Part one (the beginning) of this tutorial is here

Now we are going to make the Guard of the sword. There are a few challenges with this and I will show you how they are handled. They include the elvish engraving and the slots for the tang and the blade.

Let's Make it.

First we start out with a bar of aluminum. You are going to see that working in Aluminum is a lot easier than working in steel.

This is 6061 Aluminum and it is 2 inches wide, 1 inch thick and the piece I bought is 36 inches long. Although you don't need a piece that long.

Here is a link to the exact piece I bought on amazon.com:

6061 Aluminum Rectangular Bar, Unpolished (Mill) Finish, T6511 Temper, AMS QQ-A-200/8/ASTM B221, 1" Thickness, 2" Width, 36" Length

As we did with the blade of the sword I traced the shape of the guard with tracing paper then I cut it out and glued it right to the bar of aluminum. You will probably need several of them because working with the aluminum tends to destroy the template. In that case you remove it and apply a new one so you always have crisp edges on the template.

I start out with a hacksaw to cut the guard to rough shape.

Then I moved on to a smaller saw for the finer cutting. ALmost getting it to final shape at this stage.

The band saw is really good for getting it down to final shape. In this picture one side of the guard is just about perfect. I still need to final cut the other side.

I did the final shaping with a file.

Now we do the inscription on the guard. First I laid it all out with a fine tip permanent marker.

Then I used a dremel to carve out the letters. I don't actually carve the letters down though. I carve all around the letters, leaving them raised.

Next we drill out the guard so it will slide over the tang of the sword. We do this by drilling a series of holes in the shape of a slot.

Then I used a dremel to clean up and shape the slot for the guard. You can see in this picture that I just have to drag the slot out a little more.

The Blade slides partially into the guard like you can see here.

So I used a dremel to carve that slot out too.

Ok, the guard is done and fits nicely over the blade.

Ok, the guard is done. Let's move on and do the pommel of the sword.