Moulding and Casting Loki's Dagger Handle
Alternative title: I still love Marvel! For this project, I created a custom mold for the clay handle I designed, and went through the iterative design process to produce the finished product. I made mistakes and learned a lot about casting along the way!
Loki's Dagger Grip - Reimagined
This project is all about exploring one of the most
important physical interaction points of any product,
the handle. Comfort, safety, leverage, grip, style...
the handle and touch points of a tool, gadget or any
physical product can often make or break its success. In
this case, I thought this sci-fi prop could use a design that is actually worthy of a Marvel superhero.
The Mould
After pouring each side of the mold, I stuck each side together and poured the first prototype. My main problem was that the height to width ratio of the mold created a perfect environment for the liquid plastic to... leak. Needless to say, my first ever prototype would not be the last. I learned that excessive rubber bands and clamped scrap acrylic on each side really held everything together.
Perfecting the Process
I ended up with 3 cast plastic dagger handles, plus the original clay model. After all this experimentation, I learned about coloring the liquid plastic, how to retain each mould side together consistently, and how to sand and file the final product to have a super clean, ergonomic feel to it. After all, the goal of this work is to improve the grip of a dagger in a sci-fi universe, so these iterations were necessary to meet that reach goal!