Katana Umbrella

thingiverse

I love the stuff from ThinkGeek, but ordering from my part of the world is not possible without 3rd party purchasing/shipping. Case in point: the beautiful Katana (Samurai sword) umbrella - http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/b625/ (I really tried. I cannot find my country in the drop-down list, and even pleading via email was in vain) So! Here is a cupcake printable Katana handle for Deliverator-wanna-bes. Instructions I printed mine in separate builds, as my cupcake gets messy with too many parts on a build platform; but I am also uploading the handle (3 parts) in one sheet for well-calibrated cupcakes. Find yourself a nice umbrella and rip apart the handle; measure the diameter of the umbrella main stem go into the Shims Template file and cut 2 holes of similar diameters in the shims. Print the shims. I have included a sample file for my umbrella (14mm diameter) for reference. Print the handle (the Tsuka files, or the 3 part Tsuka_3pc file) Print the hand guard (you can cut your own patterns in the file if you wish) Assembly Put the hand guard and top shim (the one with a flange) through the umbrella stem. Epoxy the shim to the umbrella stem. This shim takes the load of the umbrella, so glue properly :-) Put the Tsuka top in. The bottom of the stem is near the base of the Tsuka top Put in the second shim (without the flange). This should be glued securely to the stem with epoxy*. Glue together Tsuka middle and Tsuka bottom, and tape them to Tsuka Top. Get some nice ribbon, cloth tape or thin rope and wrap the handle with style**. In case you have not read it yet, go read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Go forth and deliver pizzas in an intimidating fashion. The stem is secured (glued) only via the shims. The rest can just be taped down, as you will be wrapping the handle in thread, ribbon, cloth or sharkskin (just kidding, but really!). This allows some disassembly in the future if you have another umbrella, or break the current one due to too much violence. Just print another set of shims that fit your next umbrella and assemble again. ** For a proper way to wrap the tsuka (Handle), try the following link:http://pages.prodigy.net/tlbuck/tsuka/tsuka.htm Bonus geek points if you wrap with colors/stripes resembling resistors. To reiterate, in case you print the wrong parts: For minimal sheets of prints, print Tsuka_3pc, Hand Guard and the customized Shims Template For multiple prints, print Tsuka_Base, Tsuka_Middle, Tsuka_Top, Hand Guard and customized Shims Template Be advised that this print is HUGE, and uses a lot of plastic (I am following actual dimensions of real katana). Total print time for me was around 5 hours. Sigh. The price of being a Stephenson fan...