AT Survival Knife

During the Dark Ages (between the time Joe disappeared and made his reappearance) I needed an adventure knife for the Backyard Patrol commander. This is what I came up with. This knife is made from sheet plastic. I made a blank of the blade, and added the hilt. Then I simply added another slab on each side of the handle to build it up to thedesired thickness. Easy! I added a coat of paint and called it good.

The sheath was made essentially the same way. I laid out the blade on a piece of sheet plastic and outlined it. Then I cut that shape out of the sheet plastic. On each side of this piece I added sheet plastic to form the sides of the sheath. Since the middle was cut to the same shape as the blade, it slid in and out nicely. After cementing all 3 layers together, I simply cout around the edge to make the shape I wanted, then sanded and painted. The leather frog was added to mount the knife to Joe's belt. I simply sewed it out of thin leather. The leg thong was included, just for fun.

In this final pic you can see both knife and sheath. This was my first attempt at making a sheath knife for Joe and it worked so well that I used the same technique to do a variety of other blades, including throwing knives and even a machete. This little project was pretty quick (my favorite kind) and rewarding as well. Now that so many 1/6 items are available for action figures, this sort of project is probably not particularly necessary, but since this knife has been on Joe's belt since around 1986/1987 and was the first model knife I'd built, I still kinda like it. If you've got an idea for an exotic blade that's not manufactured, this might be the way to make it for your 1/6 action figures!

LMK what you think of this project, or any other stuff you stumble across on my website!
- ATC

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