Six months later, the same person emailed him again when he couldn’t find anyone closer to fulfill the order. He responded to an initial request from someone in Argentina by suggesting they try to find a local builder because the shipping would cost too much. I’ve found one or two other guys that do it, but they don’t make them as often or as detailed.” Craughwell soon realized the uniqueness of his craft and the shortage of giant swordmakers in the world: “If there is something just wrong enough in your brain that you actually need one, it’s me or no one. One of his first tasks was to build a life-size, ornamental replica of a sword from Final Fantasy VII. Before long he realized the legitimacy of the requests, and started accepting orders, mostly from men who wanted replica swords from video games or comic books. Craughwell says of the initial communications.

“I started getting these messages, ‘If you can make that you can make this one.’ I ignored them at first,” Mr. Robinson as “AmeriMike” because “it’s weird calling someone else Mike, that’s my name.” As the duo’s videos started taking off (his most popular video now has more than 550,000 views on YouTube), people across the world started taking note of his skill. “A lot of people on this island are able to help, but not everyone knows what they’re doing with the camera,” he said. Craughwell describes as a “shortage of nerds on the Island,” the two hit it off.

The two originally met playing board games, and given what Mr. With the help of fellow Islander Mike Robinson, he had the idea to document “just how ridiculous it was” to make the sculptures. Craughwell gained notoriety in the past several years for his “big swords”after he began filming his process and posting the videos on his YouTube channel in 2007. He is a welder by trade and a former sculpture student of Cluain Mhuire Art College in Ireland, where he began building “regular-sized” swords. Craughwell has been making larger-than-life replica swords as a passion project.

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