How to Make a Wooden Sword

Making a wooden sword is satisfying and fun, leaving the building with a great conversation piece, crafting table, or decoration for your office or den. Throughout history, wooden swords have been used for training, practice, and symbolic purposes. In the movie Gladiator, Proximo talked to Maximus about a ceremonial rudis that he had, which had been presented to him by the emperor.

While swords are no longer used as serious weapons, they remain ceremonial in many cultures, especially in the military. Our fascination with this ancient evidence is made evident by the number of people who buy sword reproductions, whether usable weapons or merely cosmetic ones.

In this article, I’ll discuss making a realistic-looking wooden sword again, not a child’s play sword. While the same techniques might be used.

There have been countless styles of wooden swords made throughout history. Yet they all share certain things in common. Therefore, wood swords are all made the same, whether we’re talking about an English Longsword, a Japanese Katana, or a Roman Gladius.

All of them consist of four essential parts:

• The blade
• The guard
• The handle
• The pommel

Together, a sword’s guard, handle, tip, and pommel are referred to as the “hilt.”

Making the various parts of weapons on a sword out of different types of leather or hardwood can be very attractive, helping to set them apart. Even with metal swords, the hilt is usually made of a material other than the blade, often colored quite differently, and the handle is made of a third material, often leather, for a better grip.

Designing the Sword

Before doing anything, a good design is needed. Take some time to research historical or even fantasy sword designs to find something good to use. Dimensions are variable, so don’t expect to see a diagram of the exact measurements used for making ancient swords, although some websites have some basic dimensional information. Besides that, a good hand with a pencil and sketchpad will be necessary.

One important thing to remember in the design of the wooden sword is how the parts will connect. The blade will need a tang at the hilt end, although it will not be a full hilt. This hilt will go through the guard and into the handle. While it is possible to have it go all the way through to the pommel, it is easier to let the pommel have its protrusion, much like a tang, to go into the handle from the other end. This won’t result in a wooden sword as strong as the original, but it’s made of wood, not metal.

Depending on the sword design, the handle can be made in one piece or two. Many European sword designs had a round grip and pommel. In that case, making a wooden sword with the handle one piece makes sense, as it can be turned on a lathe. But other blades, like the Katana, use a handle with an oval cross-section. In such a case, it would make making a wooden sword much more sense to make the handle in two pieces and then glue them onto the tang.

Making the Blade

The sword’s blade must be made from one solid piece of hardwood. A finely-grained wood is the best for this, but any reasonably dense hardwood will work. Since the wood typically comes sanded to ¾” thick, it must be resawn to 3/8″ to ½” wide before being cut and shaped. If a band saw is available, that’s the best way to resaw lumber, although it can also be done on a table saw.

The next step is to cut out the profile of the blade. This includes cutting the tang as well, which will need to be slightly set in from the edge of the blade to leave room for the handle to go around it.

Cut the blade outline slightly outside the line and then sand it on a belt or disk sander to ensure that the profile is exact.

At the same time, the tang profile needs to be cut, and the material should be made slightly thinner to make it easier to install the blade in the handle.

If a fuller is desired in the shape of the blade, this should be cut with a router before beveling the blade edge. It can be done before or after cutting out the profile, as the woodworker prefers.

The hardest part of the project is putting the angle on the blade. Accurate sword-making is done first at the blacksmith’s anvil and then by grinding, either with a grinder or belt sander. For a wood sword, there are two ways of cutting the angle.

One is with a panel raising bit in a router table, and the other is to cut the angles on a table saw. Either way, some final adjustments will probably need to be made on a belt or disk sander, cleaning up cutting marks and smoothing the surface.

Making the Guard

Before making the handle, the guard should be made. As with swords, sword guards have an endless variety of styles. The basic technique is nothing more than a crossbar, although some designs have a curved crossbar.

As the purpose of the guard is to protect the hand from the enemy’s blade sliding down the user’s blade, some different design styles are used, such as the curve above or putting a wide spot on the ends of the cross guard, to keep the enemy’s blade from sliding off the guard. Katanas have a very simple cross-guard shaped like an oval.

A thin piece of wood is used for a simple guard, such as used on a giant sword or a katana, usually about 1/4″ thick. However, most European sword designs will require laminating pieces length of wood together to get a block big enough to cut and slide the guard out and stick the sword out of unless some 8/4 lumber is available.

The blade’s tang must go through the middlebox and guard, so a rectangular hole must be made in the middle.

This can be cut through the first row of wood, and then the third row and other side corners squared up with chisels and files, but it’s easier to make the guard out of three layers of wood so that a rectangular hole, just the right shape, and size for the tang, can be left in the middle.

Cut the guard’s profile out on a band saw or scroll saw and then carve and sand and finish shaping it with sanders and files tools, as needed to match the planned design. This part will probably take more shaping and carving than any other sword.

Making the Handle

There are two basic ways of making a handle, both of which I’ll discuss here.

If the handle has a profile, then ies the most sense to grip and turn it on a lathe, perhaps with the pommel glued to it (made of a different type of wood). That will require laminating several pieces of wood together to create a block thick enough to grip and turn.

As I just mentioned for the cross guard piece, the easiest way to ensure a perfect hole for the tang is to leave that as a void when the chips are glued together.

One great way to do this is to cut a spacer pine piece the same shape and size as the tang and wax paper and thoroughly oil it. Then make the laminate, setting that sand in a place like the tang. This spacer can be knocked out once the wood is glued together and clamped. The wax paper will keep the glue from sticking to it.

Turning tools, the handle or the handle and pommel, is just like any other spindle turning device or project, except its shape and intended use. Remembering that the grip must be comfortable in the hand, so the size must be good for the user’s hand.

Cut out two identical blanks from ¾” thick hardwood boards when making the sword handle out of two pieces. The first thing that should be done to the second row is to cut the channel for the sword’s tang. The one-half measure of the thickness is taken out of the length of each piece, leaving just enough space for gluing.

Set the two blanks on the sword’s tang to verify their fit. Check the edges to ensure they meet up well and don’t need to be trimmed to match each other. Then mark the pieces so they will be put together the same way every time.

The outside edges of the handle blanks can be rounded with a round-over bit in a router table. Then finish shaping with a sander. Cutting a piece of scrap leather, the same length and dimensions as the tang, and putting it inside the two pieces to form the handle while shaping and sanding them will help keep the pieces aligned so they will come out even.

Wooden swords, Dushan Hanuska

Making the Pommel

The pommel must be made separately if it lacks enough space to turn along with the handle. Either the tang of the blade will need to be long enough to go into the pommel to hold everything together, or the pommel will need to make a wooden piece sticking out of it, which will go into the handle as an extension of the blade’s tang.

In any case, there needs to be some wood going between the two pieces to ensure that they are held together.

Pommels can be many different shapes, so there is plenty of reason why the pommel for a weapon or a sword may not be able to be turned on the lathe. The pommel will probably be cut from ¾” to 1″ thick stock, outlining it on a scroll saw. Then the edges can be profiled on a router table, just like the knife handle.

Assembling the Sword

In most cases, assembling the entire sword on sticks at once is more accessible than just sticking two parts together one post at a time. The various parts are glued together, using ample glue on all surfaces. Clamping can be problematic, but a single long bar clamp is adequate for clamping everything. Just put a few tape or soft pads at both ends to prevent damaging the finished sword.

Once the glue has had time to dry, the edges of the sword will need some final sanding before finishing it with either varnish or oil. An oil/beeswax mix is excellent, as it will have a great luster.

Making a Decorative Sword

As with their metal cousins, wood swords can be decorated in various ways. It was typical for the hilts of swords used by nobility to be adorned with gems and extensive carving. All of this can be done as well with a wood sword.

Another idea is to use wood inlay for decorative work, especially on the hilt. The diamond pattern, particularly to katana handles, can be done this way, especially if a laser or CNC cutter is available to cut out the diamonds. A more straightforward adornment can be done by drilling holes through the handle and guard once the sword is assembled and then gluing hardwood dowels in these holes.

Once the glue is dry, the dowels can be cut off, and the ends sanded smooth with the surface of the wood. Rather than round, square dowels make for an exciting design option.

The only decoration generally done on a sword blade is engraving. This can be done with a laser engraver, if one is available. The same laser engraver might be used on the hilt as well. It all depends on the artistic vision of the craftsman making the sword.