Trident

And finally, a cosplay accessory that had nothing to do with Halloween. This one was a commission — a request to build a full-scale trident for the NorCal Renaissance Faire.

That’s where it ended up — but it started, as these things do, in SolidWorks. I modeled it as a set of separate pieces and 3D printed them, running internal tubing down the core and across the horizontal for alignment and support so the whole thing would lock together straight and stay rigid. The tips got printed in a more flexible resin and rounded off, because no real weapons are allowed at the Faire.

Sizing a prop for a teen is its own little puzzle. Too tall and it’s a flagpole they can’t wield; too short and it’s a garden tool. Here’s the height test (a touch tall) and then the version that landed just right.

Painted up in metallic silver, the first-year version cleaned up nice. Behold the Aquaman audition.

Clean and shiny was great for year one. But a trident that’s supposedly been blocking blades and inflicting damage shouldn’t look like it came out of the box. So for the latest version, it got a history.

For the battle scars, I took a high-powered soldering iron with a wedge tip and literally dug and gouged all over it for the better part of an hour. The whole time I was trying to imagine where the real wear would land — the leading edges of the tines, the spots where a blade would catch and slide, the high points that take the knocks. After scarring it up nice and good, I brushed metallic copper paint into the grooves and then immediately wiped it back off the surface, so the color stayed down in the gouges where grime would actually collect. A few passes of that and the patina started to look like the real thing — old, hard-used metal instead of fresh print lines. Wrapped the head in some weathered netting and you’d never guess it spent its first life as a stack of resin parts.