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The Death Scythe from Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno is a new video game from Electronic Arts that is scheduled to be released in February of 2010. In the game Dante's beloved Beatrice has been kidnapped and taken to Hell. Dante has to go through the nine levels of hell to rescue her. He take the Scythe from Death and it is his primary weapon in the game. This project is the Death Scythe as it is portrayed in the game.
I used foam predominantly but to keep the strength and curve of the spine handle I installed a length of pipe inside it. The overall size of this medieval weapon is about eight feet but because it is a foam weapon it's pretty light and because of hte pipe it is pretty strong.
This is a web based tutorial showing you how I made it and it includes a video. I don't expect you will be making this weapon but there are a lot of useful tips on making weapons with foam and maybe you can use this information to make some of your own medieval weapons! The video is at the bottom of this page if you want to skip right to it: Dante's Inferno Death Scythe video The picture below shows the weapon leaned up against an eight foot tall wall.
About the Video Game
Dante's Inferno -
Based on the immensely influential classic poem, Dante's Inferno takes you on an epic quest of vengeance and redemption through the Nine Circles of Hell. You are Dante, a veteran of the Crusades who must chase his beloved Beatrice and try to free her soul from Lucifer's grasp. As your pursuit takes you deeper into the pits of Hell, you must battle ever more fierce and hideous monsters-while also facing your own sins, a dark family past, and your unforgivable war crimes.
Can you make this death scythe? You sure can! Here is one made by Yanael. My thanks go to him for sharing it with us!
How I made the Death Scythe
The first thing I did was draw a series of sketches of the weapon. This helped me to lay out what I was going to make. It also helped me to visualize the weapon.
I used a product called Foamular to make this project. It is a building material used for insulation. It is readily available at home improvement stores and comes in a lot of different thicknesses. This is two inches thick and comes in sheets that are eight feet long and two feet wide so because of the large size it is almost perfect for this project.
One thing about foamular though is that it doesn't take spray painting too well! Most spray paints will eat right through it. So if you are going to make a foam weapon or shield out of this you probably want to hand paint it and not use a spray on paint.
The characteristic of the spray paint eating away at the foam can actually be put to good use. You can see here that under the yellow paint I did some spray painting on the spine. It gives the bones of the spine a great look.
I used 1/2 inch EMT which is tubing for house wiring and I used an angle connector to connect a piece for the handle and a piece for the scythe blade. You can see that I cut out two long and curved pieces of foam for the handle.
I notched both halves of the foam so the pipe could fit in between them. Then I glued the two halves top and bottom of the foam together. This sandwiched the pipe right in the middle nicely. I secured the two halves with rubber bands to allow it to dry overnight.
I then cut out the head of the scythe and the butt end of it. The butt end is the large foam block just above the handle.
For all the pieces (butt, blade and skull) I first drew them out on a piece of paper then I transferred the design to the sheets of foam.
I followed pretty much the same procedure to get it all into shape. first I cut things to rough shape with a Hot Wire Foam Cutter.
Then I used Hobby Knives and an x-acto to sculpt things into their final shape.
Here I am carving the butt of the Scythe. This was three pieces of foamular that I glued together so I could have a nice block of it. You can also use a hot glue gun to glue the pieces together. It works really well and you don't have to wait for anything to dry.
I assembled all the pieces onto the spine of the foam weapon using liquid nails.
I applied a paint of coat to the whole thing then I touched it up with some brown spray paint. The brown spray paint went into the cracks between the spinal column pieces.
Here is the completed head and blade of the weapon.
And here is the butt of the weapon.
The aluminum tubing inside keeps the nice curved shape of the weapons spine and it is plenty strong. I can swing it around pretty good but boy is it big!
Hot Wire Foam Cutter This is the hot wire foam cutter I used for this project. It works great and makes nice clean cuts.
