Years ago I learned how to do rattlecan fades from hotrod-flaming a PC case, monitor, & mouse, and I really liked the idea of doing a classic hotrod-flamed katana.
This was a Ronin Katana Dojo Pro scratch & dent shinken (live blade) I bought for about $190. At this time I was still nervous about disassembly, so apart from lacquering the ito (handle wrap), I didn’t modify the katana & fittings at all. This was all about the saya (scabbard).
Rather than sand it down to bare wood, I masked the areas that wouldn’t be flamed. Then I laserjet-printed hotrod flames onto adhesive vinyl and cut out the flamed area with an X-acto (still didn’t have a Cricut printer/plotter yet). I applied these to the ends of the saya. The pic below shows one of the stencils, with the cut-out flames wrapped around the saya to give me an idea what the painted version would look like.
I used Rustoleum 2x rattlecans to fade the custom flame stencils with white, yellow, orange, and red. (I’ve found that a wire coat hanger bent into an S at one end and shoved into the saya is great for hanging them to paint & dry.)
Surprise! The orange paint crackled and I had to redo everything. Man, I was so happy with that fade, too.
But I still ended up pretty happy with how it all looked after I peeled off the vinyl:
The edges needed cleaning up, and I carefully scraped them with an X-acto. The flames were going to be pinstriped, so I didn’t need to be too obsessive about it. This is after edge-scraping:
I ordered an orange silk sageo (ribbon cord) from the sadly defunct Ryujin Swords (UK), and I painted the shitodome (metal washer) to match.
I am nobody’s pinstriper, and my best friend Ken Mitchroney — director/animator/race-car driver/locomotive restorer/Ninja Turtles comic artist, and my Fata Morgana coauthor — was an expert. (He worked with Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, who created Rat Fink.) Ken did the pinstriping, bless him.
When I told him about the paint problems I’d been having, he said he hated working with rattlecans because too much was unpredicatable and inconsistent. He admired my can fades but said I’d be so much happier with fades and consistency if I learned to use an airbrush. Which definitely put a bug in my ear.
For the final polish, I didn’t use rubbing compound because there was a chance it’d damage the pinstriping, and I didn’t clearcoat the flames because it would have been clearcoating the already-coated black sections of the saya. D’oh. So I just waxed it with 3-4 layers of Turtle Wax and called it a day. (Well, a whole lot of days.)
If I had it to do over again, I’d sand the saya down to bare wood, primer it white, and fade the ends (I have an airbrush now). Then I’d mark out the flames with fineline tape, mask them, and paint the saya black. Remove the tape, pinstripe the flames, and clearcoat the whole thing. Soooo much less work.
Even so — especially considering where I was in my learning process with all this — I was so happy with my hotrod katana that I decided to customize a vertical stand to match it. I’ll post that next.