Sand blasted aluminum

[BhujangiJedi]

After sandblasting my blades, I decided to see what it would look like on the hilt. It's a little sloppy (it's difficult!), but I'm pleased with it. I also did some painting (Testors gold) - I like how it came out in the grooves on the emitter and pommel, but no so much on the hilt and switch (it'll probably wear off the switch soon enough).








Here's a close-up so you can see what the sandblasted area looks like:

[strengthofrage]

That is pretty wild, I like it

[TorLinWaDur]

wow. nice.... how do you sand blast ?

[BhujangiJedi]

A friend of mine is an artist and does a lot of glass work - melting, blowing, and blasting, so he let me use his sandblasting room. Basic sandblasting isn't too difficult - you just point the hose at what you want to blast. Getting a good pattern proved to be difficult, though - the resist (the stuff you use to cover the areass you don't want to blast) is rubbery and hard to get precisely in place.

Here's my hilts before blasting:

[Obi-Dar Ke-Gnomie]

Wow! That looks really good!

[Angelus Lupus]

I like it, another interesting way to make hilts unique. I suppose the sandblasted areas also serve as grips, too?

[savyas]

hrm... as usual, you guys have given me a new idea. I have a sandblaster, but I've never used it for patterns. What do you use for "resistor" material to block off the areas you don't want blasted? It almost looks like silly putty.

[BhujangiJedi]

Yeah, the sandblasted areas do have a nice grip to them. If I could do it over I'd go for a simpler pattern with a focus on providing nice grips.

I don't know where you get it, but the resist is called Buttercut and it's made by 3M. A layer or two of duct tape will do the trick for light sandblasting, but I think it would be difficult to cut intricate patterns into duct tape.

Buttercut comes in large sheets and you can draw directly on it or you can press a penciled image onto it and it will pick it up (like silly putty on newspaper). It's called Buttercut because it's easy to cut - "I can't believe it's not butter!". I wrapped a piece of paper around my hilt, drew a pattern on it, then took it off and cleaned up the design. Then I pressed the paper to the Buttercut to transfer the image, touched up the image on the Buttercut a bit, then cut the whole 7" x 4.5" piece of Buttercut and wrapped it around the hilt. Then I used an Xacto knife to cut out the patterns. Although the Buttercut is pretty easily cut, the knife does scratch the hilt a bit - not a problem if it's right at the border of the blasting area, though, since after you blast it you don't see knife scratches.

[Hasid Lafre]

In my art class we did sandblast on a mirror and essentally etch it. what we did was took that clear roll of laminate tape type stuff, I forget what its called. but we went thru alot of stages to do our design on paper then transfer the design on this laminate tape type stuff and cut it out, then went and sandblasted it. had to be carefull thou not to hold it in one spot for to long cause the heat would build up and actually cut thru the tape laminate stuff.

I got a couple mistakes but in a few min I will post a pic of it.

EDIT

Here we go, and a cookie to anyone that guess what the image is.
*Note* the raised effect is from the mirror being at an angle and me standing back a bit(so iamnot in the image).



I wish I could remember the name of that laminate type tape. it came in huge rolls and had like mesurment marks on the side like at a craft store there table they use to cut fabric on.

Sorry the quality kinda sucks the lighting in this place isent that great.

[BhujangiJedi]

Some more pics in the gallery.