cubseidl props: "Soap" Mactavish Knife

So being the bad dad that I am my son has watched me play modern warfare 2 a couple of times. This is about the time he got his Mohawk which he still is sporting to this day. He saw "soap" Mactavish in the Brazilian mission and said he had the same hair as him. Well the little light bulb went on in my head and I thought what better than to have him go as a mini "soap" mactavish and I could go as a juggernaut and he would have a blast killing me at the conventions. I figured this would be an easy cosplay for him. Boy was I wrong. Nobody makes tactical vests in kids sizes and nobody makes fake knives in kids sizes anymore.. I mean I could have bought a crappy rubber knife but I kind of take pride in authenticity in my cosplay projects so it was off to the drawing board and down to my dungeon to make his knife as well as everything else.

So the modern warfare 2 tactical knife is based off of a black hawk tatang knife here is a picture.

So That is the real version and here is what it looks like in the game.

So the video game knife looks a lot like the real life version except for the handle looks more like a gun hand grip texture and the knife blade looks like it is serrated near the hilt of the knife. So I the real measurement of the knife is around 13.5 inches long. Well I ad to shrink that down in half for my sons hand so he has a 6.5 inch black hawk tatang knife. So I broke out the MDF board and got started. here is the first progress pic.

So basically I took 1/4 inch MDF board and made a full tang knife, meaning that the blade is one piece and runs down the handle as well. Next I cut the handles out of 1/4 MDF and glued it to the knife . After that I pre drilled the screw holes for the screw heads that would be added later. To get the crosscut marks on the handle I went old school and broke out the handsaw and just did a little crosshatch sawing. Pretty simple. For the blade I just got out my hand sander and went to town. near the end I broke out the belt sander and used it like a sharpening stone to help get the edges down better. At the end I broke out the 220 grit sand paper and smoothed it all out. Now the primer coat.

I have learned through the many props that I have done that a quick coat or two of primer paint helps out immensely. It also helps with the sanding. As you can see I still have some rough edges hear and there. Time to break out the 220 grit sandpaper again and sand away. Next step finish painting.

So the black for this is just a flat black. All the black hawk tatangs I saw had a flat black finish. For my own benefit I scrapped in the serrated edge look. I did this as a reference and to also give the impression of a slight serrated look and feel. Next step more paint.

So I added the gray part to the top of the blade and also added grey for the serrated part just like in the game. I also noticed that the screw heads in the vido game knife were not straight on so I made sure to have them the same way in this version. Also you can't see it but there is four coats of clear acrylic seal on this knife. i found that sealing it with acrylic spray really helps with the accidental droppings and banging that go on with props. Don't be shy using the spray, the more coats the less easier it chips. So basically that was the easy part of my son's soap costume. Next up was the tactical vest.

All in all this knife took about 2 hours total in work time, not counting glue and paint drying time.