Make a foam sword!

Foam swords are typically hard to make and have look good! I have come up with a technique that
I like because you are able to have a reasonably thin blade that is still quite strong. It is also a bit
safer than some other methods that use thinner centre supports.

*** Safety Notes**

Use an appropriate respirator when sanding EVA foam.
Use a respirator and go outside when heating PVC. PVC releases toxic fumes when heated, and
even more when burned. Do not use any source of flame when heating PVC, only a heat gun, and
do it slowly so that you can heat the PVC only to the minimal temperature needed to deform.
Wear gloves while heating the PVC to avoid burns.
This sword is not made for actual combat. Use at your own risk.

© 2018 Lost Wax Designs. All rights reserved.

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Sold to
ceppereira@outlook.com
You Will Need:
• Pattern: at the end of this PDF. When you print it, measure against the print guides to
know the scale is correct. ** When printing, make sure scale is set to ACTUAL SIZE**
Because I make my patterns to work on both A4 and U.S. letter paper, often Adobe
Acrobat will try and shrink the pages a little bit.
• Ballpoint Pen
• Scissors
• Cutting Surface: Somewhere to cut where you won’t be destroying anything.
• 10-12 mm thick EVA foam: If you can get foam that is smooth on both sides, that is best.
Or you can use floor mats and send them smooth. These often come in sets of four with
interlocking puzzle piece edges. You can find examples of these on my website.
• Very Sharp Knife: If it is not really sharp you will have a terrible time when you are cutting
the foam. In this tutorial I use a wide blade utility knife, and used a brand new blade for
cutting the bevel on the sword.
• Hot Glue Gun: I use the low melt glue guns, and the smaller the tip, the less likely that
you will get too much glue and have it squeeze out all over the place.
• 1/2” PVC Conduit: 64cm long
• 2mm EVA craft foam: One sheet
• Drill and bits: I used a 3mm bit and a 12mm bit.
• Heat Gun: Used to shape the PVC
• Clamps: Trigger clamps work best for this, but any clamps that open wide enough will
work. You’ll need 4.
• 2 pieces of wood : Used on either side of the PVC to squish it flat
• Paint: I like to use artists acrylic paints. They seem to remain a bit flexible, which is
important for foam. I used black.
• Metallic Paint: I mixed equal parts of DecoArt Americana Decor Metallics “Pewter” and
“Silver.”
• Sandpaper: one sheet of 80 grit.
• Hockey Tape: Used to build up the handle. It is a fabric tape.
• Leather or vinyl strips: 2 strips, 3cm wide by 70 cm long.
• Rubber Glove: For applying the metallic paint.

If you haven’t already, please refer to my video here.

** I have links to a lot of the different supplies I use on my projects here**

© 2018 Lost Wax Designs. All rights reserved.

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Make Your Foam Smooth on Both Sides
If you have foam floor mats with a deep texture on one side, you can sand that off with some 80
grit sandpaper using a palm sander or belt sander. It works best with not too much pressure on the
sandpaper. It doesn’t have to be completely smooth because this will go to the inside of the sword.
Just make it relatively flat. Make sure to wear a respirator so you don’t breathe the foam dust.

Print and Cut Out the Pattern

Print out the pattern and tape it together, lining up the alignment marks. Make sure you set the
printer to print at 100% or actual size, otherwise your printer will scale down the pattern. Cut out
your pattern pieces and trace the sword twice on the sanded side of your foam.

Cut Out the Blade

Grab a brand new high-quality knife blade for your knife. This is super important because unless
you have a really, really sharp knife the edge of the sword blade won’t be smooth like you want it.
These are the most important cuts of the whole project, so make some practice cuts on some
scrap foam until you are confident in your ability.
The key is to be able to hold your knife blade at a consistent angle through the whole cut. I put my
index finger on the edge of the blade and rest the side of my finger against the foam. This way I
can keep the same angle. Cut along the line of the sword blade very slowly, trying to stay right on
that line. The closer to being perfectly on the line, the better the two halves of the sword will match
when you glue them together.
Try to cut about halfway through on your first pass then extend the blade and cut all the way
through on the second pass. If all goes well you should have two sword halves that match up
almost perfectly.

Mark and drill the PVC

Grab some half-inch PVC conduit and cut it off at 64.5 centimetres long.
Take a strip of paper and wrap it tightly around the PVC tube, lining up its top edge. Slide it off,
squish it flat and mark those two creases. Now when you slide it back on the tube you can mark
two lines exactly on the opposite side of the tube from each other.
Lay a permanent marker flat on the table then roll the tube until the mark on the tube lines up with
the tip of the marker. Then you can mark that line all the way down your tube by sliding the marker
along the table. Make sure the tube doesn’t roll at all while you are making your marks! Make a line
on both sides of the tube.
Make marks at 44 and 48 centimetres down the tube and use your paper tube to draw a nice line
all the way around at those marks .
Make a mark every three centimetres down one of the lines and on the other line start your marks
one and a half centimetres down from the end and mark every three centimetres as well. This
means your marks should be staggered on either side of the pipe.
Don't make any marks between the 44cm line and the end of the PVC.
Grab a three millimetre drill bit and drill a pilot hole at every mark and then drill out each hole with a
twelve millimetre drill bit.

© 2018 Lost Wax Designs. All rights reserved.

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Heat and flatten the PVC
There are a couple of reasons for drilling the holes in the PVC. One is that it creates a natural
seam where the PVC will want to buckle because there is less resistance. The other, more
important reason, is that it allows for much more even heating of the PVC with a heatgun. Without
the holes it would be hard to heat the opposite sides of the PVC pipe at the same time, and this is
exactly what needs to be done in order to flatten it. Because of the holes, some of the heat enters
the pipe and heats it from the inside as well as the outside, giving a better chance to evenly heat
both sides.
Safety, Safety, Safety.
I know I mentioned this at the top of this tutorial but I am going to say it again. It is not worth
sacrificing your health to make a foam sword! Go outside and wear a respirator, and don’t
breathe any of the fumes that are created when you heat up the PVC.
Clamp your pipe between two pieces of wood with the holes facing out. You don't want to flatten
the handle so that wood should only go down to where the end of the guard will be.
Once you've got the clamps set up it's just a matter of slowly heating the PVC in sections,
tightening up the clamps as you go and heating equally from both sides. Take your time and
eventually it'll look awesome.
It is a good idea to create a bit of a taper as you reach the handle section, leaving that section
slightly thicker than the rest of the blade. This makes your blade less likely to be floppy, because it
has a larger cross section right where the most stress would be.
Once you've got it squished how you want it, leave it for a while and let it cool down completely
before removing from the clamps.

Cut a Slot in the Blade

Make sure you have a very sharp blade for this section.
Line up the bottom edge of the sword with the 44cm line on the PVC pipe and trace around it.
Extend your knife blade so it only goes about five millimetres past the edge of the knife so that the
depth of the cut is limited.
Make a 5mm deep vertical cut along the lines you traced around the PVC. Divide the space in
between those cuts into five sections and make a 5mm cut down each of those lines as well. Make
an angled cut on the first line in from each side that will connect to the bottom of the outside cut,
removing a small wedge of foam. Now angle your cut in the other direction from the first line in to
the second line in, removing another couple strips of foam.
Now get your knife as flat as possible and cut out the remaining middle strip. Now that you can
hold your knife relatively flat, you can work from the centre outward and remove the peaks on each
of those first two strips you cut.
This is the cleanest way that I have found to remove the centre bit of foam in order to allow the
flattened PVC to sit inside it. You could also use a rotary tool with a grinding wheel, but I believe it
would be harder and much messier!
Once you've got that cavity all cut out you can grab some sandpaper and clean it up a little bit if
needed.

© 2018 Lost Wax Designs. All rights reserved.

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Repeat the same process to make a slot on the other half of the foam blade.

Handguard
Cut two hand guards (piece 2) from your 10mm foam. Cut two hand guard details (piece#3) from
2mm EVA foam.

Glue
Now it's hot glue time. When using hot glue, glue small sections at a time, holding them until they
are fully cool before moving on to the next section. I also like to use a glue gun with a temperature
control dial. I turn it down quite a bit, which is good for two reasons. 1: I have less chance of being
burned with the hot glue and 2: The glue cools quicker meaning I don’t need to hold pieces
together for long. For gluing large areas at once (such as when gluing the PVC into the centre of
the sword), I turn the glue gun to a higher temp, giving me more working time.
Glue the detail on the smooth side of each hand guard piece, lining it up so that it has an even
amount of the hand guard showing on all sides.
Glue your flattened PVC pipe into the cutout in one of the blades.
Check that the other half of the blade will line up properly when glued on top. The way that the
PVC lines up with the cutout will only allow it to be in a specific position. If the blades don’t line up,
you can cut a little more out of the inside cutout until they match perfectly.
Glue the tip of the blades together and let cool.
Being generous with your glue, cover the PVC all the way down to the bottom of the blade. Lay the
top half of the blade down on the glue covered PVC and keep some pressure holding the two
halves together until the glue has cooled. Also make sure the edges line up as close as possible.
Now go around the edge of the blade, gluing it together a section at a time, making sure the edges
line up as you glue. If you find you're having a problem keeping the glue seem nice and clean you
should check out my hot glue gun tips video.

Get your Groove on

For the groove we'll start with a line straight down the centre and then another straight line on
either side. Make a cut along each outside line with a shallow angle towards the centre.
Remember we've already cut in from the backside so we don't have a lot of foam thickness left.
Again, a sharp knife makes life easy.

Attach Hand Guard

Glue the two hand guard pieces together only gluing the outside edges. Once it's cool you can
slide the guard over the PVC handle and into place on the sword.
Glue the guard as tight as you can around the PVC pipe without actually gluing it to the PVC pipe.
You need to make sure you hold it together until the glue is totally cool otherwise it will want to pull
apart. I found it worked best to glue one side at a time. Watch that you are not pressing the guard
up against the blade so that it is not glued together too soon.
Once that glue has completely cooled, you can slide the guard down the handle a little bit, apply
glue between it and the blade as well as on the PVC pipe, and then slide it back into place. Clean
up any extra glue before it hardens with a piece of cardboard or something similar. And just to be

© 2018 Lost Wax Designs. All rights reserved.

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sure everything is good and strong, squeeze in some extra glue from the bottom. Trim off any
weird bits on the tips of the guard.

Paint
Time to paint it black.
Give it at least three coats of artist acrylic paints.
Once the black is completely dry it's time to add the metallic paints. Right now my favourite sort of
antique silver colour is actually a mix of two of DecoArt paints. I mix equal parts of DecoArt
Americana Decor Metallics “Pewter” and “Silver” together.
Put on a rubber glove.
Put a small amount of your metallic paint on a piece of scrap cardboard. Dip your finger in the
metallic paint and wipe it around a little bit on the cardboard to make sure you don’t have too much
on your finger. Then apply the paint with your finger in a light rubbing motion. Keep doing this until
the whole sword is covered and looking amazing.
A little thought about realism: On a metal object, any surface that is constantly being rubbed will be
the shiniest, so apply more silver along the edges and ridges of the sword.

Handle
Cut two strips of leather or vinyl approximately 3cm wide and 70cm long.
Grab some hockey tape and start wrapping it around the centre of the handle. We're doing this to
add some contour to the handle so we'll create a bit of a bulge in the centre. As you wrap the tape
give it a couple twists. This will build up the thickness much quicker than if you had just used it flat.
Keep going, wrapping around and around, trying to concentrate the most thickness at the centre
and having it taper down as it gets toward either end. The great thing about using hockey tape is it
has a bit of a rough texture and can sometimes be a bit sticky on both sides so when you wrap
your leather over top of that it helps to hold it in place without it sliding around. Once you like how it
looks, wrap it one or two more times with the tape just flat.
Cut a steep angle on your strip of leather, glue it to the top of the handle and start wrapping it
down the handle, making sure you have a bit of overlap over each previous wrap. Add a touch of
hot glue at the end to hold it in place.
Use the other strip of leather to build up at the end of the handle. Wrap that strip of leather around
and around and around, gluing it as you go so that it doesn't move.
Add a little foam circle to close off the bottom end of the PVC tube.

And…You’re Done!
Now you can go and save the world.

© 2018 Lost Wax Designs. All rights reserved.

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If you have any problems or questions, don’t hesitate to email me at:
lostwaxozcontact@gmail.com
I’d also love to see your finished projects so feel free to email me your pics!!!

Thanks so much for your support!

- Chris

© 2018 Lost Wax Designs. All rights reserved.

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 1
m 10mm foam
 1
Cut 2 from 10mm foam