In this Instructable, you will be making a costume sword. I made this in about 30 minutes on halloween to complete a costume I was working on. It's made of copper wire, some tape, and a golf club handle. Cheap, fast, and easy to build.
Enjoy!

Step 1: Materials

So, what you'll need is:
-Some copper or steel wire, pretty thick
-Duct tape
-Electrical tape
-Golf club handle (or any other long, skinny stick)
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For tools, you'll need:
-Wire cutters
-Pliers
-Possibly wire strippers, if you want the wire showing

Step 2: Taping the Handle and Blade

So, this is the easy part.
To tape the handle, wrap the electrical tape in a spiral up the handle of the stick until satisfied with the length.

As for the blade, take a piece of duct tape as long as the rest of your stick and tape it vertically along the shaft. Wrap the tape around the shaft tightly, making sure there are no wrinkles. The smoother, the better.
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Also, instead of using tape in this step, you can just spray paint it.

Step 3: Handle Guard

This is the hardest part of the sword.
First, you need to cut a length of wire about 3-4 feet long. Take the center of this length and wrap it around the top of your handle 2-4 times. (this is where the golf club hand comes in handy. Due to the gradual increase in width, this will keep your wire in place w/o glue)

Bend the wire into whatever guard shape you want, but be sure you have enough left to wrap around the bottom of the handle. (see pics for reference)

If you want to, you can spray paint the wire before hand, or glue buttons, jewls, etc. on to the handle to make it more shiney.

And with this step, you have succesfully made a costume rapier!