This is a complete step by step walk through on how I made a Soul Eater scythe replica which is accurate from the show. It is made completely from solid wood and the handle is metal, it's all held together tightly so it's completely safe to swing around without it falling to pieces. Overall the project cost about £30 if I had to buy the things I didn't already have. I also have this uploaded on my Deviantart page if you want to take a look at that and all the art I draw and other projects like my first Soul Eater scythe and my Zelda OoT Hylian Shield: http://ant-richards.deviantart.com/

I made another Soul Eater scythe earlier in 2016 and was very happy with it at the time but that love has slowly deteriorated just like the scythe. At the time I wasn't very experienced so I made it with as little effort as possible, the body is made from compressed MDF and the blade is too small with the details on the blade being inconsistent and made up as I went along. The eyes are quite poor and the paint job is terrible and sloppy, the scythe has started to fall to bits and I love the original works and would've like to have made something which would be a worthy tribute to it so I decided to redo it by applying my new skills and correcting any problems I made with the past one, so this is a complete redesign. If you would like to check out the previous project though, the link is here: https://www.instructables.com/id/Soul-Eater-Scythe-...

Step 1: Working Out the Dimensions

Because the scythe only exists in the show there isn't a physical object to measure so I had to do it myself. The actual notes I made I ended up throwing away since I thought I wouldn't need them so I quickly knocked up these rough ones. I started off by finding an image of Maka and Soul's scythe form, then I found Maka's height out which is 5 feet and then compared the image of her with the scythe so I could get an idea of the main body's length and width. This took me a while to do and I'm pretty sure that some of the measurements written on the image are wrong so if you were to make one then I would advise you work out the measurements yourself rather than looking at the image I have here.

Step 2: Main Pieces

We had to find the pieces we needed for the main building pieces. The wood was found on Ebay. They're cut with a wood lathe and use the measurements you send them so you get a custom cut and the prices depend on the size, the delivery is also really fast and the service is great you can check them out here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Natural-Wooden-beech-woo...

I then drew out the dimension on it. For the blade we used the straightest piece of ply board we could find and the side piece was made with a solid bamboo chopping board that I found at my local B&M's for £3. The top of the cylinder was cut with a hack saw along the sides and to get the chunk out we used a router the get the majority out and then used a file to get the bottom perfectly flat. The groove at the top was cut out with a standard saw and the thinner one at the bottom was cut with two hacksaw blades taped together.

Step 3: Cutting All the Wood

The side piece was cut out using a saw to make it into the rectangle then used drill bit attachments to make the holes. The curve was used by taking our electric sander and cutting away the plastic at the edge where the paper curves, then cut away the majority of the wood first then used the curved area to get it curved. With the cylinder piece we had to figure out a way to cut into the side to stick the blade and side piece into. We knew that we could use the router but holding it stable was the problem so we made a box out of bits of wood to hold the cylinder in tightly so it wouldn't budge, the flat wood also provided a good base for the router to slide across, the router was set to a specific height so as it went along, it made a consistent groove that didn't sway at all, we did this for both grooves, it also didn't matter if the edges were curved or not perfectly straight since those areas could be filled in easily later. It's very important to keep in mind that you'll have to include an area on the blade and side piece which will glue into the body and would be hidden. The blade was drawn out with a pencil because I made a lot of errors and guessing here. I decided to make the blade more straight this time around since I thought the blade on my last scythe was too curved. You need to find a open area to do this in and draw two points where the width of the piece that sticks into the body is then take a piece of string and secure one end down to make a pivot point so you can essentially make a big compass, then attach the pencil to the other end and draw the curve onto the ply wood, I drew out a few and rubbed away the ones I didn't want.

Step 4: The Zig-Zag Pattern

I had a lot of fun with this . Since the blade on the show is inconsistent with its shape and number of triangles on it I found a collection of official images and counted the number of points on each of the pictures. Believe it or not but in the manga and show the number of points switch between 8 and 9 most commonly. I chose to use 8, I took a few pieces of paper and drew around the blade and cut out the stencil. Then by using some math that I'm happy with I measured the width of the blade all the way along it while keeping my ruler consistently flat and made points marking the mid points, then took a string along that dotted line then measured the string and divided that measurement by 8, that's how I found where each spike needed to be. KEEP in mind though that the first and last spike aren't the same as the others. Now make sure that the distance between each point is the same between all of them. I had to make sure that all the triangles have a consistency so what I did was draw lines where the points are and measured those lines and divided them exactly by three. So each point at the top of the blade is exactly one third from the top of the blade at that width of that area. Then use a compass and put the pivot point at the top spike and put the pencil end at any distance past the half way point between each spike and draw a circle at each of those points of the triangles. You'll find that there are two points where the circles cross on all of them, you'll want to draw a line down through each of those widths and you'll then have a line which will represent where the bottom points will be. I measured each of those widths and divide that number by 4 to each of those points are exactly one fourth the distance of that width from the bottom of the blade. After all that is done you should draw lines between each of those points with a pen. Make sure that the spike near the body is accurate to whatever refernce picture you use and the spike near the end of the blade trials off to the tip.

Step 5: Painting the Blade

THIS part is optional but I highly recommend it. I painted the wooden blade a first time but didn't like that I could see the wood lines through it so I bought a primer and undercoat and painted the entire blade in it and when it dried then sanded it down then painted again and sanded again and did this about three times. I say this is OPTIONAL because it's very tedious and took about a day or two to finish. What this undercoat does is fill in any bumps and grooves and when it's sanded it becomes incredibly smooth and doesn't look like wood anymore. I highly recommend doing this but it is time consuming. As you can see from two of the pictures that one of them is more shiny than the other. They're both painted with the same gloss spray paint but one is extremely dull. The finished blade is very smooth with no bumps and very shinny and almost looks metal.

The pattern was transferred to a clear paper thing I got from Home Bargains that school kids use to cover their books in. I taped each piece of paper to a section of this stuff and drew the line pattern on it and cut it all out. This stuff is rolled up and looks like grid line paper but once peeled its a thin shiny plastic which is sticky on one side and it doesn't leave any unwanted residue behind either. The paper you see on the picture isn't that stuff but it's a terrible thing I used before I gave the blade an undercoat. But after it was painted it looked great and is exactly mirrored with the other side.

Step 6: Soul's Eyes

I found a good reference image to use and drew out the eye on a piece of paper the I found tube which was the same diameter as the body so I could sculpt the eye of it. I found some clay to use in a craft shop and used that I didn't take a photo that early so the one I have is of the eye after I finished using it and dropped it by accident. There is a video you can look up on YouTube which uses a tube of silicone of any colour and corn flour so you can mix it together and make a silicone mold for anything. This stuff is amazing and I've used it a ton of times. It takes like two minutes to make and sets in like half an hour. I took the silicone mold and covered the sculpt with it and then i had a reusable mold that I could use. MAKE sure that you do this on a tube or something which is the same diameter as the main body so what ever you fill it with can set to the right shape. For our eyes we used car body filler. This sets very quick and is real easy to sand and incredibly sturdy. We used bits of plastic to help fill the eye out to at some sturdiness to them. You can use this stuff to fill in any holes, scratches, bumps etc. In the eyes or the body. I sanded the eyes smooth and then painted them with acrylic paint.. The elastic bands and tubes were used to make sure that the filer dried to the right diameter so it fits onto the body perfectly.

Step 7: The Handle

The handle was found thrown away so I don't know what exactly it's for. It's about 8 feet long and hollow and that's all I know about it. The hole was drilled using a huge drill bit that was found at B&Q which is a bit big for the handle but it was the only one that we could find which was near that size. It was attached to the drill and used while being held tight against a right angle edge which is where the wall meets the floor in my roof so the drill wouldn't skew off anywhere. The metal handle was sanded all the way along and then buffed out to get a shine and was cut in two places. The big length was cut so the blade looks good on its own and can be displayed on the wall and a smaller piece was cut and a thinner metal bar was glued into it with epoxy glue so it's in there solid. It fits perfectly into the other piece so the pole becomes huge and anime accurate, I included a picture of the finished scythe there with the manga to give an idea of the scale of the scythe.

Step 8: Painting the Body

The side piece was glued in with gorilla glue and used slithers of wood to make sure it was tight. The area that was being glued in was scratched up with a saw and scored deep with a blade so when the glue went in and dried it would be held in and gripped tight. The body was then painted with the undercoat and primer that was used for the blade and then sanded so it's perfectly smooth and bump free. The middle section was painted with silver spray paint and the other parts were painted with a mix of black and grey acrylic paint. I didn't like the shade of grey and would later re paint it. But the metal handle was the glued in. We drilled two holes at different heights into the body and then used counter sink drill bits to make pits for the screws to fit in and wouldn't show after painted. The hole was filled with slithers of wood and glued in with epoxy glue, this stuff dries quick so the bar was twisted as it set to grip the bar too. Because the bar is hollow it isn't very sturdy to we found a children's shovel at a £1 shop and put that into the top of the bar so the screw through the body could fit in tight to the handle. Since the handle meeting the body would have to be the most secure part of the scythe so it was screwed in tight and glued with epoxy to secure this. The screw holes was filled with the car filler and sanded to fill up in the holes and couldn't be seen after it was painted.

Step 9: Almost There

The blade was scratched up at the area which would be glued in to help the glue grip to it and used slithers of wood to help making it tight and then glued it in with gorilla glue and held up right while it sets so gravity could help keep it down to. After it dried the main body was done and glued completely after that I repainted the dark grey areas to a lighter tone then measured around the circumference and looked at my reference pictures and found that there are 6 black spikes in total and divided the measurement by six and made small points on the clear sticky paper where the points of each spike are and then put that clear plastic on the body and painted on thee triangles with black acrylic paint. Then all the details and stuff for the main body were done!

Step 10: Finishing Off

The eyes were glued on with epoxy glue while being held upside down with elastic bands to prevent the glue running and waited a few minutes for it to dry and then....

Step 11: Finished!

The scythe was spray painted with clear lacquer to give it a shine and then it was done. The scythe stands at 6.8" feet tall and is completely anime accurate, right down to the blade, scale and colours. I've included some images of the overall size of the scythe and a comparison with my old one as well as different angle shots and how it looks when displayed on my wall.

My other Instructables projects like my Zelda OoT Hylian Shield and previous scythe: https://www.instructables.com/member/Ant-Richards/i...

Check out my DevianArt here where I upload other projects and drawings: http://ant-richards.deviantart.com/

I found the wood here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Natural-Wooden-beech-woo...

I loved doing this project and I'll probably go on to make Soul's death scythe form too, let me know what you thought about this project in the comments, I'd love to here any feedback or anything you want!!!