Henry VIII's axe; Teach Em' a Lesson.

 For the history quiz round of 'Teach Em' a Lesson' several specified props were commissioned, one of these was a props to represent Henry VIII. As a group we decided that a small axe to symbolise the execution of his wives and his ruthless attitude would work well. I decided to make this out of foam and wood, as opposed to MDF alone, as this way it would look slightly more cartoonish and match the rest of the set and props style. I feel if it looked very realistic it could have looked out of place.

Marking out the width of the handle and the shape of the blade was the first stage. The diagonal lines in the image above represent where there would be an angle carved into the foam to begin creating shape.
To the left shows the final measured lines and the arrows indicated to me which lines to follow.

 Once carved and hand sanded I also hollowed out a hole in the base for the handle to stick into later on. To get the axe symmetrical was the hardest part of this process. Once I was happy with the shape a few layers of white paint were applied as a base coat.

 After a few failed attempts of trying to carve out a shape for the top of the handle, a technician introduced me to the lathe. This fixed up my errors and produced a channel to use as guidance for shaping the handle further.

After buffing with graphite powder, glossing and staining the handle, the axe prop is finished! I'm pleased with the coloration of the 'metal' and the introduction to the lathe machine. However, if I do something similar to this again, reference pictures of every angle would be something I bring with me rather than just ones from the side, as these would have been very useful. Further research into blade shapes and widths would also have been handy, but for a small prop seen on a TV screen for a few seconds, this amount of detail wasn't necessary with a project so fast paced.