Project Long Sword – 飛雪 Fei Xue

During the Valentine’s Week, I completed 飛雪劍 Fei Xue Jian, the lover-partner sword for 殘劍 Can Jian.

殘劍飛雪生死相守
人不離人劍不離劍

Like its male counterpart, 飛雪 Fei Xue is the name for both the sword and its owner. The 16-word poetic vow above is among the most memorable parts of the movie. It states that in both life and death, the person will be with the person and the sword will be with the sword. The gravity of the promise is particularly notable because the two have developed ideological differences and are no longer the invincible duo they once were. Despite this rift, they continue to faithfully guard and care for each other.

Blade

When I made Can Jian comically large, I wasn’t planning ahead for its companion sword. A proportional Fei Xue made little sense – I’d have to fully stretch my arms apart to barely draw its 90-cm blade from the sheath. As an art project, I also wasn’t sure how to make such a long and skinny structure without it bending to its own weight.

One day, I stared at my stack of Gift of College cards and a light bulb came on. This pile of used trash was sturdy, flexible, and lightweight. I could graduate from paper-only constructions to having some plastic in my sword.

This turned out doable. Gorilla-gluing 22 pieces of plastic card bits together was a little messy, but it formed a far stronger back bone than the same size of cardboard could deliver. From there, I covered it with a few layers of cardboard and finished it with some silver foil card stock.

I thought the silver foil was the right choice for Fei Xue because I used the same material for Can Jian. They are a pair, after all. Aside from that, however, the card stock tends to bend against my wishes and the foil creases too easily. As such, I most likely won’t opt for it again to make blade surfaces.

Sheath

Aside from the skinny blade, a key reason I shied away from tackling Fei Xue before was its round and tapered sheath. How do I make a cone with elliptical cross sections from rectangular card boards? And how would such thing retain shape at such length? With several months of cardboard blacksmithing experience under my belt, I knew I could figure something out. That said, I had no idea what that something was at the onset of this project.

Then two gems landed on my lap – a paper tube (increasingly uncommon) inside a roll of wrapping paper, and a super long box that came with our recent shower caddy purchase. I got so excited over garbage and nobody was surprised.

The paper tube was an inch too wide so I had to surgically narrow it. It wasn’t quite long enough so I attached some cardboard to both ends, and used this opportunity to make one side narrower than the other. Then I cut a generous slice of that shower caddy box to wrap around the whole thing. The process was rather unsightly and imprecise, but I made myself a tapered elliptical-ish tube! The shape of the tube was a bit twisted from top to bottom, an imperfection, but it retained shape and withstood weight. I wasn’t gonna be glass-half-empty about this.

Colors

In the Hero movie, Can Jian was made of a dark metal and Fei Xue’s body was mostly covered in off-white jade. Ideally I would have followed the canon, but the metallic spray paint I bought for Can Jian wasn’t a dark gray as I thought but instead a light silver. To maintain a contrast between the yin and yang, I had to use Wednesday Adam’s color on the lady sword. Then I swapped the accent color from silver to gold, too. Artistic liberty all the way!

Hilt & Crossguard

Attaching a flat blade to a round handle at the crossguard was reminiscent of my first project, but upgraded techniques made it more pleasant and of superior quality.

Finished Product – Fei Xue Jian

Nine months after Can Jian was born from my garbage pile, Fei Xue emerged as his companion. Despite imperfections in the process, I’m pleased with the resulting sword and have continued adding to my skill set.