet i really
wanted harley to have a place to put her logo
so in this case i'm going to do a leather wrap all around the top of the
mallet the basic shape of this leather wrap was
first drawn out onto some bristol board and then transferred onto two millimeter
hd foam that was then cut out using a utility
knife additional strips of two millimeter hd
foam were glued around the bottom of it this is to make it look like this wrap
actually attaches i want everything about this mount to
look as though it has a purpose that's also why i spent all that time
carving the bark of this wood even though i'm going to be covering up
because if i hadn't done it right it wouldn't look good in the end
i use a mixture of contact cement and super glue to adhere down this leather
wrap around the top at the ends of the mallet i'm going to
be using strips of six millimeter foam to look like metal bandings
visually this will give the appearance that they're keeping the wood from
splitting on the ends since the bands aren't going to get a
lot of wear and tear i just use super glue to glue them down for the band at the top of the handle i
used a strip of 10 millimeter hd foam notice that i cut it at a sharp angle
this will help minimize the seam i also glued one inch circles of 10
millimeter hd foam to the bottom and top of the handle to cover the holes to give all the strips a hammered metal
look i used a medium grit sanding drum attached to my dremel rotary tool to make it look as though the woven
handle wrap was stitched i first drilled out the handle and then cut strips of
two millimeter hd foam these are then glued and pressed into
the holes that i had previously drilled out this is one thing that's great about my
two millimeter hd foam is that it has more stretch
than any of the other foams that are on the market because of its higher density
so it works great for these faux applications where it looks like it's
sewed or tied after it looked like it was all stitched
one way i then took my additional strips and glued them in the opposite direction in the end it really does look like a
leather stitch and gives that additional detail to the piece
to keep with the look of realism and that everything is functional i cut out
a ton of these little rivet heads and started gluing them to all the leather
pieces when placing my rivets i actually had to
make sure that they look like they were going into the raised sections of the
wood i also added a few to the metal bands to simulate some small tacks on the
leather wrap i did the pen technique where you just take the end of a pin
and press it firmly and twist into the foam to give this leather a worn and tattered
look i'm going to go ahead and do the tin foil technique
this is achieved by lightly heating up the foam crumpling up some tin foil and
pressing it firmly into the surface this will actually emboss it
this same texture is applied to the faux leather handle wrap it's a small detail
now but makes a huge difference when you dry brush later on last fabrication step we got harley's
logo and for this i'm going to do three diamonds on either side
the diamond patterns were drawn out and then traced onto some two millimeter hd
foam these pieces were then lightly marked
with a pencil on the side of the hammer to make sure i lined them up properly
once i was satisfied they were glued into place and the tin foil technique
was also applied to them so you guys can see some of the
techniques that i implemented to put together this iconic weapon at least
my version of it now i'm really proud of how the wood grain on this came out
and i really enjoyed the leather wrap on this handle this is the kind of stuff
that i'm excited to put out there because i want to see you guys
implement it in future builds if you guys are enjoying these videos be sure
to give them a thumbs up and share them with your friends and
family and remember if you're building any of my builds or
using an hd phone be sure to tag sksprops on twitter and instagram
because i love seeing your progress until next time
build your best with the best hd foam
