So this is what I've been working on for the past two weeks or so-- toiling away while I did reading and research and pursued various points of interest.

~72.5" overall
~55" blade
~15" grip
Approximately 6.5 lbs/2.95kg

This is my new Great Knife, inspired mostly by the particularly vicious-looking version of the weapon wielded by Pyramid Head in Silent Hill: Homecoming. For the purists, yes, I know the teeth are facing the wrong direction and the guard and grip are both all wrong for the Homecoming edition, but like I said, this mine.

Contrary to appearance, the entire thing is carved out of a single piece of pine planking, a 2x8 I picked up from Home Depot because wooden barricades in good condition were in short supply. Rough cutting was done with a Dewalt reciprocating saw and the shaping was mostly done with a belt sander packing a monstrous 36-grit grinding belt.

I decided on the axe-handle style grip after swinging my fire-axe around. I noticed that the shape of the offhand's position allowed me to apply considerably more force and permits greater range of motion than a completely straight grip without applying more effort.

The grip itself consists of two sections of wire wrapping and (fake) leather. The wire is nylon-coated framer's wire and the leather is... well... fake. The raised portions of the grip are just old shoelaces glued to the grip under the pleather. The pommel is just painted over and intentionally roughed up to look like it had been used enough for the paint to wear away.

The guard is just painted over with some leftover Pearl Black Metallic spray enamel from my plastic model-making days. The fake screws are just sheets of 3/4-inch plywood that were punched out with a hole saw, screwed and glued into place, and slathered with wood filler to cover up the wood grain and screws, then painted over.

The blade and screws were layered over with some Elmer's wood filler, then painted over using Rust-o-leum chrome metallic, and artificially aged with a rust-toned acrylic paint mix and some slightly red-brown-tinted black. The dulled metal and rust effect on the portions of the blade that haven't been ground down were done with Krylon ruddy brown spray primer and flat black spray paint.

The blood (oh dear gawd my camera sucks and murdered the colors... I want a DSLR like... now) was done with two different blood-like hues of acrylic paint that I mixed seperately to look like older, dried blood and fresh, wet blood.

Also, the pitting was a result of voids in the wood filler that were exposed during sanding. I decided to capitalize on the recesses and used them to fill with black/rust paint.

Note for future reference: If you plan on sanding, DO NOT, repeat: DO NOT use Behr's exterior multi-surface primer. That stuff doesn't dust when you sand it, it pills and rolls like a giant eraser, and it takes FOR-E-VAR to dry, and even then, it's really sticky and tacky like it's covered in glue. I had the entire thing covered in that primer, at one point. Not fun.