I pulled out some Sculpey Clay and made the very simple maul head and baked it. I dragged some tools over it to carve out some raised wood grain and dug out a split in the wood in the front of the maul head. I wanted it to look used. I then spent some time thinking about how to brace a maul head for use as a weapon and decided on a sort of t-strap for it. I drew this just now to illustrate...
Here's the initial pieces I assembled and the results after I removed the axe and the cleaver.
I put a Heavy Gauge Floral Wire through his hands. Which required that I pop his left arm free. That maul head is about as basic as it gets before sanding and "carving." Then after drilling a hole through the maul head I created the wood grain and dry fit it all for a look at how he's holding it.
Sanding and more sanding on the haft and the head got even better results. So I then pushed to add the wood flaring from getting beat up and adding the decorative pieces over the weld points on the maul head straps.
Some proper photos taken in the studio:
A little more sanding took place after the photos above. Mainly on the maul head but a little more on the handle. The next step will be to add some ballast to the base to match the integral base and prime it for my buddy before shipping it all to Iowa. Really the primer step isn’t necessary except for my own sake. I just want to see if I need to clean anything up.
A fun project since I created the maul from scratch and got to try some techniques out.
