Welcome to another What Are You Making Wednesday! This week, I have a special guest post for you: my little-brother-in-law TheActualDaleFishman will be sharing how to make your very own Batman Begins Batarang. Don't know what a Batarang is? (I didn't either.) It's similar to a throwing star, but shaped like the Batman symbol.
Like this:
In other news, my Secret Christmas Crafting is complete - plenty of time to spare. Now I get to plug away at my new sweater that I haven't shown you yet - next week, maybe. I might do a very quick/short post around Christmas, as I'm sure I'll be knitting away all through the holidays.
With that, take it away, Fishman!
Hi everyone! @Theactualdalefishman here and I am here to show you what I made for "What are you making Wensday"!
This will be a tutorial for my homemade Batman begins Batarang.
There are many interpretations of the famous "Batarang", Batman's most handy and well-known gadget, Such as Batman's fold-up version in Arkham city, or the classic-Batman Batarangs from the comics!
But I have made the famous Batarang from Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins".
I am a big nerd about Christopher Nolan's Dark knight series, and decided that I wanted to have my own little bit of Batman at home, and today I am going to show you how I made it!
*WARNING: The sheet metal and the tools used for this project can be sharp and can easily hurt or injure yourself with them! Please use gloves for this and be careful while making this.*
THE TEMPLATE
First off I started with a simple Google image search and found a great template for the Batarang.
You can view it here:
When I printed it out, the paper turned out to be just a little smaller than the actual measurements, but I prefer it like that.
Next I carefully cut out the paper Batarang and taped (glue will work allot better) it onto a piece of very thin cardboard. And then I cut out the shape of the Batarang with an Xacto knife.
*I would show you a picture of the cardboard template, but it got destroyed in the process of making the finished product.*
THE METALWORK
For the actual metal part I used scrap-steel sheet metal for it (The thickness of the metal is up to you depending on what you want the weight to be).
Next I glued the template to the metal trying to save as much extra-metal as I could for future projects, and waited for it to dry. (Elmer's glue will work fine for this.)
Once the glue was dry, I then began to cut a square as close as possible to the template with a tool called a Beverly sheer, a tool with a lever that is made for cutting metal and other things. But as long as you can cut the metal, it doesn't matter what you use to cut it.
Once we have a smaller object to work with, we can begin the more detailed cutting.
THE JEWELER'S SAW
I will not explain exactly how to use a jeweler's saw since there are probably plenty of instructions online on how to use one. A clamp that can hold the piece of metal flat and off the edge of a table is recommended to use to cut it. Remember to slowly cut and take your time with a jeweler's saw... Or else you will break the blade. (Thank goodness for cheap-priced blades!)
The pointy-ness of the ears will not matter when you cut them out, for it will be filed down later.
The outcome of it should look like this:
GRINDING IT DOWN
The next step is to use a file (preferably a rounded one) and start filing down all of the curved sides and in-between the ears (And sharpen the ears all you want now.
And the last step is using a belt grinder to grind down all of the shapes of the extra details into the Batarang ( I had my dad help me with that), and to grind down the faces to make them shinny and clean.
And as for Sharpness, I prefer to have mine sharp, but that is your decision to make.
A belt grinder can be a very dangerous machine if not used with much caution... It may not look very dangerous, but it can cause serious injuries. Be very careful while using it!
THE FINISHED PRODUCT
And after all of that you are done! And if you are keen on making another one, than you can just trace this one onto more sheet metal instead of having to glue a cardboard template on it, and follow the same steps again!
This is throwable and if the edges are sharpened it will stick into wood and (if you are not using thin metal) not bend or warp.
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial!
Special thanks to Amanda for letting me guest on her blog!
Have fun!
~Theactualdalefishman~
Hope you enjoyed that! I am super excited to have my very first guest poster. I feel like a real blogger now.
So, what are you making? If you'd like to be featured for a guest post, let me know - I'd love to use this blog as a place to share others' work as well as my own.
So, what are you making? If you'd like to be featured for a guest post, let me know - I'd love to use this blog as a place to share others' work as well as my own.
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