1st Lightsaber Build! (with a partial wooden hilt)

[Ethan]

Hello Everyone,

I'm starting work on my first lightsaber build, for which I'm going to try to use a custom made wooden body for the main part of the hilt . Here is a few images of what I hope to have the saber look like once it is finished.

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I intend to make the main body of the hilt out of a piece of walnut, which will then have 2 of the .75" male/female extensions glued into it for the pummel and blade holder to screw in to. I have yet to order the metal parts for my saber, as there is only 1 of those extensions, and none of the pummel inserts I would like to use available at the moment (does anyone know how long it usually takes for things like that to get back in stock?), but I have started to prototype the walnut section which will form the center of the hilt. Images of the prototype are below (the prototype is only made of pine)

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One end of the prototype became too thin while I was sanding it down to the correct diameter (a bit less than 1.5", as I am going to use the 18" sleeve piece to make a shroud for the saber), so I will have to be more careful on future attempts. I was only measuring one end of the piece while it was on my lathe being sanded, which is a somewhat stupid mistake to make, but I'm glad it was made on the prototype, not the final piece. I will update this thread as I make more progress on the saber.

[minorhero]

I like your design! My first saber also incorporated wood. I went through several designs and ended up just using wooden rings and some wood shielded by steel to make a sort of control box. However my original design involved a 1-1/4" sink tube which acted like a metal barrel for the wood (cherry in my case). If you have ever turned a pen you get the idea. This worked really well because the sink tube gave the entire structure strength. Ultimately I wasn't able to make it look aesthetically pleasing enough. But the store does have sink tube to mhs converters. My main worry for your design is that an all wood main body would not be strong enough to be useful as anything other than a pure display device. That may be all you are going for though.

[Ethan]

I’m not going for a pure display piece, however I don’t plan on doing any dueling with this saber (mainly because I don’t know anyone to duel with). Using a sink tube as a barrel would make it stronger, however, I am unsure how to incorporate that into the design without making the wood part so thin it would be impossible to make without cracking. How did you get around that?

[jbkuma]

I'm looking forward to seeing this build take shape!

Depending on what needs to fit, you can probably find aluminum tubing that would work to support that section.

[Ethan]

My plan is to use the MHS v1 chassis discs to create a chassis that will fit into the saber. This makes adding an aluminum piece as a barrel difficult, as the wood combined with the proposed aluminum piece would have to be no thicker than 1/8 of an inch to let it fit inside the MHS sleeve tubing. I am contemplating just using normal MHS chassis parts, and then putting a walnut veneer around it to give it the same look, but I have somewhat of a bias against using veneer to make things look like wood you could say, so I'm unsure whether I want to go that route

[minorhero]

I basically made what amounted to a giant pen barrel. I started with a rectangular piece of cherry and using a 1.25" forstner bit drilled out the center. I had to do some sanding and filing in there to get it to fit but once done I had a rectangular piece of cherry that would accept as a tight fit the sink tube. I then epoxied the sink tube in place. Once dry I took the whole assembly to the lathe and turned it down. I got it so the wooden outside would slide perfectly into a 1.5" sink tube which I planned to use as a shroud. I abandoned this idea when it turned out that cutting good sized pieces out of my "shroud" caused it to deform and no longer remain tight against the wood. I have a thread from that first build with pictures and explanations. You can see the progression here: http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/showthread.php?20929-Hello-and-first-build-in-progress-(small-progress)

[Ethan]

Thank you for that link, from a first glance, it looks like you did roughly what I’m thinking of doing. I’ll spend some more time later going through that thread, to see what I can learn from it. In my current plan, I’m thinking of using the Mhs chassis parts to house the internals of my saber, which makes using a sinktube difficult, but maybe I can figure out another way to reinforce the walnut piece while turning it, or another way to hold the internals of my saber

[minorhero]

You could use mhs parts as your tube instead of a sink tube. This may make using mhs sleeve material for your shroud difficult or impossible however. You would need another solution for that. Another option is make your own chassis discs out of wood. That way you can use any size you want. And finally since you seem able to 3d model you could make a 3d chassis and have it made somewhere like shapeways and sent to you.

I admit to not understanding all of your parts in your model. Not sure if you are planning to go completely custom or not. If not you may want to revisit the design so you can use off the shelf parts. Having done one saber more or less custom or highly adapted, and a second saber almost complete the same way.. I have to say I am looking forward to my third saber being completely mhs.

[Ethan]

Other than the walnut piece, and a few small 3d printed pieces, I am trying to make as much of the saber as I can out of MHS parts, so I would rather not use custom 3d printed chassis discs made by a place like shapeways (that would also likely increase the price, and I've created a budget for this saber that I would rather not go over). making wood ones is a possibility, but that would also add more complexity to the build, as getting all the pieces to line up correctly would be hard, and like you said, just having things go together the way they are supposed to is nice. another small thing I would like to do is have a crystal chamber inside the saber, and the smaller I make the interior space, the more difficult that gets. Because of these reasons, I think I will likely go with just a walnut piece as the main hilt, the pine prototypes I've made for that piece have been pretty strong, and since walnut is a much harder wood, it should be even stronger. The aluminum Shroud Piece also runs almost the whole length of the walnut, so hopefuly that will act as sort of an exoskeleton as well. To give you guys a better idea of what I hope to do with the internals of this saber, here is an animation I created of it being dissembled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkBF6DdYPG4&feature=youtu.be

[adacey]

Damn, and I thought i was being ambitious with my planned first build just on the electronics side. I'm loving the look of your design and ambition on the fabrication.

[minorhero]

Well first of all... What a great animation! You have clearly put a LOT of work into the modeling aspect.

In the animation the parts that I am not sure about are the metal end caps to the Walnut cylinder and the black/dark grey ribs to the grip. The metal pieces are the same outer diameter as the Walnut but they go into the Walnut piece and are also what allows transition to a mhs emitter and pommel? Unless you are planning to make these metal end pieces, then whatever they are is going to determine what your chassis is. I honestly don't know what parts from the store though look quite like what you have there. If you do plan to make them, then again however big their inner diameter is your maximum size for your chassis.

When it comes to 3d printed chassis, discs is not the way to go. Search on shapeways for lightsaber chassis and you will see a bunch for around 20$. The discs in the store are a great way to go if you are using mhs parts because they are so customizable and fit into the existing bodies. For your saber you are already obviously familiar with 3d work it seems like it might be easier for you than most to custom make a chassis just for this saber.

As for wood discs. Making them line up will be easy. Turns a solid wood cylinder to the perfect diameter, then take it over to a drill press and drill your holes for threaded rods right away. Then take it to a bandsaw and slice it up like taking thick slices off of a salami. Then you can stack up any number of wood discs, tape them together, and drill whatever holes you need in them for things like batteries, sound cards, wire holes, etc. Mhs discs are simpler and easier but if have an inner diameter they won't fit into you have some great alternatives.

The pieces from the grip, I just don't know what it is but I am wary of them because they will have the most twisting and pressure put on them of any part so whatever they are they need to be very strong and very very well attached.

[Ethan]

For the end caps on the walnut, I was thinking of using the .75" male/female extensions. I had not thought of 3d printing a full chassis, as most of the modeling I do for 3d printing has to be done for FDM printers, but since shapeways uses more advanced printers, that would certainly be an option for the internals if I end up needing something different from MHS parts, and would also be easier than wood discs. For the grips on the rear end of the hilt, I was just thinking of using the left overs of the sleeve material I would have after cutting out the main shroud pieces. I can't think of where there would be a twisting force on them, could you clarify that more?

[minorhero]

If you are holding the saber and swinging it around your hands will compress, twist, pull, scrunch, and slide on those grip pieces. Obviously not like actually slide all over the place but just think of what the grip of a baseball bat needs to withstand and you have a good idea.

The good news about those MHS male/female adapters is that the inner diameter is mhs standard 1.25" so you should be able to use the chassis discs if your wooden cylinder is the same inner diameter after you get past the part where the MHS male/female adapter inserts in. It will be important that your wooden cylinder is setup in this way so that with the mhs parts on the end the inner diameter of your wooden tube remains a consistent 1.25" all the way through. If not you will have a hard time installing any chassis whatsoever.

The bad news is that the male/female coupler has an outer diameter like all mhs parts of just 1.45". That means the wall thickness of your wooden tube will need to be at most a bit under 1/8" at its thickest, and even thinner at the ends where the male/female couple will make contact in order for your wooden tube to remain flush with the mhs parts. That is a VERY thin piece of wood for a lightsaber.

[Ethan]

As I said earlier, I'm not going to be doing any dueling with this saber, so I'm not too worried about a lot of force being put on the grips, but if the Mhs parts are only 1.45 in", that is getting quite thin. I think I may have to use a sink tube on the interior and have a custom chassis made by shapways. Looking at the 1.25" sink tube on the store, it widens towards the end, does anyone know if that is included in the 12" length? also, will the MHSv1 to 1.25" sink tube adapter allow me to secure the LED unit between the adapter and the blade emitter? there aren't any images on the store that show the inside of the adapter, so I can't tell whether it has the recess behind the threads for the flange on the LED heat sink to slide into.

[minorhero]

The blade emitter itself has room for the heatsink and led, or at least the ones I have seen. The converters have a flange more narrow than a sink tube inner diameter which means you will likely want to attach your sink tube to mhs converters through some method that can be disassembled such as screws. If you glue them in place you will have a problem with your chassis either getting in or getting out.

[Ethan]

On one of the reviews for the sink tube to Mhs converter, it says that the inner diameter of the converter is 1”, so I was thinking I would just make a 1” chassis so that I could remove it without having to undo any screws, to make accessing the recharge port and Sd card easier. That doesn’t solve the issue of the speaker though, as 28mm is larger than 1”, so I’m still coming up with ideas on how to implement that. It would be nice if the speaker could fit inside the pummel, but the store doesn’t list the inner diameter of the pummels as far as I know, so I’m not sure if that will work.

[minorhero]

All mhs 1 parts have an inner diameter of 1.25" except for the ribbed section and possibly some of the fluted sections... Not sure on them. The smaller diameter of the ribbed sections is 1.15" if I remember right.

If you use a 1" diameter chassis to fit inside your wood cylinder which is reinforced with a sink tube your chassis will rattle around because the inner diameter of the sink tube is greater than 1". Hence why you would probably need screws to remove at least one side of the converters so your chassis could have the same diameter as the sink tube so it won't rattle.