As you may well have read already, Betty is creating a femme Khal Drogo cosplay for WLFCC in October, and she asked me if I’d mind commissioning her a Dothraki Arakh (the curved sword used by Khal Drogo) to go with it. Obviously I was up for the challenge, and in the end was able to make the whole thing in under one day – so, if you’re making this same outfit and need to throw together the accompanying sword, this is a quick and simple way of doing it.

Obviously, if you want super accuracy then making it in wood or similar and then making a plastic cast would be preferable, but currently lacking a few tools, I opted for a simple foam option.

To begin with I found out an old plastic hollow pole (this was from a walking cane I had for a Day of the Dead outfit last year) and cut it to length, in this case 48cm.

Next I took a sheet of newspaper and freehand drew how I thought the blade should look, approximately the same length as the pole. It’s worth noting I’m quite a good artist, so drawing long smooth curves isn’t a problem, but if you’re not as competent, find something large and round to draw around, and then taper off the ends.

Cutting that out you could see how it was going to size up.

Next I traced and cut that shape out of 14mm craft foam, and on the patterned side, dremelled out a groove for a bamboo stick to sit in. This gave the blade a bit more lateral stability so it wasn’t so wobbly.

Dremelling out the same groove on the opposite side of the blade is tricky, but once you’ve got it, you then hot glue the two sides together with the stick in the middle, and that’s your basic shape.

Obviously at this point it doesn’t look very bladelike, so it’s time to get the dremel out and have at those edges. Really, you have to play it a bit by ear. I didn’t go to a super sharp point along either edge because it was a quick job and I felt it might make it a bit unstable, but I went sharp enough that it was obviously going to be a blade. Have a look at reference pictures if you want a better idea of how to shape it.

I also rounded off a section at the hilt of the blade to slot into the pole.

Next I sealed the foam with a PVA / water mix, and some thick PVA layers applied slowly over a few hours, then left overnight.

By the morning it was nice and shiny, a sign that the PVA had done it’s job and prepared it for painting.

On went a layer of white primer, and I left it out to dry whilst I worked on the handle.

The Dothraki are all about their leather, so I decided that a leather wrapped handle would be a good way to go. I had some elk hide scraps lying around, and I felt that the uneven nature of them would suit the design really well. But, they were the wrong colour.

A good soaking in bison brown leather dye later they were looking much more like the colour I was after as they hung up on the washing line alongside the blade.

Once the white primer had dried, it was time to slap down some silver. It took two good coats, but in the end I had it looking good.

The leather dye took around three hours to dry (it’s quick outside on the line), and once I could handle them and not risk getting dye everywhere, I needed to make them into one long strand.

This was achieved by punching a row of holes at the end of each stand, and then using the leather from an ladies belt that I’d unravelled to cross tie them together. Again, I felt this big clunky method was very authentically Dothraki.

Very quickly I had all four parts tied together.

Attaching them to the handle (once the silver paint had dried) was simple enough. I used a two-part epoxy resin glue to adhere the end by the blade (also adding a bit of much needed strength to the join) to the leather, and wrapped it as tightly as I could coming down the blade, adding more glue three or four times for extra strength. Once at the bottom, I glued it again, then tied some leather string offcuts around both ends to ensure it didn’t unravel.

The one weakish point of the Arakh was where the blade slotted into the handle. In hindsight I should have made it go in further, but I’ll know that in the future.

To help counteract this weakness, I tied extra strong wax coated leather string around the head of the handle and the base of the blade and it seemed to do the trick. It still won’t stand up to the force of whacking people, but it’s for posing for photographs rather than playfighting, so it’s not really a big issue.

Finally came the weathering. Standard procedure really. Dab some black paint on the edges with a brush and then smudge them with a cloth and layer up until happy.

The one weathering difference I did here was to add a bit of blood splatter, as it is a blade after all, by spraying it from a distance and up close with some red paint.

And with that, it was done. It’s now going to hang in my workshop until LFCC when I’ll be delivering it to it’s Dothraki owner.





I couldn’t help but take these next two photos. I apologise in advance.

As usual, any question or comments, leave them below.