Forging Benihime Creating Urahara Kisuke's Crimson Princess

Urahara Kisuke, aka Sandle Hat, aka Mr. Hat and Clogs is a character from the anime series Bleach. Urahara wields his Zanpakuto, Benihime (Crimson Princess). In creating a costume for Urahara, I decided to create Benihime's Inital Release form.

This is a brief tutorial of how I created my Benihime prop . I used a lot of what I learned creating Seifer's Gunblade in the creation of this prop. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, drop me an email.

Design

To begin this project, I created a "pattern" to build the sword around using Adobe Illustrator. A pdf of the pattern is available, download here.

It was drawn true scale so that I could print it out on several sheets of paper. Use spray-tack glue on each sheet, then glue them to the wood. Much like a pattern used with fabric, this pattern can then be cut with a jiggsaw.

Assembly

Pattern on wood ready to be cut (jiggsaw in the background)

Closeup, the wood is clamped to the workbench

This Benihime prop uses one sheet of quarter-inch plywood, and two small sheets of quarter inch basswood.  Half inch pine was used in my earlier Gunblade and Kagato’s Sword props, but the desire here was for a thinner blade. The Basswood pieces are used to build up the hilt and handle portion of the sword. Basswood is similar to Balsawood but stronger.

Pattern for the handle pieces glued to the basswood

Use a handsaw to cut the basswood, the U shapped slot was challenging

Here are the primary pieces of the sword.

You'll notice the end of the handle of the blade piece is cut off short, my pattern was just a little to long for the piece of plywood I had. As I assemble the pieces together, I'll fix this issue.

The basswood hilt piece is glued to the handle piece and clamped. Repeat this step with the second hilt piece and handle. Sand the two combined pieces, focusing on the u shaped grove going down the center, it will be harder to sand once glued to the blade.

Update! By popular request, I'm adding more details on the hilt construction.

I realize now that I don't have any pictures showing how the trim was applied around the edge of the hilt. This diagram shows how the layers of the hilt are to be assembled. I have broken the pattern up into individual files to better show what pieces are cut from what thickness of wood.

Cut Map for 1/4" Wood

Cut Map for 1/8" Wood

The pdf files for both cut maps are available, 1/4" Cut Map and 1/8" Cut Map. They can be printed and applied directly to the wood for cutting. You can see from the 1/8" Cut Map, the hilt trim is made up of four pieces of wood, 2 U-shaped pieces (Hilt Trim), and 2 short straight pieces. The U-Shaped pieces are glued to the wide part of the hilt, matching the U-shaped slot in the Hilt Face piece. Once in place, the Hilt Side Pieces are glued to the side of the hilt, to connect the Hilt Trim A and Hilt Trim B pieces together. I used wood putty to hide all the seams.

Take one of the hilt and handle pieces and glue it to the blade piece. Clamp together and let dry, I waited six hours. Glue and clamp the other hilt and handle piece to the other side of the blade piece.

Sword Hilt Assembled

Sword Assembly Layers

Handle End Showing Gap and Inserts

Due to the size of the plywood and the length of the blade I wanted, a gap was created at the end of the handle. A small piece of basswood was cut to the size of the gap and glued in place and clamped until dry.

Sanding and Shaping

The next stage of preperation requires quite a bit of sanding. Start by using 60 grit to shape the wood into a sword-like shape. Narrowing the edges of the blade to give it an illusion of sharpness, then rounding the pieces that make up the handle. The picture "Handle End Showing Gap and Inserts" above shows the sanding work on the handle, but the end hasn't been shaped yet.

After the sword has been given its general shape, use 100 and 150 grit sandpaper to smooth out the surface and prepare it for the fine details. The Benihime has a flower like design on the hilt as well as a raised edge around the hilt and the caps on the end of the handle.

Flower Pattern Glued to Basswood Sheet

Flower Pieces Ready to be Glued to the Hilt

I glued a pattern for the hilt details to a basswood sheet, then cut it out using an Xacto knife. Once cut out, I sanded them smooth and glued them to the hilt. I used a little wood putty to fill the small gaps.

I had to compromise on the End Cap and use craft foam to create the fine detail on the end of the handle. During the planning stages I had thought I could bend balsa wood around the handle, but that proved ineffective. Eventually I settled on craft foam, being careful when sanding an prepairing the surface for paint.

The Fine Details of the Hilt

Craft Foam for the End Cap Details

A second design choice I made was to use wood to simulate Tsukamaki (the art of wraping the handle of a Japanese sword) rather than attempting to actually tie the handle with cord. Mainly it was because I know nothing about Tsukamaki, but it would also be more durable in the long run. And with the unique curved end of the handle, I'm not sure how you could do that with traditional handle wrapping.

Painting

I used black gesso as the initial primer, applying the paint with a foam brush. The gesso doesn't chemically interact with the wood and can act as a sealant between the enmal paint and the wood. It also sinks into the fine imperfections always present in raw wood.

With the primer on, the wooden prop begins to take on its final appearance.

Sand with 220-320 grit sand paper between coats of gesso. Fill any imperfections in the surface with wood putty, let it dry, then sand smooth and repaint.

Closeup of the Hilt with Primer

Masking the Hilt

The blade will be painted half silver and half black, the hilt and much of the handle will be painted gold. First I masked off the hilt and handle, paiting the entire blade black. then I masked off half the blade and painted it silver. The half black/half silver look is likely a result of the manga artist trying to show the blade as metalic, but I decided to use it as part of the prop anyway.

Masked Handle is Painted Gold

Finished Hilt

I masked off the portions of the sword that were black and silver prior to painting. Peeling away the masking reveals the finished hilt.

Benihime After Painting

Once the painting was done, there were a few final details to complete. The first was what I can best describe as a chain of small triangles that hang from the side of the sword's hilt. I think they're ment to be made of paper or some other light materical, but I realized that something like that would be at the mercy of the wind and easily damaged. So I decided to make it out of basswood and craft wire. I cut out the triangles with a furrow down the center for the wire. I carefully sanded each triangle then glued it in place along the wire.

Triangle Pattern on Basswood

Triangles on Wire

I filled in the furrow with wood putty, sanded and primed the triangles then painted them gold.

The red cord around the hilt was reinforced with craft wire down the center. The wire would allow the cord to hold its shape. I bought the red tassle at Joann's in the drapery section.

Finished Benihime