Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Controlled Chaos: The Grappling Hook from ReCore”.
A few months ago I saw a preview for a really cool-looking game. It’S called recore. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, it’s got a main character. A young woman named jewel.
Who’S got like a sidekick that can be put into a robot dog or a robot spider, or a robot gorilla, or some other forms and shapes to help during the game. But what really caught my eye was that she has this arm, brace that has a grappling hook launcher on it now. This was all designed by Keiji Inafune a and that’s the same person who designed Megaman.
So I was instantly a fan, but I had to table this idea for a while. I had other obligations, things like writing articles for Make Magazine and the make website. So I didn’t get to build it for a while, but then Xbox reached out and they asked me if there were any of their properties that I’d want to build something cool for and immediately my mind shot to recore. So I’m excited to present to you my recore costume, complete with arm brace and functional arm mounted grappling hook, but before I get into how I built this, I want to say thank you to xbox for sponsoring this video if it weren’t for you guys sponsoring this.
I wouldn’t have been able to take the time to build this. I decided to go with kind of a steampunk or dieselpunk look instead of trying to match the game exactly. It was better suited to my skills and I thought it would be fun. So the first part I wanted to tackle was the actual launcher that was going to be the hardest part for me. You can see here the basics, there’s a rod in the middle of a pipe that pushes the projectile powered by a spring to get there.
I had to cut the rod into a section and beat this kind of the central rod that pushes the projectile into shape so that it could latch on to the spring and push through the center of the pipe some basic welding after I decided to add a Second spring was required. I just love the look of the hot metal there. I also had to add some mounts on the pipe itself for the springs to attach to here.
You can see some of the first tests it’s now cocked and ready to fire and on releasing you can see that it works. It is pretty powerful and there’s a bit of a pinching hazard there after assembling the actual launcher. I moved on to the arm. Brace. I started by cutting a cardboard template. This allows me to quickly prototype out the shapes that I want and get it to look the way I want it literally just duct taping it onto my arm to check sizing and looks, and you can see. I seem pretty happy with it here after that I ripped apart an old file cabinet I’ve gotten for dirt cheap. The steel in these is a nice thickness.
It’S a you know thin enough to mold easily, but still thick enough to hold a shape, especially if you layer it for reinforcement here, I’m just snipping it by hand to get to the so the smaller pieces that I wanted for some of the visual shapes. These are the elbow pieces that are nice and round. My welding throughout this whole project is very ugly and there’s two reasons for that one. I thought that it would look good with the aesthetic of kind of the dieselpunk or steampunk look and two I’m not that good at welding.
So you know it’s a good excuse to say I’m going to leave it ugly, some test fitting to make sure it fits, and one thing I found was that all those metal edges were extremely sharp and a lot of it required a few more welds. I love welding in slow motion here. It just looks so beautiful all those little bits of molten metal landing on my workbench, which is a bit of a fire hazard, but I do have a fire extinguisher just out of frame so to combat the effect of this metal. Cutting into my arms, I decided to line the whole thing with leather.
I simply cut leather pieces, put some holes through it and used aluminum rivets to hold it in place. It seemed like an easy way to get what I wanted done, after that it all came together. In my opinion quite nicely, the shirt was extremely simple. I just started with a long-sleeve red t-shirt, snip, the sleeves off and sewed on a zipper that I purchased separately. The helmet was a bit more complicated. I couldn’t replicate the shape of Jules helmet without completely doing something custom, so I just decided to take a hard head and cut it into shape similar.
I added some scratches and cuts on it and then aged it by spray-painting. It and then wiping the paint off so that it just remained down in the in the grooves of the cuts and scratches it turned out quite nicely. In my opinion, those cuts and scratches add a bit of a story to the helmet. So here’s how it’s supposed to work, I load it up and I take in I fire it. The grappling hook hits the target it’s released in a clamps on just like in the game, but it actually turned out a little more like this. This thing was extremely hard to aim.
I got a little bit better with practice, but it never really was what you would call easy. I honestly could have thrown it with a little bit more accuracy and then my mechanism for latching on tended to release as soon as it was launched. Overall, I would consider this project a success. It turned out really cool looking and it technically does shoot something, even if I can’t aim it at all. I want to thank Xbox again for sponsoring this video and be sure to give us a big thumbs up and subscribe for more cool projects from make you .