Inside Adam Savage's Cave: Chronicles of Narnia Sword!

Hey, everybody, Adam Savage here in my cave with a show and tell. And today's show and tell has to do with, well, we're going to Narnia. OK, we're not going to Narnia. We are going to Weta Workshop's version of Narnia because a few a few months ago, I think it's a few months ago, I picked up a lovely new piece for my collection. And, you know, I love swords. I have probably over a hundred. I've got them on display in my office at home. I've got them on display here. And I love all sorts of swords. I love real swords. I love fake swords. I love stunt swords. And I might love stunt swords most of all. And our friends at Weta Workshop, Richard Taylor's amazing wonderland of of the possible have made thousands of swords for movies over the years. They made weapons for Mulan, for Warcraft, for everything. And they made all the weapons for Narnia. And yeah, a few months ago, I was able to pick up one of their swords built for the Narnia films. And I want to walk you through this piece because it's a lovely and amazing piece. And it's it's it's hidden qualities are worth crawling over because this is the kind of effort that a great shop puts into a narrative. So this is this is a sword built for the Narnia, one of the Narnia films. I'm not sure which one. And as you can see, it's got the very Narnia iconography from the design of the film. It's beautiful handle with the wire wrapped and the decorative scabbard. And you can also see that it's quite beat up. You can see that it's like this thing has a lot of production use. And to my mind, that only increases its beauty. The shape down here, all this entire scabbard is actually a monolithically cast piece. And I'm not even sure what it's cast out of. But let's just take a look at the scabbard first and foremost. This scabbard is, I believe, cast in polyurea. It feels that durable. It's super flexible. You can't break it. It's absolutely indestructible. Wouldn't it have sucked if I banged it on the workbench and just separated into two pieces? That could have happened, but it didn't. They've got some beautiful metallic silver treatment on the decorations here. And yeah, if you look really look, I mean, I like to joke that when movies went from normal resolution to 4K, Weta is one of the only shops that didn't freak out because they were already building things to this level of detail. And it's portal here. I don't I think they must have cast this with a plug inside of it that they pull out, but I'm not sure how that works. I mean, I guess I could call them and they would tell me, but I haven't gotten around to it. Everything about this is great. There's a leather texture cast into it. And while this looks like, I mean, from one foot away, I could believe that this was metal and leather. And yet it's cast as one piece. So this is the way a shop like Weta is able to do thousands of weapons for a film because they can reach these efficiencies. And a shop like Weta, in fact, every major effect shop has all of these different ways in which they achieve economies of scale to build many things for a film like this, because, you know, it might cost a thousand bucks to make one hero's sword. But there's no way if you have 200 swords that the producer is going to give you 200000 bucks to make that. Now you got to make them cheaper. This is a great way in which the economy of scale also just makes the whole thing look even more convincing. That it's the way it weathers, really just stunning. OK, so we've got the leather pieces that hold this on the belt of the wearer. There is the scabbard. And again, there's no metal on the scabbard at all. It's just one piece of plastic. And now here is the sword. And this is this is very much a stunt sword from stunt battle scenes in the film. That means a stunt person held on to this thing and whacked into. Whacked into other stunt people's swords with it. And you know how I know? Because look at the leading edge of this blade. Look at this. Yeah. Ooh, that shine in the back is neat. This thing has seen some action, but it was built to see action. So check out how thick it is on its leading on its leading edge. It is really almost probably four millimeters. Yeah. Yeah. Easily three or four millimeters thick, which means that it's not going to it's not going to shatter or dent so much you can't use it anymore. This is meant for big. I keep hitting the thing above me. OK. In a big battle scene where people are swinging at each other, you need the swords to be light. You don't want them to be dangerous. Well, it's why you had the stunt people, so they don't kill each other with them. But it's also got to be able to take the abuse. And this blade has been designed through and through with the goal to take the abuse of filming. It has this beautiful etched detail. If I'm right, that was etched with ferric chloride, which is Peter Lyons' favorite acid for aluminum. I'm going to guess this is not standard 6061 aluminum because it's got a really nice spring to it. I think it's a it's a different alloy. And now here, let's take a look at the handle and the grip. And this is this is gorgeous work. The chain, you can see there's no bubbles in this. It really looks like a chain. And it's not this whole thing is cast as one piece. In fact, it's a stunt sword. So all of this is meant to be able to bend out of your way. My guess is that the sword has a rat tail that comes out to about here and maybe a fatter part here. So they could cast it. I'm not sure. You might not need that. You might just drill some holes in here. And then when you put this in the mold and do a casting here, it all just becomes one piece. And again, this isn't a whole bunch of swordsmithing. This is one mold done once and you have the whole thing. Like, that's really cool to me. I I don't often come across stunt pieces like this, like background stunt stuff. But when I do, I love adding it to my collection because I like seeing the use. I like imagining a bunch of grownups in costume beating each other with these things because they're having a great time. Come on. How could you not put on like a minotaur costume and grab a sword and just start smacking away at each other? That's got to be great. I watch the behind the scenes Lord of the Rings material. I know that Viggo love beating the crap out of all the Morty stunt men and they love beating the crap out of him. That's fabulous to me. That is that's that like that sounds like the best kind of fantasy camp. It's something I'd really like to try one day. Anyway, thanks for walking through my beautiful workshop made Narnia sword with me. It is a proud piece of my collection, and I'm delighted to share it with you. Thank you, guys. I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching that video. If you'd like to support us further, you can head over to our merch store and get a poster like this one. This is my sketch of a gauntlet, but it's not just a sketch of a gauntlet. I use drawing as a tool for figuring out problems, and I have drawn this to help you solve the problem of how to make a gauntlet. I've made it a kind of instructional and pattern guide for making an entire gauntlet from scratch. But you don't have to. You could just frame it and hang it on your wall if you like. The choice is yours. It's printed a beautiful heavy card stock, and you can purchase your own by following the links below.