As if recreating Sauron’s mace wasn’t enough, the crew of Man at Arms: Reforged have brought us to Middle Earth once again to replicate another nerdtastic battle weapon: Aragorn’s sword, Andúril. Also known as “Flame of the West,” the sword was given to Aragorn by the elves of Rivendell, but it was forged from another. Andúril was born from the broken shards of Narsil, the blade that splintered that fateful day Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron‘s hand. For the team of master metalsmiths, this could only mean one thing: two swords, one video.

During Peter Jackson’s Return of the King, we all watched in butt-clenching suspense as Elrond revealed Andúril just in time to give Aragorn the glorious “be the ruler you were born to be” Lion King speech we’d been waiting for.

But in a real Middle Earth, fixing the busted blade wouldn’t have been so easy. “Every time you reforge [the way the elves did], you don’t get a solid construction,” the team explains. In other words, unless Aragorn planned to use his new toy to slice lembas bread, it would’ve been pretty useless.

The correct way rather, would have been to rebuild the sword completely by stacking Narsil’s shards to create a brick, which could be fired, folded, and drawn into a new blade. This method has been used to create Katanas (and meteroite space swords) in Japan for centuries, and as you can see in the video, is extremely effective.

For more Reforged badassery, head to their YouTube channel here.

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IMAGE: New Line Cinema