Making plastic spears

[maxxon]

This may be old hat to some of you, but recently a friend of mine was asking about spears and I just wrote this all down.

The short summary: You can make spears out of plastic broom bristles -- they bend but just bounce back and they won't pierce your fingers like steel ones.



For complete step-by-step, see here:

http://www.smallcuts.net/photo/?pict=spears.jsp

[Engel]

Yupp its a neat technique.

Big thanks for the tutorial Im sure it will help many.

It can be used to all kinds of stuff, javelins or arrows to.

[Emir of Askaristan]

Great idea this. I've been using it on my figures for a while and not had "a break off" yet.

Process improvement suggestion - Use Pliers to flatten tip of bristle instead of tapping with hammer. As same pliers can be used to snip the bristle from its broom head this is quite handy.

Now if only someone made a brush with brown bristles which had the top few mm in silver!! 

[Melnibonean]

So simple yet so effective.
lovely.

[Braz]

Different brooms have different thickness bristles. I use the finer bristles for radio aerials on vehicles and such. Bendy so less likely to break or to poke someone - more kid safe . When I get to it I will use some of the thicker type bristles as protruding rebar in ruined buildings for the same reason.

[maxxon]

Process improvement suggestion - Use Pliers to flatten tip of bristle instead of tapping with hammer. As same pliers can be used to snip the bristle from its broom head this is quite handy.

I tried this, but I can't control the width of the blade with pliers and they produce only very narrow ones (you need to have pliers with very tight jaws to really flatten it out -- most cheap ones aren't). On the other hand, the process is more repeatable if it's important for you to produce identical blades (but the tip cutting will make them slightly unique anyway).