With the Murgleis suitably reinforced, the only thing left to do was paint. Fortunately, I was able to tag-team some of this work with Maria, which made the process significantly easier. After sanding down all of the fiberglassing work we did to make the piece stronger, the blade was airbrushed with a coat of Vallejo German Panzer Grey Primer. I opted for this instead of a black primer because it left open the possibility for me to use black washes as an additional shading layer while trying to get that ‘wrought iron’ look on the piece. After the primer, the blade itself got airbrushed with multiple thin coats of red, working from a dark base all the way up to Flourescent Racing Red at the ‘hottest’ points.
The painting started off as a bit of push-and-pull between airbrushing red onto the edges of the blade and black back over it to knock it back, as the sword glows most vibrantly towards the hilt and burns out a bit as it reaches the tip. We ended up masking the center of the blade and the edges and painting them independently after the first coats went down to try and get a bit more control over the finished appearance. The majority of the tip of the blade ended up back at the German Panzer Grey tones, but a bit of careful drybrushing along the high points on either edge of the blade helped maintain the glowing effect.
We didn’t fuss too much about getting red overspray on the handle – the whole blade got masked off and the handle was simply re-primed after. While there’s a lot of detail on the handle, guard, and quillions, simply drybrushing the edges of the parts with a gunmetal silver did an awful lot to get the sword looking like it should.
The whole sword received a few solid coats of Duplicolor Wheel Matte Clearcoat, which is my current favorite matte finish for how easily it applies and how durable it seems to stay.Â
When all was said and done, it was basically unavoidable that Maria and I would end up posing like goobers with the finished piece.Â
