Hephaestus's Blog

So there’s this webcomic called Homestuck. It’s a massive, ~8,000-page, rambling story about teens, aliens, video games, and the fate of existence itself.  But enough about that; if I go down that train of thought, I’ll never get back.

One of the countless facets of the story is fantastical, often ridiculous, and occasionally legendary weaponry. One of those weapons is the Warhammer of Zillyhoo.

This is what it looks like.

So one day in October, I decided that I wanted to make this thing.

Construction

Most of the hammer is made of this stuff called floral foam. It’s a stiff plastic foam material, which can be easily carved, sawed and glued. Everything except for the blue box in the front, the handle and the star are made from this stuff, covered completely by a synthetic spackling paste.

The horn-shaped parts were made by cutting foam cones into segments, then gluing them back together at an angle and chipping and filing the edges into a curve. I used dowel rods to reinforce the sections.

I made the central block by cutting a large cube down to size. Then, I cut a channel into it by first making two vertical cuts, then chopping out the excess with a spade bit. I used the same spade bit to drill holes for the reinforcement.

This should give you some sense of the chaos in which I worked.

To give the hammer some internal strength, I used PVC pipe running through the block into the head and tail, with the handle made from the same and emerging from the bottom of the block.

Then, it was time for spackling.

The spackling behaved rather like a very sticky, smelly frosting when wet, and is slightly flexible when dry. This gives the spackling-covered surfaces some resiliency.

For the big block at the front end, I used 1/8″ plywood to make a box. This is so thin that I had to have blocks of wood inside the box in order to screw it together. To attach it to the rest of the hammer, I used what is called a pipe floor flange, which can screw on to a pipe fitting. A length of pipe emerging from the block went into the fitting.

PVC fitting- floor flange- block- plywood.

I actually screwed up and made the pipe section too short, so that we had to buy a couple more fittings and stick them together to get sufficient length. My dad actually did a lot of that himself, as I was busy at the time.

Finishing

Next step: Painting. I used Craft Smart acrylic paints in red, orange, yellow, blue, purple and white (for lightening colours). The green paint was Galleria artists’ paint, which required twice as many coats to get right.

This is the only image I have of painting in progress. Sorry.

After all the painting was finished, I wrapped the PVC handle in coloured duct tape.

The final step was simply coating the entire painted surface in glossy Mod Podge to give it a nice shine.

There she is. Forged in fire by the smiths of Pipplemop, commissioned by the sage Lord of the Wozzinjay Fiefdom in the Realm of the Snargly Fruzmigbubbins… Just kidding; I made it myself.

In total, the hammer weighs 2.210 kilograms, or about 4 pounds ten ounces, or 0.34 stone. In length it is 63 cm head to tail and 80 cm top to handle tip. The head is approximately 20 cm wide. The materials cost around sixty dollars, and it probably took around twenty hours of work to make.

Let me know in the comments what you think of this project, and if you have any technical questions I will be happy to answer them.