My Galaxia Sword

Finally! I can give a description for you guys! And thanks for all the praise, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside and let's me know I'm not the only Mety fanatic out there that has a serious need to possess an object like this lol.

***I WARN THEE IN ADVANCE, THIS TEXT WALL IS HUGE. SKIP TO THE END IF YOU'RE LAZY***

First off, I need to thank my parents. My mother very patiently put up with holding the sword for me while I took at least 30 pictures of it before sifting through the ones that looked the best and stuffed them together here. Secondly, I must thank my father, because in all honesty, this project had a split workload. I'd say about 70-30. The 30% was my doing, and the other 70% was my dad.

My dad's a machinist and that basically means he does stuff with machines, (mechanical engineering kinds of things, stuff with metal, etc.), and some years ago he made two little Yellowfin Tuna fish out of aluminum, one for me and one for my brother. They were fairly simple, a few inches long, less than a centimeter thick, I think. But they were awesome, because no other kids I knew had cool dads who made them tiny metal fish. (Still to this day none of my friends have cool dads that've made them tiny metal fish). Years later after I started my ongoing Meta Knight obsession, I started noticing people online displaying replicas they made of Galaxia and I got wicked jealous. I saw all these cool model swords; paper mache ones, cardboard ones, wooden ones, maybe even some plastic ones, I forget now, but they all looked pretty great. Some were coated in tin foil and colored over somehow; this made them shiny(!), and others were spray painted. Eventually I realized that I could not fully enjoy life without one and should probably acquire one for myself. I debated which materials would produce the undisputed coolest result, when I remembered that my dad effectively had magic powers and I knew immediately that I would convince him to make one for me, out of metal.

At first he was having none of it. I'd shown him some pictures of Galaxia and he scoffed at the idea. Something along the lines of "Blah blah blah that's too complicated blah blah spikey things blah blah can't be done blah blah blah rubies blah colors blah won't work blah blah blah." But I didn't really believe that argument. My faith in his abilities and my desire for this sword were far too ossified. So I kept bugging him until I wore him down and he agreed (YAY) and then came most of my 30%; the design. I knew I wanted this sword to be a recognizable replica of Galaxia, and I wanted it metal. I poked at the idea of using actual steel a few times, but was shot down because, and I quote, "There's no way you(me) could lift it" (gee thanks dad, but yes true) and more importantly steel is expensive and "A pain in the butt to machine." So as perfect as it would've been, steel was out of the question. Eventually, because of the low price, availability, ease of machining and the fact that it's light, we went with good ol' aluminum. After that we needed a good image of the sword to go by, so I searched the internet for a while. I preferred the games' designs over the anime, and my favorite by far was the design featured in Brawl, so I chose a suitable picture and printed it out.

My dad began the vast majority of his 70% by scribbling little notes all over it, taking measurements of the distances between different parts, angle measurements, and the like. I told him about how big I wanted it; (big enough to swing around and pretend I knew anything about swordplay at all), and most days at work for a couple weeks, he'd work on the 3D modeling in his computer during lunch. When that was done, there was the set up programming and the actual machining of the sword. At this stage, Galaxia was actually in several pieces. There was the blade piece, (which included the tang/grip), the guard piece, and the pommel. (The pommel itself is slightly different from the games' canon. I told him about Meta Knight's M with a sword through it insignia, and had him put that on the pommel as a neat little touch.) The guard slid onto the blade piece and the pommel screwed on and we had this perfect Galaxia. That was all silver, covered in machining marks, without a nice grip and lacked the gems in the hilt.  

This led to the rest of my designing portion. As we sanded and polished the metal to get out most of the machining marks, we had to decide on the colors. I refer to the sword as "gold" like practically everyone else in existence, but technically it's yellow, because no gold nugget ever looked like that. It's funny how people turned gold into yellow over time. Every animated movie ever will make gold out to be yellow. So I chose the colors, (yellowy blade, darker, more orangy hilt) and we bought the powders off the internet. (Powder coating gives better color options and styles than electroplating.) We ordered the "rubies" too. Sadly, real rubies that size would be hard to come by and pricey, so we used red glass. The powder coating was applied, (it took a few tries to get right), the glass set in place using little sticky things, and it was almost done! All we had left was to buy leather to wrap the hilt with, and quite suddenly I had in my possession a very beautiful, cool as heck, one-of-a-kind Galaxia!

***GIANT TEXT WALL OVER. PROCEED DOWN HERE FOR USFUL INFORMATION***

Full Length: Approximately 22 Inches
Length of Blade: Approximately 14 Inches
Width of Guard: Approximately 5 3/4 Inches
Diameter of Pommel: Approximately 1 1/2 Inches
Diameter of Glass Gems: 30 Millimeters
Length of Prongs/Spikes: Approximately 3 1/2 Inches
Main Material: 6061-t6 Aluminum
Hilt Wrap Material: Leather
Coloring Method: Powder Coating
Blade Color: Candy Yellow Transparent
Guard and Pommel Color: 24 Carat Gold Candy
3D Modelling/CAD Time: Approximately 10 Hours
Set-Up Programming and Machining Time: Approximately 40 Hours
Sanding and Polishing Time: Approximately 20 Hours
My Workload For This Project: Approximately 30%
My Wonderful Dad's Workload For This Project: Approximately 70%