Sunday, July 13, 2014

Cthulhu Cultist Knife

Joe Broers returns to our pages with this faux-obsidian and ivory sacrificial knife.  I quite like the realistic conchoidal faceting of the blade. 


2 comments:

  1. Beautiful work. The blade really looks like obsidian as Propnomicon said and the hilt gives no doubt to the knife’s purpose. I also like the accompanying figure. The sheath is functional, but the fur just might be overdoing it.

    Obsidian is an ancient tool making material. It can achieve an edge so fine that even modern steels cannot compare with its microedge.

    Photos of obsidian in its natural state in situ http://simplynahala.blogspot.com/2013/08/obsidian-love.html

    A number of obsidian points, showing variations in flaking and color http://imgarcade.com/1/ancient-obsidian-arrowheads/

    Images of obsidian dagger and sword, made just like the originals http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/52962/Fulltang-Obsidian-Dagger

    Museum replicas of paleo weapons in obsidian http://www.occpaleo.com/lithics.html

    Don’t forget to Google around for obsidian figures for your prop making ideas.

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  2. Hi CoastConFan,

    sadly those obsidian swords are probably not like the originals. The problem is that they are only known from depictions, but there is not one single remaining artifact, neither an original brought to Europe nor archeological finds. There was one single Macuahuitl which was housed in Madrid, but it was sadly destroyed by a fire in 1884. The remaining drawing is different from those reconstructions, and also differs to some degree from some of the old depictions (which are somewhat "comic-styled"), what could be also a result of different sorts of obsidian-blade-swords. There were also attempts of experimental archeology to see how it could have been constructed, what gave some interesting insights into the possible construction. But after all, it´s sadly still a problematic issue how this things really looked. I wanted to build one as a prop since some time, but when I did some research, I realized that this is really not an easy thing.

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