The next piece to make was the weapon. Every good paladin uses a two-handed mace, when on offense. Last year I carried a one-handed mace and shield, and it proved to be impractical. Carrying a 15-20lb item in each hand for hours gets extremely tiring. I couldn't hold my arms up by the end of the day.
So this year I had a few criteria for choosing a weapon...
- Must be two-handed. Last year's one-handed mace and shield were too unwieldy. Another problem with the shield was that I couldn't remove it without help, so effectively I couldn't put either one down all day. Not this time!
- It must have a long handle, like a sledgehammer. The weight of anything this size would make it difficult to hold if you can only use it from a short handle. Having a long handle lets me hold it like an axe, or sledgehammer. This lets me use "big muscles", like those that control the torso, shoulders and arms, instead of using "small muscles", like those that control the forearm and wrists. This means I get less tired.
- It must look like it's made out of "clean" metal. Essentially I'm ruling out all Naxxramas era weapons, that look dirty, rusty, and dead. I want something shiny, with a machined metal feel that matches the armor styling.
After hours of looking through almost every two-handed weapon in the game, I decided that the Grand Marshal's Battle Hammer, a level 60 PvP reward, was most fitting. This was before the Argent Colliseum (patch 3.2) was on the PTR, otherwise I might have chosen one of those.
This is the same mace Uther and Arthas carry in the Culling of Stratholme dungeon.
And here is a picture of a large portion of the woodwork done. It's missing 3/4" faceplate on each face of the mace, because the woodburning of the lion head isn't done yet.
Hindsight being 20/20, it's probably overly thick (between the side facing the camera, and the side facing away from the camera), coming in at 10-5/8". Something more apporpriate would have been more like 7" thick. I'll get some more pictures as the work continues.