How To Make A Quiver: Arsenal Style

 

Okay, so for an upcoming costume, I'm going to appear as Arsenal. Arsenal is the current alias of Roy Harper, a staple of the DC universe since the 1940s. However, Roy has more often been than the bridesmaid than the bride, and he's gone through some drastic changes over his lifetime. In the beginning, Roy was Speedy, Green Arrow's sidekick who was also founding member of the original Teen Titans along with Dick Grayson (the first Robin), Donna Troy (the first Wonder Girl), Wally West (the first Kid Flash), and Garth (the first Aqualad). However, his story took a hard turn in the early 70s when it was revealed that Roy had become addicted to heroin. Despite that, Roy has beaten his addiction (with the occasional relapse), and has gone on to join and even lead various superhero teams under the name of Arsenal and Red Arrow at various times.

Backstory aside, this post is about building part of Roy's costume (although quivers are a part of many costumes, so let's call this a multidisciplinary craft). In particular, this quiver is modeled off of one of Roy's Arsenal costume variations where he uses a flattened, backpack style quiver, rather than the more traditional cross-body cylinder look.

This is Roy, in all his ridiculously monochromatic glory

Materials

Plastic form (I used a plastic cereal dispenser, found at a thrift store for $2)

3 long wooden dowels (These came from Home Depot. They come in all different widths, but the ones I used were 1/2 inch wide, 48 inches long, and cost less than $2 dollars each)

1 Foam sheet (You want a thin sheet of craft foam, easily found in your local craft store in 8" by 12" or similar dimensions)

2 strap adjusters

Spray paint

Utility knife

Needle and thread


Steps

Make the body of the quiver:
For this step, you need to find a quiver shape of some kind. As mentioned, the most commonly seen quiver shape in media is a cylinder. However, Arsenal generally uses a quiver with a wider, oval- or rectangular- shaped top. In order to find an acceptable shape, I trawled the local thrift stores, and found the usual treasure trove. Eventually I settled on a large tupperware container (the one generally used for dry storage, often cereal)

Step 1) Paint the quiver
This is pretty straightforward. I used a dual duty paint/primer outdoor spray paint (in the brightest red I could find) and gave the whole outside of the cereal bin a couple coats. I didn't end up putting a top coat on it, but I probably should have to keep the paint from scratching off so easily.

Step 2) Attach the harness
For this, just take out your handy dremel (or another small saw of some kind) and cut four holes in the back of the quiver in a square pattern so that you can attach the straps. I went for a standard backpack style with two straps, one over each shoulder. The straps themselves were simple. I bought a two-yard strap of red nylon webbing, cut it in half to form two straps, and then closed the ends with a strap adjuster on each of the two straps

It's not exactly pretty, but it doesn't have to be! I love it when that happens

Make the arrows:
I wasn't sure how many arrows I was ultimately need, but I decided that making full-length arrows was just going to be unnecessary for my particular purposes. Instead, I made arrow-tops, only about 5 inches long each.

3) Paint and cut the arrow rods
For the arrow shafts, I took three 4-foot-long wooden rods painted them with the same red spray paint I used on the quiver. Then I cut each into into about ten sections (so that each section was just under 5 inches long and I ended up with 30 mini arrow shafts)

Optional: I went slightly crazy at this point and used the dremel saw to cut notches in the end of each arrow shaft to simulate nocks.

4) Make feathers
For the feathers on the arrows, I decided using actual feathers would be more expensive and annoying than I wanted, so I turned instead to craft foam. I wanted to make three triangular feathers for each of mini-arrows, so I cut...just so many little triangles

This is but the first of many

To give the feathers more dimension, I also used a craft knife to simulate the little barbs on each feather.

5) Fletch
After making the feathers, I went ahead and glued three feathers to each shaft.

Attach the arrows into the quiver:
This is the easy part, it's pretty much just plug and play.

6) Cut foam to fit quiver.
At this point, I got out my sheet of styrofoam and cut it into an oval that fit into my tupperware quiver. The benefit of the quiver I found was that it actually had a slight lip about 2 inches below the rim. This made it easy for me to cut the styrofoam round and fit it under the rim of the quiver, but not push it to far down, giving the whole structure some stability.

7) Paint the styrofoam
After cutting the styrofoam to fit, I decided to paint the top of the foam piece so you wouldn't see the bright white sheet inside the red quiver. You can do this or not, but be aware that spray paint will melt the top layer of the styrofoam, giving it a rough appearance.

8) Plug the arrows into the styrofoam
Easy as pie, I just took my little arrow-lets and stabbed them through the styrofoam in a couple of staggered rows. Then just settle the styrofoam into the quiver, and you're ready to go!

Optional
Lay a strap under the styrofoam, so that each end sticks the side of the quiver. This means that you can more easily remove the styrofoam piece without upsetting the arrows, which means that you have easy access to the space under the arrows. Considering how short the arrows actually are, this means you essentially have a backpack for everything else you need at your chosen activity!