This post is possible in part because of my friend A., who was gutsy enough to dive into cosplay and fan convention culture with me one summer, and showed up to their first con dressed up as Dean Winchester, one of the two leads on The CW’s Supernatural megaseries. (Their Mark of Cain was especially realistic – we’re talking about someone who’s got their fair share of high school plays and theater SFX expertise. It was scary good!)

This is how we made their replica of The First Blade, a bone knife Dean wields at some point in the series’ lengthy run, using basic materials you can probably find around your house. (I did, after all, spring this convention trip on my friend rather quickly, so it was definitely a con-crunch type of project!)

Materials needed:

• Hot glue gun
• Lots of hot glue sticks (you’ll want to stock up)
• Flexible wire hanger
• Scotch tape
• Gray and tan acrylic paint (optional)
• Black string
• Styrofoam
• Toothpicks

Find a reference picture of the First Blade online, or sketch one. Print or draw it to a lifelike scale, proportionate to your self.

Untwist your hanger completely and start carefully bending the wire to the approximate shape of the blade. In the show, the First Blade is made of a donkey’s jawbone; we will be adding “teeth” at a later point, and their shapes should not be included in this wire frame.

Fold the excess wire in towards the middle of the shape, so that it can support the hot glue we’re about to add. As noted above, I hope you have an ample supply of hot glue – this project will require a lot of it.

Being careful not to burn yourself, heat your glue gun and start filling in the middle and all around the wire frame. You can reinforce the center with pieces of styrofoam to help with structural integrity. You want to completely cover it on both sides with hot glue. If your glue comes out lumpy, don’t worry; it’ll make the finished prop look all the more bony. Try to mimic the crags and grooves of the original bone sword in your reference picture. After the initial glue filling dries, you can also keep layering up the center part of the blade, for depth.

When the center has been filled to your liking, let’s move on to crafting the teeth. Make little dabs of hot glue all along the “gumline” of this faux jawbone, and build them up until they resemble teeth. For extra “dental” support, you can use broken pieces of toothpick to reinforce the teeth shapes.

If you would like to paint the blade to give it a more opaque, bonelike color, you should you have the option of applying acrylic paints (a mix of gray and beige would work best) before you apply the last layer of hot glue. Let the paint dry first before sealing it in. (It was a con crunch kind of project, so we didn’t end up doing this – the grayish hue of the hot glue sufficed for us.)

For one final touch, we wrapped black string between the handle anfd the blade parts, and our First Blade recreation was convention-ready!