Found this at Dollarama, a nice stiff bristled broom. I cannot say that I have really been looking hard for something like this, but it has been in the back of my mind for a while. Well now that I have based up 60+ pike men for my Empire army, and given that I have 30 or so spear armed Martian cavalry sitting in the wings, I figured it was high time to get me some spears.pikes!
They are grey in their natural state, but the plastic bristles take spry paint very well, and thus I have primed them brown. Now, of course, I was not able to completely coat each bristle, but the spray job does make it quicker to produce spears as in most cases I only need to paint one side of the bristles prior to attaching them to the figure.
Now this is not an original idea of mine, and I will post up a link to the youtube video that showed me how to make these into spears. For now let me say that all you need to do is to press flat one end of the bristle, then cut that end into something resembling a point, and you have your weapon! There are fancier things you can do, but I will have to cover that later...
Later has arrived...
The LINK to a great youtube video (not by me) that demonstrates the full process.
The pliers I used to crush the spear heads:
The crushing:
Ready for spraying:
The results:
Still need more practice, and re-sequence when I spray the spears [a bit of a cart before the horse situation]. I have to work on my carving skills for were the spear tip meets the spear shaft. You basically take a pair of scissors, or some such thing and cut around the spear [not too deep] to make it look more like a spear point.
Also there is some variety to the bristles, some are flat while others are larger the the norm, so I must be better at picking and choosing which bristle to use.
Nice find! I had once bought a cheap broom for that purpose, but then somebody used it as ... a broom! Did you flatten the tips with pliers or with a hammer and anvil?
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