This guide is put together to help you design your very own make-able latex weapon. It covers the basics of the areas of a sword and what you can do with them whilst drawing them up.
It's also of the assumption that you've had inspiration from the vast amount of influence material out there.
First of all you need to understand the different areas of a sword and what they’re called.

When people talk about the areas of a sword, it’s generally broken down into two areas: the blade and the hilt.

The Hilt has aspects to it of the pommel; grip; crossguard and these elements can be changed for your design, which we will look at later in this guide.

The Blade is the striking area of a sword and is something that can be radically changed to suit each design or ‘flavour’ of a sword. It also has other elements to it which will be explored later.

When designing a sword it’s important to remember that the sword is built around a straight core and so all the sword elements have to fit around it.

The best way to do this, is to draw a straight line on a page before drawing anything else, then drawing the sword over it. That way you will instantly know if it’s a makeable design or not.

A. Single Angle
Edged Tip

B. Double Angle
Edged Tip

C. Single Rounded
Edge Tip

D. Double Rounded
Edge Tip

E. No Tip

These are the most common tip designs. You will find most double sided blades will have the double angled or double rounded tips as the blade edges follow though. In turn the single edged blades will follow to a single angle or rounded tip. Cleaver weapon types generally don’t have a tip, so they have a flat end. Whether you choose if tips are rounded or straight angled is entirely down to your own preference and doesn’t hinder the use of the sword.

The Fuller (illustrated here in red) is featured in lots of swords. The fuller is mainly there in real weapons for two reasons: to lighten the blade so it’s more easily wielded; to strengthen the blade in the blacksmithing process. On a latex weapon, the Fuller only really serves in an aesthetic way, so it isn’t necessary to have one. If you want a weapon to look ‘blacksmithed’, it’s a good idea to include this. Otherwise it’s down to you!

For obvious reasons and because we’re pretty immature, we like a nice Chappe. The Chappe is actually there for swords which are normally put into a protective sheath when not being used. The Chappe is there to bridge the gap in the sheath entrance, to stop rain from getting in and rusting the blade. For latex weapons, it doesn’t have this purpose. Instead you can use this element as an awesome excuse for adding all kinds of shapes and details.

The Ricasso was originally on swords from the medieval / renaissance times as it allowed the wielder better control of the weapon. In latex weapon terms this is an epic part of a sword which you can do loads with to make it look cool. You can serrate the edge to make it look mean; you can add spikes for that extra nastiness; you can have it there and just keep it plain for an additional visual element of the weapon. Whatever it’s used for, it’s a great part of a sword.

A crossguard can change everything about a sword. Whether it’s small and simple or large and extravagant, the crossguard can really control the flavour of the sword. This is where research, creative magic or good planning can really make the difference. Alternatively you could go the other way. The most aggressive weapons are considered to have no crossguard as you don’t expect to defend, only attack. Often self-made swords don’t have a crossguard in favour of showing off riveted plates or crude bindings.

Some swords look for a little bit more protection for the hand and so have a handguard (or sometimes referred to as a bucket hilt). They are often seen on period military swords and characters of a more noble standing. They also offer an additional way of blocking, giving the full length of a sword as a parrying surface. However to adopt this as your normal swordplay can be a little bad as when you use a different sword without the guard, you may find yourself with stingy fingers.

Standard Binding

Cross-Bound

Random-Bound

Multi-Binding

Good grips have a leather wrap which are bound into place. Hack and Slash ones certainly do! And this is where weapon making moves away from real life weapons. It’s an opportunity to add additional detail to a sword to help give it flavour.

Standard Binding is great if you don’t want to detract from the main body of the weapon. If it’s a relatively simple design, doing anything else could be too much detail.

Cross-Binding in an excellent way to fake a look of martial artistry or give the sword a bit of bite to it.

Random-Binding is the ultimate bad guy grip. The randomness show almost like, a professional evil element or a lack of caring.

Multi-Binding is something rarely used. It’s a great way of adding ‘even more’ detail, effortlessly to a sword to make it even more cool.

The pommel is the final part of the design process to put the icing on the cake. It’s usually best to echo the flavour or the sword’s crossguard onto the pommel so it has continuity of design. It’s best to avoid a spiked bottom to them as this can present a weak point of the sword. If you’re putting a sword down, pommel first, to preserve the stabby end, a spike at the bottom will equally get destroyed just as quick.

That’s about it for the sword design basics. Hopefully you’ve learned something from this tutorial and it’s been informative. Best thing you can do now is put a pencil to a page, remember or refer to this guide and draw what’s in your mind’s eye!