“The lives of those who bear the Brand, from the last drop of blood, to the last moment of your agonizing death, will feed life to the new Child of Darkness.”

Today, I made the brand of sacrifice from Berserk, an anime/manga. Really good read, but let’s save the spiel and jump into the process.

So I first cut it out of aluminum during the tutorial session. But later I was told that we should use steel for the extra challenge. So one is made out of aluminum and the other is made out of steel. I think having to do one of each material really helps your intuition when dealing with both materials because now you have a reference point for the strength and feeling of both. Honestly, if this assignment were to be done again in the future, highly, highly recommend doing one of each material.

My tutorial one also has a weird circle engraving on the underside. The water jet just does that sometimes.

After cutting it out, I used a file to get rid of the sharp corners and a little bit of unevenness where the machine finished the cut.

This is where I was expecting that the steel would be much harder to file down, but it was surprised when it felt nearly the exact same.

You can see the little nub at the top

After filing it down.

Then I used a wire brush to see the effects. But it was unnoticable. I couldn’t even tell in the pictures, so we aren’t including them.

After that I sandblasted them. This was a really enjoyable part, seeing the piece slowly change colors. Very meditative.

You can see the effects of sandblasting. The lighter part is where I sand blasted.

After sandblasting. Much lighter in color and smoother.

After that I sanded them down using the orbital sander, and then manually going up to 400 grit. Here I kinda wish I could have switched the designs up, because the steel one was really shiny, and I wish I could have done a mirror finish. But I already painted the aluminum one. I might come back and make another one.

After that I spray painted it. Did one side at a time and waited 20 minutes. I painted the second round upside down to ensure I got all the sides.

Finished and on the drying rack.

Oh and of course because I was the last person I made sure to clean up the mess as best as I could.

What I learned

Spray painting takes a lot of time. Properly sanding is very important, otherwise you have giant craters in your paint. Very confident in using the water jet cutter now. Be careful using png to vector converters. Oftentimes there are multiple cuts in one line.

I enjoyed this process IMMENSELY. I think its because I’m sick of working with wood. But I could’ve done this for much longer.