I first saw this sword being made on Forge in Fire and I thought it was the dumbest design ever. I made a small version of the sword as letter opener, just as a wacky thing to make, but after finishing the mini version I fell in love with the shape. It grew on me and I got the itch to make a full size wooden version. The best part of this project was that I used material I had lying around and left over pieces.

Step 1:

I found a picture of a Khopesh on Google. I copied and enlarged the image before printing it out on multiple sheets of paper which I then taped together. The overall length is about 24 inches. The template in the picture is the cleaned up version of the print out.

The wood I used for the blade is mesquite wood flooring that was given to me as payment for another project.

I taped the template to the wood and traced the outside edge. I try to follow the line as carefully as I can, for some reason I thought a silver colored marker would show up better.

The silver marker didn't workout like I had planned but you can still see the shape of the sword.

Step 2:

I used my band saw to cut out the rough shape of the sword. If you don't have a band saw you could use a jigsaw or if you want a work out a coping will do the trick as well.

You can see my cut lines aren't that graceful, that's why when I make the cut I stay on the outside of the marker line. It gives me more room for error.

The last picture shows the rough shape of the sword.

Step 3:

The wood flooring has some ridges on the bottom that I had to sand off.

If you use store bought lumber you can avoid this step. It takes a little while to sand off the ridges but the belt sander works well for this process.

The last pic shows the sanded handle.

Step 4:

More sanding and smoothing all the lines. I used the curves of the belt sander to clean up the curves of the blade.

Some spots were just to tight so I had to sand those by hand. Here I am using a wooden dowel wrapped with sand paper to clean up the inside of this tight little curve.

Step 5:

Once every thing is cleaned up, it was time to add the bevels. First I had to find the center of the blade and make a mark down the entire length. This time I used a black marker.

Then its back to the belt sander. While keeping the blade at a slight angle I work the sword back and forth working my way up to my center line mark. I repeat the process for the other side.

The bevel is starting to take shape.

Step 6:

The most time consuming part of the making this sword is the sanding there is a lot of sanding. I eventually switched to hand sanding to clean up any marks left by the rougher grits. Here I am sanding with 220 grit sand paper.

Step 7:

After sanding it was time to make the handle. I don't know what this wood is, its very soft and a dark chocolate brown and smells really good when I cut it. I traced the shape of both sides of the handle on to the wood.

And yup I used the silver marker again for some reason.

Step 8:

Here again I used my band saw to cut out the handle.

The wood was pretty thick so I decided to split this handle in two instead of cutting another handle.

The last pic shows the two rough pieces cut.

Step 9:

I made sure to sand one side of each handle flat so that there won't be any gaps when I glue them to the sword.

Next I add glue to all the surfaces.

I sandwiched up all the pieces and clamped them tight. I let the glue dry overnight.

The final pic shows the sword after the glue dried.

Step 10:

And time for more sanding. I used the different curves of my belt sander to do the majority of the work and clean up and shape the handle.

I finished off the handle by hand sanding it. I ended up sanding everything up to 600 grit for a really nice and smooth finish.

Step 11:

After wiping off all the sawdust I applied about 4-5 coats of Danish Tung Oil per the instructions on the can.

The camera doesn't really do the wood justice, it really is very pretty with a lot of figure in the blade.

Step 12:

Like I said earlier the shape of this sword really grew on me and I know it won't be the last one I make. Thanks for reading my Instructable and I hope you found it helpful. See you next time.