Andúril Museum Collection (Pre-Order)

$550.00

Available on backorder

Pay in Full Pay a Deposit Amount

Description

PLEASE READ EVERYTHING. Then take a break and read it again! I know it is a ton of text, but everything is important. 

This listing is a “pre-order” now because we know final pricing. Within this description is ALL the information on the product and no other retailer in Arda at the moment knows more specifics of this item.

Castle Kon is determined to secure as many of these as possible. United has informed us that this will NOT be limited. Meaning that we will be able to secure as many as ordered. However, in the rare case the number of pre-orders is larger than United’s first shipment to me (has never happened before), then we’ll inform those with later purchases and ship ‘first come first serve’.

Those who put the deposit down during the virtual line process will receive a coupon code for the deposit amount to use toward the official pre-order listing with final price.

All deposits will be kept in the business account and not spent. We are collectors just like you and would never spend your hard earned money before the product was official. This means if the item manufacturing is cancelled by United Cutlery, you will receive a full refund! 

Lastly, while deposits are refundable, please do not get in line if you intend on purchasing somewhere else or may not be able to pay the full price when it comes due. As such, we have learned that the credit card companies and PayPal take their 5% regardless of refund or not. To ensure Castle Kon can still provide the lowest prices, requested refunds will be sent at 95% of the total received. We are so sorry to have to do this. However, we realized that refund fees actually cost us the majority of our minimum profits last year.

Remember, Castle Kon is dedicated to providing the LOWEST prices in all of Arda! We have for years come in less expensive than all the competition and if you do find a pre-order for less money elsewhere, please give us the chance to defeat the evil of high prices of Sauron and Morgoth.

We do NOT know the:

  • Final pictures (we only have prototype pics from UC)
  • Final weight for shipping (we are estimating it to be within 1kg of the standard edition Andúril and have shipping costs calculated based on a tad heavier than it)
  • Full construction details
  • When exactly it will be released

The current estimates for United Cutlery pre-orders are located on a stickied post in our Facebook page. CLICK HERE TO VIEW PRE-ORDER ESTIMATE DATES!

What we do know is based on social media posts (more will be added when we find out so check back regularly):

From United Cutlery Wholesale Customer Service October 20, 2022:

There were manufacturing delays with the prototype and our new estimated delivery time is July 2023. Prototype pics are updated.

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From United Cutlery Design Customer Service November 28, 2021:

The Andúril Museum Collection version with NOT be a limited edition.

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From United Cutlery Wholesale Customer Service November 22, 2021:

The minimum advertised price for this item must be $424.99.

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From Kit Rae (UC Designer, Producer, and Supervisor) on UCForums, May 25 – May 26, 2021:

…it will be the same hilt tooling as the standard version, but Anduril‘s hilt did not have the type of heavy pitting and corrosion weathering that Sting and Glamdring had. There are a few nicks and dents that can be seen on the hero prop, but it really only had some dark gray tarnishing and light surface corrosion in a few places. The more obvious difference was the cross guard and pommel steel color, which looked brighter and slightly duller than the blade steel. It almost looks like silver, so I am going to test having the parts silver plated and try some different clear coats to simulate that look. I would like to have UC try that light tarnishing as well, but we will see. There is still a lot of testing to be done for the hilt. This is the hero prop.

Yes, a new plaque with a different look than the standard LOTR displays. The banner is actually part of the plaque display, so to speak. It goes back to an original idea I had for the old autographed limited edition Anduril from 20 years ago. I really dislike that display, especially the silk screen design, so I’m looking forward to seeing this come to fruition.

The Museum Collection Anduril with the carbon steel blade looks like it is going forward as well. The fuller grooves will be the correct length this time, and the blade rune art will be much more film accurate. I’m finalizing the art this week. I designed a cool Gondor banner to be included with it.

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From Drew Hall (UC Social Media Representative) on Facebook, May 28, 2021:

Anduril Museum Collection coming at you. The biggest changes are the etches and blood groove are correct, the etching on the current Anduril has always been slightly off. The blade is 1060 carbon with a high polish on it (it looks totally different than the current Anduril) then the plaque and banner are new. There’s a few other changes, but I’ll wait until the prototype gets here to tell you about that. (this [image] is a rendering, prototype has not arrived yet)

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From Kit Rae (UC Designer, Producer, and Supervisor) on UCForums, January 6 – January 10, 2021:

I tested the sample last week. I have to admit, the 1060 forged blade looks a lot nicer than the stainless version…The hilt and tang actually held up to normal use testing, and I tested it gripping it normally and just by the pommel. I still would not call it a functional battle ready sword, and It won’t hold up to stoopid use, meaning the dumb things people do with swords, like chopping wood.

They used the stock guard and pommel. Since those are cast and plated parts, not steel, I cannot call that functional. The cross guard can be snapped if it is struck hard. It still has a welded tail on the tang end that screws into a nut with a pommel friction fit and epoxied over it. A true full tang cannot be peened through the pommel end and finished properly since that would be trying to peen and finish a non ferrous alloy to steel. It would just make a mess. They can’t make those parts in steel for production. Well they can, but at that point they would hand ground and finished parts, so it becomes basically a small, limited run of a custom sword, approaching Weta Master Swordsmith prices.

Last Fall I came up with a way to modify the pommel tooling to add a steel sleeve inside for a longer tang and longer brass nut for the threaded end, as well as other ideas to make the tang and hilt more stable. They did not do any of that, but what they did was stronger than the stock sword, since the pommel did not snap off when I tested it. But again, the guard and pommel are not steel, so it’s really only the blade that is functional.

It’s not “getting” the steel hilt components that is the problem. It’s the limitations in how they have to be made and the cost ceiling. Real forged steel hilt parts, like Lyon’s parts, are precisely shaped and polished on grinders. Cast zinc parts, like the regular LOTR replicas are precisely cast to shape in steel dies, so it is easy to make the shapes consistently accurate, but those are too brittle to be functional.

For production steel hilts parts to be made functional, we have to do steel investment casting/lost wax. That allows the shapes to be roughly cast to shape, but the surfaces still have to be hand ground and polished to finish them. Any complex shapes with sharp corners or ridges – basically everywhere on the Anduril guard and pommel – get polished down smooth, altering the looks. We lose a lot the detail, and in some cases deep fillets and shapes have to be simplified because they are too small to polish. That’s why all those functional LOTR sword knockoffs never look right. Same with the raised ridges on the twisted square bar shape of the Boromir sword guard. All those ridges would get polished smooth in the polishing process, and some of the deep corners and fillets would not be polished at all. Parts like you see on the the Hanwei Tinker line are easy to make because the surfaces are all smooth and easy to polish. Nothing in LOTR is like that.

[What care is required?]

The same care as the Sting and Glamdring MC blades, for any of you that own those. Either apply light coat of oil every few months or clean and degrease the blade and apply a coat of wax to seal it – automotive wax or Renaissance Wax. Either way, avoid finger prints on the blade, and wipe it down if it does get touched.

As long as it is kept in an air conditioned, low humidity environment, it will take a long time to oxidize or rust even if you don’t apply any protective coating. I have a few carbon steel blades in my sample room that have been in open air for years. I don’t think I have ever done anything other than wipe the dust off, and they only have a few tiny rust spots.

[Will the MC Anduril fit the current scabbard that’s on the market?]

That’s the plan. It’s shape will be made using the same blade die as the standard Anduril, so the profile will be the same. Hopefully the thickness tolerance will be within the window to fit the scabbards, but we have not gotten to that point yet.

Additional information

Weight 15 lbs