Wesley Scoggins
Indy Mogul
Wesley's Weekly HOW TO: Retractable Wrist Blade
So you made your Ninja Costume, but you wanted something extra that is definitely a Ninja staple, The Retractable Hidden Blade. Well fear not, because today, i'm going to show you how to make one from odd's and end's for almost nothing!
First, start out with some foam board, and almost exactly like a scaled down Sword Tutorial, make a blade. I sketched out a kind of long skinny blade, but you can do different shapes, or longer or shorter blades, but I sketched mine out, then cut it out with my X-Acto and a ruler, any straight edge will do so you get nice clean cuts.
I painted it with a layer of silver acrylic paint, and compressed the edges to make it look more like it is a real blade. You can give it an aged finish by brushing it with some black paint after the silver dries to make it look more ancient or primitive.
Poke two holes in it with any kind of cutting implement you have, get help if you are worried about your ability to cut into it. Then push a couple of paper fasteners, I'll explain the purpose for these in a moment, but now...
Take a couple of Toliet Paper tubes, and cut them down the middle like so.
And you see how they can be used as a bracer for your wrist.
Push the rolls together, and poke holes in the top corner on each side.
Take more of the fasteners and put them at the holes in the top.
Poke another hole in the bottom middle of the tube, on the opposite end from where you pushed in the fasteners.
Push the bottom fastener from the fake blade, into the hole you cut into the tube.
Now, with it pushed into the tube, bend the bottom fastener so it will say put, then take a couple of rubber bands, and string them from each fastener at the top of the tube, to the second fastener on the blade.
Tape the rubber bands in place, to make sure they don't slip off, you could also probably use Hot Glue, but I like tape because I can peel it up and adjust where the fastener is, if I wanted to modify the build, easier than if I used a more permanent glue.
Get another tube, and bend it so the blade has plenty of space to slide up and down, but not enough to pop away from the rubber bands. You can put more tape on the other fasteners to keep the rubber bands from popping off of them as well.
I used a piece of tape facing outward (so it doesn't stick to my arm) and used it as a brace to keep the rig tight against my arm.
Now that I have the top part taped in place, and it attached firmly to my wrist with another stripe of tape on the back. I removed the bottom fastener keeping the blade in place and replaced it with a paper clamp, I did that because the paper clamp has these loops on the back, that are easy to string some twine through so you can easily pull it...
And the blade shoots out. You can easily push it back in and reclip it and repeat it again by just pulling the clamp again. The great thing about this is that since it's suspended on the rubber bands, you can stab your actor, and the blade shrinks back into the rig, so it is a lot like a retractable trick knife.
And there you go, a retractable knife blade. For the clamp, you can pull it with fishing wire so it would be harder to see on film, or have the pull string running up your sleeve so someone out of frame could pull it.
For any stabs with it, just check out my stabbing and cutting tutorial, you can use it for this.
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