The Making of the Father's Sword

Based on Ron's drawings, Jody painstakingly carved the hilt component originals from hard jeweler's wax. The crossguard is a representation of an Irish Elk skull, an animal that once roamed the woods of Ireland, now long extinct. The skull waxes were made in two identical halves, and then were joined together to form the guard. The massive guard was hollow under the skulls in order to reduce weight.

The pommel was carved to represent two elk hooves pressed together.

The bronze hilt components were cast at Sun Foundry near LA. Jody spent three days cleaning up the castings prior to fitting the sword together. After an initial rough polish on a Scotchbrite wheel, the hilt components were chemically "antiqued" and then the highlights were buffed for an aged, worn look. The grip on the Father's™ Sword was made of canvas micarta and was left bare for wrapping by the propmasters at the studio.

If you look closely at the picture at left of the unwrapped grip of the Father's sword, you can see a hole in the wood near the guard. The piece of canvas micarta Jody used for the sword in the picture was a scrap piece and had a drill hole left over from a previous project.

The grip was wrapped in two layers of leather. The base layer is a simple overlapping spiral latigo leather wrap, which was then overlaid with a criss-cross design of thin suede leather strips.

To create the look that John Milius desired, Jody chose 440 stainless steel, hardened to 48 rockwell. Jody ground each of the original 3 blades by hand on the same BurrKing belt grinder he uses today.

After the blade had been made to Ron's original specifications, it was engraved by Daniels Engraving (at that time in Glendale, CA). A process known as "EDM" was used, where specially designed electrodes and a electrolytic salt solution deeply etched the runes into the blade on each side. Contrary to a popular myth (resulting from one of the opening scenes of the film, where it apears that you can see the fire of the forge through the runic inscription) the runes did not go completely through the blade, but were etched to depth of about 1/32nd of an inch.

The blade's runic inscription, in a "runenglish" script invented by Ron Cobb, reads: "Suffer No Guilt, Yee Who Weild This In The Name of Crom." Crom is the patron deity of the Cimmerian hillmen.

No replica of the Father's™ Sword has ever been available to the public before.

© 2003 Conan Properties, Inc, all rights reserved
Conan™, Father's Sword™, Atlantean™ Sword, Fangs of the Serpent Dagger™, Conan Dagger™, Subotai's Sword™ and Valeria's Sword™ are registered trademarks of Conan Properties.

© 2003 Conan Properties, Inc, all rights reserved
Conan®, Master's Sword™, Father's Sword™, Atlantean™ Sword, Fangs of the Serpent Dagger™, Conan Dagger™, Subotai's Sword™ and Valeria's Sword™ are registered trademarks of Conan Properties.