Keith’s Bayard: A Step Up
Having gotten my feet wet making the first incarnation Pidge’s bayard, I started working working on Keith’s, which is a step up in size, but still relatively simple. I found and bought the original model from Sionnach Studios, which is quite nice looking and well designed. For strength, the blade has a hole running all the way down on the inside which you insert a threaded rod into, otherwise I suspect the blade sections would come apart fairly easily if you bump it wrong. I was overall quite pleased how well it turned out for a first attempt, but like with Pidge’s bayard, I felt I could do better, and so I redesigned it from scratch.

Like Pidge’s bayard, the model is separated by color in the remake. Keith’s, however, also got much more of a design overhaul. For consistency, I used the base of Pidge’s bayard as a starting point, then built the blade from a reference image. Due to the size of the blade, the color sections themselves are also split into pieces, but not parallel with each other. This has the effect of making the seams stronger since they no longer go straight across the blade but are much more crisscrossed with each other, and have more surface area to adhere together. Combined with the blade itself being thicker, it no longer needs the metal rod for reinforcement, which shaves off a surprising amount of weight.

The electronics are pretty much identical to Pidge’s bayard, consisting of a 5V LED strip and a rechargable Lithium battery. It uses the same USB port for charging as well, and since the blade doesnt cover it, I actually really like it’s position on the bayard.

I didn’t include the blue eyelets that are on the original since they are not on the reference image, and also for simpler wiring, but I think the final result looks amazing.