Papercraft: Dagger Style

Papercraft: Dagger Style

The prompt for this project was to create an object out of paper that was important or significant to us in some form. The dagger was a choice I made based off my brother and his love for a certain webtoon series so I thought it would be interesting to see how far I could push my abilities. I had many ideas, and started out with my first design, however proved to be unsuccessful as the way it unfolded was very difficult to actually build, so I restarted the design and went with something more streamlined and realistic. I revised this a few times, making the sides of the blade wider to accommodate for more tabs and a sturdier blade as my prototype was flimsy and didn't hold well. I had to make everything a bit larger including the edge pieces of the blade to make sure I could actually build it. 

    The feedback from the peer review was incredibly helpful to make the dagger come to life. The first comment was to make the handle smaller so that someone could actually hold it, which I made adjustments to and that also helped to make the dagger more proportionate. I made the first handle and that ended up being much too large, it was proportionate to the dagger but was difficult to wield. In the final dagger, I added a curve that opposed the curve of the blade to give it more balance and interest, and also decreased the size to fit in the hand nicely. To connect this to the hilt I created a hexagon shape using split to make sure the handle fit perfectly, inserted it through the hole and attached tabs inside to hold it steady.

 The next comment was for the side pieces to construct them in smaller sections as to not lose the length when folding them. I made small pieces and attached them at about two at a time to make sure nothing would end up not fitting into the sihlouette of the dagger. This was the most helpful piece of feedback as I struggled with this step when making my prototype, and I learned the most during this step. I also learned through this how to glue the pieces together with the from blade efficiently, by connecting one side by only the bottom pieces, then moving on to the other side and placing the top blade portion after those pieces dried. It was a little tedious, however by far the most efficient way I found to do it.

The third comment was to create a slit in the hilt to slide the blade into in order to connect it without it wiggling around. I left extra flaps on the bottom of the dagger and slid those through and glued them to the inside of the hilt which stopped the blade from swaying. Due to the volume of paper on the blade versus the hilt makes it a little wobbly, but still sturdy enough to hold. 

Finally, based on my own decision I felt my first prototype was boring and lacked interest so I added a surface design through an additive technique. I used the curve tool on rhino and made shapes that connected to the edges, fixing them how I felt would convey magic or fire and made them into planar surfaces. This way I would know exactly where the pieces would fit on the blade and it would be the same on either side.

Now I present my long and painstaking (but rewarding) process:

Ah, the baby first idea, which ended up having too many small triangles on the outside and would've been too flimsy when built. I also wasn't a fan of the uneven hilt and changed that a few times.

First idea for the handle, I realized the small pieces of the unrolling might've broke and changed that further as well. 

First small unrolling, where I learned that doing the sides in one piece was a bad idea.

The blade, which I still liked from the first idea however changed its width and subtracted the smaller triangles, trying to get a more general idea of the form. I kept this form through to the last product.

Second prototype flat plans, however I changed the handle once again as this version was good in idea not in the actual building. 

The final screen prints for the laser cutter, however after I left my appointment and got halfway through building, realized I forgot to cut off one sides tabs on the edges of the blade and had to do that manually. 

The planar surfaces of the decoration.

Revised handle and flat plans, also changed the shape of the hilt to not distract from the blade or handle.

After the sides had been glued together.

Placing the handle inside the hilt and gluing the tabs down.

After the blade had been fully constructed.

First handle

Second prototype

Second vs. First prototype

Flat parts of the blade with design

Final Dagger

Dagger renderings

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, the process was long but I learned a boat load and look forward to making something like this again in the future.