Building Boba Fett's Gaffi Stick

hello everyone and welcome back to a long overdue prop building video i am so excited for this week because it has been far too long since i've done any sort of prop building and the plan for this week is to build boba fett's gaffy stick now this of course first appeared in the mandalorian but has been more recently featured in the book of boba fett which is what ultimately swayed me to want to build this because you see it in much more detail and it just looks like a really cool thing to build and have displayed and honestly i would have loved to attempt to have made it like you see them do in the show not that i have any woodworking or wood carving experience at all but i would have been willing to try and honestly really the only reason i'm not making it that way is because i have no clue where i'm gonna get a branch that would work so even though actual woodworking was out of my reach i wanted to try and be as faithful to the original as i possibly could so at some point i thought of the concept what if i tried 3d printing the bottom wood portion of the stick with wood filament not that i have any experience using that either so that is the plan we are going to attempt to build a screen accurate boba fett gaffy stick out of at least partially wood filament [Music] so funny thing when i went to screen record the file that i ended up using for this project so that i could give credit and also mention if you wanted to build this i will link the file that i personally used in the description box but they have since changed the file to be even more accurate which is obviously great except of course everything that i'm about to talk about and show in this video now doesn't really look like the file that if you bought this now would get so just wanted to mention that obviously it's great that this is now even closer to what you see in the show and i hope you enjoy watching me attempt to get to this final product the hard way i ended up slicing the print files over a couple of my ender threes mostly because i keep each one with different nozzle sizes on it which we will get to i was of course printing all of the handle pieces in the wood filament and then i just decided to print the metal shaft piece in some black now the thing about wood filament that i was well aware of going into this is the larger the nozzle the more chance of success because this actually has wood particles in it just the additive into the filament tends to build up in the nozzle and can cause clogs pretty easily and so i was trying to get away with using a 0.8 nozzle for as much as i could which i think only ended up being like two pieces because when i went to slice the files for the super detailed like middle parts of the staff it just completely got rid of all of that detail so i tried printing those in a 0.4 nozzle which actually went pretty well it clogged on one of the pieces but other than that all of the central parts of the end were fine the end acorn portion was a completely different story though and i really wanted to try and get as much detail into the piece as possible so i decided to flip one of my printers to 8.6 nozzle and it ended up working i also ended up making myself a custom acorn point i originally added this little cylinder to the end but i realized the shape still wasn't quite right so i just fully designed a new one to fit the existing file i ended up deciding to resin print the spear point and fins mostly because they're pretty delicate pieces and so i wanted them to be as strong as possible so i figured resin printing those would probably be the best bet here's all of the pieces together in their raw state of course the next step is going to be to clean all of these up which the good thing is for the most part there wasn't a whole lot of support material needed on the pieces and where there was it was pretty easy to just take off with some pliers and clippers because i never used wood filament before i wasn't sure how much the support material would end up sticking to the actual piece but this stuff came off so clean and easy which was a very good thing especially with this acorn piece considering just how suspended the one side of it was with support material there was absolutely no worry about breaking any of these little acorn points off it really just peeled off even though the support material did come off quite easily there still was a reasonable amount of cleanup that i was going to need to do to this piece i started with a knife but then i realized i was just going to hot knife it later for more ease as far as the other pieces the cleanup for the spike pole pieces was super simple it was just removing various rafts and brims just i added them for more success rate for printing since they are such tall thin cylindrical objects i did have one fail which is why you will see me having possibly more pieces than the file has i know i split one up just so it would fit on an ender three easily but because the pieces that failed were good up until the point where they knocked themselves over i just decided to recycle them instead of printing new ones so i went ahead and sanded all of the metal shaft pieces i figured you probably didn't need to see me sanding them down they're pretty rough right now also it did some filing of the ends to try and eliminate any possible elephant's foot situation so looking pretty rough although they do feel much smoother than they did and for the most part you can see how many of the layer lines i guess aren't super visible like you have some little rings that you can see but overall they're looking you know pretty good for the state that they're in at the moment and as you can see here i've also cut up some dowel pieces and these are i believe these are 3 8 of an inch dowel which i measured the holes for the metal shaft the actual wood handle part is a different size so the 3 8 i measured and that was like a size that was the closest it's probably in millimeters and you know dowels don't really come in millimeter sizes so this was the closest so depending on the ends that one's of course the super messed up end but depending on the ends some of them are a little looser than others but i basically just want them as like a safety net so it doesn't really snap that much that is why they're a little on the long side it's pretty much just to help me line things up and also for a bit more stability so what i'm going to do now is actually start assembling these pieces i did figure out how long it's supposed to be and i don't think i technically need to use one of these pieces or i need to like add a bit of a spacer to the actual end of it just for the amount of space that it goes into the handle bit uh which is this piece you see this just slips in here and it does fit pretty nicely and there's definitely like an end point so i'll figure all that out measure it and all of that fun stuff yeah onto assembling this pole i used a combination of super glue and hot glue the hot glue was mostly to fill in and help with the looser ends that didn't fit quite as tightly around the dowel and that ended up working perfectly i also decided to assemble the pole in essentially two separate parts i figured if i tried to build the entire pole i was gonna keep hitting stuff and knocking stuff over in my studio while i was working on it so kept it in two pieces until i absolutely needed to just for the smoothing and finishing process i used my hot knife to burn down the seams between the different pull pieces just to make the next smoothing processes just a little bit easier but from there i decided to use my absolute favorite wood filler stuff it is this color changing stuff it's super plasticky and i basically refuse to use any other kind of wood filler it's absolutely perfect for smoothing out 3d prints especially for anything that is a deeper imperfection there's obviously a lot of different products that you could use for this but this wood filler is just really simple and easy and so i ended up doing a couple of coats of that and i just like putting it on with my finger so i can feel the smoothness and get it all into the crevices and then you can also use like a little bit of water on top just to help smooth it out so that it dries as smooth as possible just to make your sanding life easier while i was waiting for the various layers of wood filler to dry i decided to go back to working on the acorn mostly the hot knife i wanted to use to really clean up the bottom where the support material was it just had that rough liny texture i'm sure if you've seen a 3d print you know what i mean but i realized that using the hot knife with like one of these thin points on it would actually probably be the easiest way to smooth the entire acorn part out instead of trying to sand all of these really fine points down plus i realized that when you implement the hot knife in the right way you can actually achieve a very wood carving like texture which ended up looking fantastic so i ended up smoothing the entire thing this way just using different parts of my hot knife even between all of the points where it wasn't particularly rough and even on the flatter points to give it that texture now this is where the crazy modifications start to come in when i first printed this i did not realize that the top three rows of these knob things shouldn't actually be there it's smooth around that portion where the acorn horn is had i realized that i probably would have done this step digitally and printed this piece smooth but because this piece already looked pretty great and i actually managed to finally get it printed i decided to do it the old fashioned way with a hot knife so i just gradually flatten down the ridges the knobs whatever you want to call these little acorn bits and then i ended up using the failed acorn print for added filament to fill in the different gaps i did consider doing this in wood filler but i really wanted everything to have the same texture and i figured just burning the actual wood filament back onto the piece was probably going to be the best option and here is what the finished result of this experiment ended up looking like it took so many hours i don't even want to think about it but i'm really happy with the end result as far as other modifications that i decided to make to the original file i knew pretty immediately that i was going to need to do something with the texture on the handle pieces i actually almost smoothed out the pieces completely to get rid of the triangles but i couldn't really guess any better like i understand why the triangles are there i'm not sure if they're on to other tuscan weapons but they're definitely on the original fijian weapon that the gaffy sticks are based on so i understand why they're there but boba fetts has this very distinct braided pattern on it and so i decided to add that in to these blank ridges that the original file has just with a angled hot knife tip they're definitely not perfect but i honestly kind of like that because it gives it that more hand carved look so i've got all of the wooden handle bits sanded down and they all have their new engraving marks on them and now i'm actually going to start assembling them with their wood dowel pieces i did also which i did this off camera because i didn't actually realize it was going to need to happen i sanded down and tapered this end point it was much bulkier i don't even know how to describe it it was like practically flat and it really does taper according to all of my reference images and it's something i completely missed so did that by burning it down and then i sanded the living daylights out of it so it is much thinner around the end here now to assemble all of these so that i can continue on finishing everything up again i used hot glue to more securely place the dowels into the more loose fitting pieces and then also used super glue just to really get everything stuck together the handle pieces are a lot more specific with lining everything up so i tried to get all of the triangles and stuff as straight as possible and then the end bit definitely has like a right way that it should be fitting on the final piece once i had all of the pieces assembled and let the glue set it was a time to deal with those seams i decided to use pretty much the same method that i did for the metal pole portion except specifically for the wood pieces i was trying to keep them as plain filament as possible because i wanted to actually try using wood dye on the pieces so i did burn them to smooth them out the rings between the super textured handle bits are actually supposed to be metal so they can be super pristinely smooth but for the rest i actually mixed up this custom color of wood filler that in theory should have been stainable to the same degree as the rest of the filament and i wanted it as close of a color as possible just so that the die took as similarly to the entire piece that it possibly could with it being the same color and this was to mostly get rid of that seam between the two pieces on this end portion but i did decide to spread a really thin amount over the entire piece just to try and get rid of any layer lines as for the smoothing process on the rest of the piece i decided to use a new technique which is the uv resin smoothing i'm not exactly sure what it's called and this is not going to be an in-depth tutorial on it there's a lot of incredible ones on youtube if you are interested in this but you're essentially mixing baby powder or talcum powder something along those lines with some uv resin to create a slightly thicker consistency and then applying that over whatever piece you're trying to smooth like i mentioned this was a new technique for me and oh my god it is so simple and easy it's particularly incredible for people that live somewhere where there is weather and you can't be applying like at 10 000 layers of filler primer or you know comfortably working outside to put a bondo or something on obviously uv resin has its own set of precautions that you need to be taking but it is something that you can very easily do indoors regardless of the temperature outside the idea is you're brushing on fairly thin layers of this resin mixture and then curing that with a uv light i started off with a uv flashlight but then switched to like one of those plug-in curing lights because i found it and i just figured it was going to go faster just since i was working on quite a large piece and i worked in sections of the pole and then i did multiple coats on those sections trying to make the edges of the sections as thin as possible so everything overlapped and blended together nice and smoothly i ended up sanding down the pole pieces of the resin that i'd put on just to gauge the smoothness of them and this was the point where i actually attached the pole pieces which is what i'm working on here getting that new join between the pull pieces nice and smooth with extra resin i also ended up using this technique on the rings on the actual wood handle piece because they are supposed to be metal i wanted them extra smooth and it wasn't going to matter if they were coated with something else so to keep them as uniform as possible to look like the metal of the rest of the pole went at that with the resin as well at some point i did also sand off the excess wood filler to get it nice and smooth before then actually attaching the acorn part onto the rest of the handle i also decided to finally attach the last of the spear pieces which are these fins now there was a lot of sanding down and fitting to get these fins fitting nicely into the slots but once they could actually fit in there nicely i just used super glue to attach them to the main pole now onto possibly my favorite technique in this whole build which is i decided to put some of this wood filler into a tiny baggie and use it sort of like icing it to create these false welding seams whatever you want to call it the fins definitely needed this detail to actually look like real metal and it turned out just so well and it was so simple now that everything was assembled it was time to move on to the final priming step which i actually got to use my brand new spray booth for this i decided to use just a bit of filler primer over the entire spear just to make it that extra bit of smooth this is obviously metal so it's a super perfect finish and this also worked as a bit of a primer the handle however didn't involve any sort of a priming so i just started to go in with my chosen wood dye which i wanted the first layer to be this honestly crazy sort of cherry red color i wanted it to have a really warm undertone that i could build off of to create that really interesting natural depth and the branch that the handle is actually supposed to be originally made out of is a very cherry wood looking color so i figured this would be a perfect as a bit of an undertone for the most part i just applied the dye with a sponge but i did end up using a paint brush to get into all of the little nooks and crannies of the acorn as well as the handle parts i was honestly pretty nervous to see if the dye would actually take to the burnt plastic areas but it seemed to have worked fine so once that cherry color had dried i went back again with a darker color this time more of a dark walnut to start building up some of that darkness and depth of the wood i wasn't using the die quite as perfectly this time especially on the smooth handle part because i did still want a reasonable amount of that cherry color to still come through but this walnut shade seemed a little bit more translucent as for the spear once the filler primer had dried i decided to airbrush on a silver color super roughly honestly i probably would have done this with spray paint but i somehow didn't have any silver spray paint around but back to the handle this is what it ended up looking like once the wood dye had dried overall i really like the variance in color but it did need to be deepened up and weathered so i grabbed my black wash mixture and some sepia ink just to deepen it up if i felt like it was maybe a little too black or not as pigmented and then i just started to weather the entire handle so mostly it was in the triangles and the detailed textured part of the handle the dye just i couldn't really get the dye into those really tiny crevices as well as i would have liked so they seem to be significantly lighter than the rest of the handle so that is where i spent most of my time with this wash but i did decide to go around the rest of the handle as well i went around all of the little acorn detail bits from all of the reference photos it seems like the acorn portion is i don't want to seem significantly darker than the rest of the handle but it does seem to be pretty consistently dark so i wasn't too worried about it looking quite dark in that area but i did also add a little bit to the rest of the handle just to deepen it up and give it that more on-screen color appearance it's really hard to tell what color this thing is actually supposed to be in the show it looks very dark but then the hot toys figure it looks almost the color that i had it before i started weathering it and hot toy figures are generally supposed to be screen accurate and so that complete color difference just seems like maybe it's the lighting in the show or just the environmental lighting that the stick is shown in so this was a bit of a guess so i tried to go a little bit in between so weather it up a little darker but try and keep some of that lighter brown showing through once i had everything weathered i masked up the handle and then airbrushed those metal rings silver i figured this was probably the easiest way to do it and get a nice smooth perfect metallic look and now to start weathering the actual spear i grabbed a lot of different paint colors because i wasn't entirely sure what i was going to want to use different metallics in different silver colors matte metallics and black metallics bronze colors different browns some more rusty colors and then of course a bunch of painting tools different brushes some different sponges stiffer brushes all of that fun stuff i decided to start weathering the fins because i had essentially three options to try and figure out some sort of technique that i wanted to use and i figured i would try and explain my thought process behind what i ended up settling on this is going to be a layered process and i found that i personally felt like starting with the more rusty brown shades as your first coat tend to look the most appealing so taking a sea sponge just go at it pretty lightly you know take some paint off on a paper towel beforehand just so it isn't overwhelming but really try not to be too perfect with this like i was using my fingers and smudging things in areas i was using the sponge to smudge things around so it wasn't like perfect flecks of paint almost and it was more of like a stain on the metal i guess you could say much like the color of the handle there is a large apparent interpretation of the color for the weathering and what exactly is it going on here i then went in with a brush and this metallic black paint which is honestly probably my favorite to paint color for prop making because it is just so handy for weathering and just so much stuff and so i again apply that very lightly with a brush which this paint is very slippery for lack of a better term so it's really easy to blend out i was just using my fingers for this to go at it while it was still really wet to get a nice smooth blend and i was mostly putting this color closer to the pole itself it's really hard to tell what the weathering effect really is on the pole portion especially when you just think about the logistics of what happens to this weapon it pretty much looks this discolored brand new like when they pull it out of the kiln it has this rust-like appearance so working off of that theory since you really can't see very much of the detail and stuff of the blade portion and exactly what's going on it would have to be somewhat assumed that there is a portion of this discoloration that is created during the making or firing up process so that is ultimately why i decided to go with this slight gradient more towards the center to give it that effect of being fired and the metal changing color on its own that way but in other references it looks pretty filthy from just the desert situation that this is being used in all of the time so i went at the blades again with my black wash i applied it with a brush i kind of splotched it on just really tried to get a random dirty effect i was using my fingers i was using sponges just try and make this as natural looking as possible and also continue it down the pole i was mostly focusing on the blades but i was trying to blend out the weathering effect along the edges of those blades so that it could be blended in easier later to the rest of the pole although there are portions on the pole like the extremities so the tip the edges of the fins that look significantly cleaner probably because they're being used all the time so there's no like dirt and stuff that can be built up so i was going at them with some darker matte metallic just to sort of blend that in and give it a more interesting texture and then i also went back in with my super light silver acrylic ink to really bring out those farthest extremities and edges to be super perfect and pristine looking as for the rest of the poll the only consistent thing that i basically could distinguish between the actual footage from the show and like the hot toys figure and just any reference i could possibly have come across was that it's extremely dark and dirty right before the actual handle portion so i almost painted the entire thing in that metallic black just as a base and blended it up so it had a nice dark base that i could work off of to really make that section look dark and grimy like it seems to appear i also started adding in some of the bronze and browns upwards towards the middle of the pole there is a portion that looks pretty clean so you do want to blend it up but you don't want it to be too perfect of course and still have that grimy effect it's just a very delicate process should we say the key here is really to try and get it as natural as possible so i was just like rubbing my hand along it to blend out paint just apply it with my fingers go at it with sponges just anything to create a natural texture there was a point where i felt that the dark weathering was looking good so i actually went in with that super bright opaque acrylic ink and added some of that to the more clean parts of the pole just to give it again more of that weathering effect and adding lighter colors back onto weathering it can look a little weird and muddy but this stuff was so opaque that it just looked like straight metal and the last part of the paint job was of course the metal rings on the handle portion which i specifically left for last because i needed to make sure that these matched the color design and texture of the rest of the prop they do honestly look reasonably clean compared to the rest of the spear so i started again with that black color and one along the edges of the rings just to give it a more 3d effect and have that weathering look so mostly around the edges but i did sort of come into more of the center and just blot that out with my fingers and the brush i'm using a pretty rough brush for all of these just so that it isn't super perfect and has a nice texture and this i was honestly sort of viewing as the base coat the black to silver color was a super easy guess and it didn't really affect you know the amount of rusting and browns in it so that's why i started there but then i decided to be a little cheeky with a trick on the end portion of the handle so right where it attaches it to the spear pole i realized that my tape ring wasn't quite as sharp as it needed to be so i essentially created a fake sharp edge with paint which is honestly really easy you're essentially faking a shadow so i did a reasonable line that was pretty rough on the one side and then blended it out towards the rest of the handle so it created that seemingly edge even though it really isn't that deep of an edge it just now appears like that because of the paint it obviously would be nice for it to be the appropriate shape with that sharp edge but this honestly worked better than i thought it would have and especially on camera and honestly in real life it looks super legit i then decided to actually slip the spear pole into the handle just so that i could create a nice cohesive weathering between the two pieces i'd actively made sure that i didn't really weather the ends that much because i knew i was going to want to bring the pieces together and do the weathering then so just made sure they stayed pretty clean so that i didn't overdo it and i of course just continued with my weathering as i felt looked appropriate and here's the finished gaffy stick of course this thing is so long there is no hope for me to manage fitting this entire thing in one shot but i did actually manage to take some pictures of it earlier so i will insert those here but this was a really fun project and overall i'm really happy with how it turned out i think my experiment with the wood filament was interesting and once i got past the first few hiccups it definitely worked out well because this entire end is just wood dye and because of that you do have the variance in color especially on this section and in the detail of the handle it does look pretty dark in this lighting but it also looks a pretty dark in the lighting on the show half of the time so i think overall it is pretty much the right color i'm also really happy with how the weathering ended up turning out which who knows how well that's going to show up on camera but it looks super legit in real life i'll probably end up designing some custom brackets or hooks or something to wall mount this in the future i will say if you are planning on mostly building it for a wall display you might want to technically misalign the blades of the actual staff it's supposed to have that one blade in the center back of it but it just is going to make wall mounting it super annoying because it makes it stick out significantly farther than if the distance like on the back was split between the two blades so if you are planning on wall mounting it either permanently or occasionally you might want to look at maybe not gluing the actual staff part if you have like a tight enough fit and you can get away with it um just so that you can like turn it to wall mount it easier and if you didn't glue it and you did need the fin actually in the center back for a costume or whatever then you could just turn it and you're good to go i hope you enjoyed seeing the process of me making this prop i would love to know what other props you might want me to look at building i do have a pretty extensive list myself but i'm always looking for interesting things to build and work on or just you know any sort of video that you might be interested in seeing i'm hoping to do a lot more with this channel this year because i love talking about a prop building and 3d printing and all of that fun stuff so definitely leave that in the comments anything that you might want to see from me in the future but that is everything so thank you so much for watching and i will see you in my next video

Channel: M.M's Prop Shop

Views: 9,632

Keywords: artist, studioofmm, studio of mm, weekly vlogs, star wars, 3d printing, book of boba fett, boba fett, mandalorian, 3d print, resin print, prop building, how to make, tutorial, make your own, wood filament, how to, cosplay, tusken raider, sand people, gaffi stick, gaderiffi stick, temuera morrison, cosplay tutorial, ender 3, boba fett cosplay, boba fett costume, props, the mandalorian, tatooine, tuskens, airbrush, how to weather, how to paint, prop weathering, mandalorian armor

Id: AmY5PSaWFNE

Length: 32min 4sec (1924 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022