Harley Quinn's Baseball Bat from Suicide Squad.

Recently my wife purchased a pair of the trainers worn by Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) in Suicide Squad, They are pretty awesome. She jokingly mentioned that I would have to make her the baseball bat that she uses in the film. 

Not to take a challenge lightly I made the baseball bat :) 

 

 I did a little googling and found a few images of the screen used bat. one such image had a full 360degree view of the bat.

 using this image and some others (im pretty sure they are replicas and souvenirs) they helped me work out what to put on the bat and the spacing for the main components.

Once i got a suitable bat that didnt have any markings or branding I measured the length and scaled the images i had to the right size so i could work out the size and position of the 'GOOD NIGHT' text on the front of the bat. 

 I traced out the lettering of 'GOOD NIGHT' and printed them out to the right size to match the bat. cut it up and taped it in position on the bat. this will be my guide for marking the words out on the bat.

Once the template was taped in place i wrapped some tracing paper round the bat and traced the words on the paper while it was all in place on the bat. 

 leaving one side of the tracing paper taped onto the bat so it would be returned into place, i used a soft 7B pencil to colour the back of the letters. 

When the tracing paper is wrapped back round the bat and traced over the lettering again, which transferred the soft pencil onto the bat.  (its like a home made sheet of carbon paper)

I then went over the faint pencil lines with a thin permanent pen.  

I then used a red permanent marker to fill the letters in red. (Im using red markers as it lets the grain of the bat show through and I feel its more like something Harley would do.)

 Using a non-permanent fibre tip pen and a cotton bud i coloured the edges in and blended the black into the letters to give them the airbrushed fade to black look seen in the source images. 

I wrapped some more tracing paper round the bat again, this time the join is over the letters on the front. 

The aim of this is to get a template for where the writing is going to be on the back of the bat. 

I traced round the sides of the letters this was so i could see where they were when i unrolled the paper. This was to allow me to get the spacing correct on the bat.

 

Using the template i wrote out the whole quote once just to get used to writing it and to try and get the spacing correct. 

I then did it with the pens i will finally do the bat with. this matters as the pens are thicker than the pencil i used first.

I wrote the words out a few times in the pen just so i knew i could do it when it came to putting it on the bat. 

I wrapped the tracing paper back onto the bat (using the outlines of the letters to align the paper correctly.) this was to make sure the spacing of my writing was correct and that it all lined up.

Once i felt confident that i could write the quote on the bat correctly I went about slowly writing the quote onto the bat.  

I started with the black and blue lettering, switching between them as i went along. 

The red lettering in the background of the quote was written last to make sure it was in the correct place.

 Using the tracing paper I wrapped the handle of the bat and marked out where the diamonds would be. I used the scaled image to get the dimensions correct. 

I took the paper off and marked out how the diamonds will look. thickening up the lines so they matched the screen used prop. 

Then using the colouring the back of the paper technique again I placed the design onto the handle of the bat. 

I then used some acrylic paint to fill in the lines. I started with white as other colours will go over it better if i make a mistake :)

The blue i originally used was a tad too dark once I painted the other colours so I used a lighter blue and I think it works a lot better. 

Once the paint had dried it was time to seal the bat. 

I took the bat out to the shed and gave it a couple of coats of clear gloss lacquer. This is to protect the paint job on the handle, and also it will make sure the pen wont run or smudge, even though it was done in permanent marker it still might get smudged but with the gloss clear coat over it it will stay fresh.

To put the grip on the bat i purchased some white rubber tennis racquet grip. The one I got was white and i thought (incorrectly) that it was blank. I had to wrap it funny in the middle to cover the dunlop logo as i didnt want it to be visible if the grip got dirty etc. 

I started wrapping at the base of the grip and then worked my way to close to the black lines on the bottom of the diamonds. The grip came with some black logo tape to secure the grip but i didnt like it so i used some white electrical PVC tape. it will age differently to other grip but i think it looks good. To match the top of the grip i wrapped some tape round the bottom as well.

 

Finished bat is all shiny and ready to get some folk for Mr J.

 

 

 Thank you for taking a look at my post about how i made Harley Quinn's bat from Suicide Squad. 

If you have any questions please feel free to ask and i will try my best to answer them. 

If you like Harley Quinn I have another post about how I made her Mallet. see HERE

Harley Quinn's Hammer

 This halloween my wife wanted to dress as Harley Quinn. She worked out the costume side and i said that i would make the hammer for her. 

This post will go into how i made the hammer out of what we had around the house. 

 The hammer we wanted to make was the wooden style. There are many types found all over the internet and this was they style my wife wanted so i set about making it for her. 

Starting the hammer with the head of the hammer. 

 

 I had a section of large cardboard tube. this tube is 159mm diameter. we had a tube that was over 300mm across but we decided we didn't want it to be too huge. 

I cut the tube in two and one side was around 300mm and the other section was 400mm. I chose the 400mm part as it looked a better length in scale to the diameter of the tube.  

 

Using Some 10mm EVA foam i cut two circles the size of the ends of the tubes. These will be the ends of the hammer. 

I didn't glue these parts in just yet as i would still need access to the inside of the tube. 

Cutting the hole for the handle.

I measured 200mm to find the middle of the large tube. at this point i marked out a circle slightly smaller than the diameter of the Broom handle that i am using as a handle, it is smaller so it is a tight fit. 

I divided the circumference of the tube in two and then measured that around the center line and then i drew another circle for the handle. 

To cut the holes for the handle i drew 4 lines through the circle and cut these spokes and then carefully cut around the circle and pushed the slices into the tube.

Attaching the handle to the head.

 Using a smaller diameter tube, i cut the smaller tube to the diameter of the larger tube. This tube will go into the large one where the handle goes through the large tube.

 

I cut some 5mm dowel to slightly longer than diameter of the small tube. 

Marked four spots along the side of the tube and drilled a 6mm hole through the tube and the broom handle the wooden dowel will go through the tube and the handle to secure it inside the main tube. 

 

   I test fitted the handle into the small tube and when everything lined up it was time to put it in the main tube.

I put the small tube in the large one over the holes, then inserted the handle into the main tube and lined up the four holes and pushed the pegs through all the holes. Adding a little glue to the pegs before to get glue through the holes to secure the pegs to the tube. 

This Setup stopped the tube moving up or down the handle and also stops it from tipping forward or backwards. It doesn't stop the head spinning on the handle, to stop this i poured glue into the gap at the bottom of the small tube and let it set. when it had set it secured all the hammer insides in place and stopped all movement of the hammer head. 

When i had done this i glued the thick EVA foam ends into the tubes.  

Adding the detail to the hammer head.

Using some thin EVA (yoga mat) 

i cut some 30mm strips i cut some space out between each strip as sometimes when cutting EVA this thin and long it can creep and move as you cut so to make sure i cut a 5mm spacer between each strip.

 

I glued these 30mm strips around each end, around 40mm from the edge. 

This strip will be painted to look like its a metal band around the wooden hammer. 

Using the same thin EVA foam i cut 4 Hexagons, i glued two of them together to make it thicker, (i didnt use the 10mm EVA as it is textured on one side and this wouldn't have made for a good surface to glue to the curve tube) when the glue had dried i cut a hole in the middle to go over the handle and the hole to make it look like it had been bolted on.

To make the band around the hammer look like a metal band that has been hammered and nailed on to the wooden hammer i cut some card discs out of 1.2 mm card stock and glued two together and glued them around the band at intervals of somewhere between 35mm and 40mm, this was to make it look like they had been nailed into the hammer slightly randomly by Harley Quinn.

To make the Harley Quinn logo i did a similar thing to the discs, i cut out 8 diamonds and glued two together and then glued them onto one of the hammer ends. 

Painting the hammer head. 

 Before painting the hammer head i gave the whole thing a few coats of a PVA and water mix to seal all the foam sections and give the card a nice sealed surface to paint on it. 

When the glue had dried i painted the whole thing with a couple of coats of a white primer. 

To make the hammer look more like wood i started the paint technique at the base coat level.( the earlier you start the paint technique the better) 

I Painted the sides of the sides of the hammer front to back along the length of the hammer head and the two ends were painted in a circular pattern to mimic the grain of a log. 

I painted the whole thing white to give it a good blank canvas to start with.

 

 At this point i remembered that i hadn't decorated the other end of the hammer.

 So i marked out the words 'your face here' on the blank end of the hammer and carved it out with a sharp scalpel. 

I then had to paint layers of PVA and then a layer of paint over the carved words, as i had exposed the foam again.

I painted the hammer head in a mid brown. again in the direction of the grain. I painted it quite thick to leave the brush stroke indentations in the paint. 

 

I lightened half the paint and darkened the other half of the mid brown. 

I painted the ends of the hammer head with the light brown ( i didn't paint it too well i left some of the mid brown showing through to give depth to the paint work) 

I painted the dark brown on the sides of the hammer (again leaving a little of the dark showing through) 

Again all of this in the directions of the grains.

After all the brown paints had dried i painted the bands a dark grey. 

Details on the hammer.

 

I thinned down some black acrylic paint and painted it into the valleys of the words i carved out of one end. 

I then painted the diamonds a bright red to make it stand out.

Weathering the hammer head. 

I made wash out of the dark brown paint, i made it darker and watered it down to be just a little thicker than water.
This was then painted onto the hammer and then rubbed/wiped off to leave just the dark wash in the grain marks from the paint.
I also used some silver paint and dry brushed it onto the edges of the parts painted dark grey to make them look like metal.

After the weathering i gave the whole hammer a coat of clear coat spray to seal it all in and give the paint a layer of protection.

Now you can go out and clobber the batman.