Looking for advice on first hilt

[santini]

Hi everyone,

Im just starting into this whole custom saber thing and wanted to run some ideas past you guys to see if there are any glaring problems that I've seemed to miss or if anyone has some suggestions.

Anyways the idea I have for my hilt is to have a basket-weave over part the length. Ive seen at least a few instances where people have used a lathed piece of wood as part of a design but not quite like this.

It would consist of a mhs style 4 blade holder, style 1 hilt, male to male connector, 3 inch f/f connector and a style 3 pommel,
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/waylanddargen/scan0004.jpg

as you can see I want to anchor the weaving using a ring attached by 3 button head or cap head screws at both ends
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/waylanddargen/scan0003.jpg
Any advice about what to use as the anchor ring would be appreciated, since the weaving wouldn't be too thick but would probably make the od larger than what a sink tube could easily slide over.

Since this will be my first saber I'm just aiming for a stunt saber with no sound, and will likely go with a green 5w lux. Any advice suggestions would be appreciated

[supertrogdor]

contact Tim(Strydur) about your anchor ring, he could most likely machine one for you. I would suggest you plan your weaving as an overlay over a MHS hilt. Get your MHS pieces and put together and then concentrate on the overlay.

[santini]

yeah the plan is to have this over a mhs hilt, since the weaving wouldnt be structurally able to stand by itself, think of it as what a leather wrap might be just with wood.

[vortextwist]

I wander if you could find something like the old chinese finger traps, only bigger. unless you could weave it yourself. I think it would look pretty cool

[santini]

Luckily my mother is a museum piece level professional basketmaker, otherwise i doubt I would be able to do this :)

[Ravage179]

awesome im doing something very simmilar for my gf envolving leather woven down the hilt then frayed off at the end to disguise the pommel and speaker area, your tight weave would look very cool in carbon fiber too, i have done sword wraps in the past then saturated them with clear varnish to harden them and fix them in place this works very nicely.

[scott5050]

Since the basketweave will be slightly soft a solid piece is probably not ideal - you really want to clamp it.

Two suggestions:

1: Hose clamps. Nice and easy but you have the screw section sticking out.

2: Strip of metal (maybe cut out of a drinks can with shears) wrapped around (and overlapped) then secured with the three bolts.