Saber Staff Cliche

[gundamaniac]

So, for my next project, I'm planning a pair of sabers that would couple together to form a saber staff. The thing is, it's been done so often in fanfilms it's almost sickening...but the idea of a personally built double-bladed saber is so appealing....as is the idea of being able to use one at a time when I'm in a single saber mood, or being able to dual-wield when I want to rave or make a pretty light show. Opinions? General advice and pointers?

My main issues at the moment are a) having to make each saber part twice (ughhhh), and b) where do I drill speaker holes so that sound escapes when the sabers are coupled together? Is the MR Maul solution the best solution?

[Barmic Rin]

Sorry dude, but it really has benn done over and over and over......

My dual i'll be doing soon will be solid. I think that's the minority, isn't it? :P

[Darth Lars]

I think that if you make the hilt longer, such as on Darth Maul's saber, then the blades need to be shorter to maintain symmetry. The total length of a saber (single or double-bladed) should be relative to your body height. A single lightsaber with a shorter blade is a crippled saber.

I think it would be cool though if you could simulate the saber being cut in half, maybe by just having the joint between the two sabers having an angular cut and the joining mechanism hidden inside.

[chase]

I have a TCSS double, in the very middle is a Milled slot peice and i was planning on drilling a few small holes in that part with speakers facing eachother. I think that could work pretty well.

[gundamaniac]

I'm not planning on using this as a staff most of the time. My current design is not like Maul's, with one covertech so the entire saber can be hung from one clip. The Covertec placement on my sabers is terrible for staff wielding; on each of the halves, the covertech is near the "pommel", making holding the saber in the center when joined together highly impractical and painful due to there being two covertec knobs right where your hand should go. The double-blade feature is therefore more of a gimmick-y thing, maybe for walking around during a convention or future halloweens (ain't getting done for this halloween).

The reason I'm considering this is that for awhile, I was toying with the idea of a pair of dueling sabers, one that's longer and one that's shorter, kind of like a katana and wakizashi type deal. But I like my symmetry...and if both sabers are going to look identical, I thought, why not add in a coupler and be able to join'em together?

...or should I just separate my resources into two entirely different lightsaber projects... :roll:

[chase]

i think that would be pretty cool. i always thought that doing a double blade that has a shorter blade on the bottom side so you could take it a part and it would be just as you described. Also with the shorter blade on one side, it would create some interesting fighting

[goldsaberwarrior]

I dual wield double blades all the time and have two in the works specificaly for that. Those hilts are to small for anyone to split in a dual anyway.

[gundamaniac]

I actually meant that I was considering the long-sword short-sword pair, but decided to go with two long swords, and while I was on the two long-swords train of thought, it struck me that the hilts would be exactly the same, and that I could just throw in a coupler for the added gimmick of having a "double-bladed saber" (did I mention that I love having gimmicks in props?)

But that's interesting too, having a shorter blade coming out the bottom of a saber. I saw that in an anime film once, Char's Counterattack. One of the giant robots wielded a "beam saber" with a standard blade out the top and a short knife-length blade out the bottom. It looked really cool, though they never used the shorter blade on the bottom of the handle. Here's a picture of the saber from a model kit review site:
http://www.dalong.net/review/mg/m99/p/m99_34.jpg

I don't know if I would build a lightsaber with a shorter blade on the bottom for my own use. The "fighting" style you'd wield it with would be totally different than anything else...you can't wield it like a single blade cuz the extra blade would get in the way of twirls or might impale you...you can't wield it like the way most people wield double blades because it's asymmetrical now. While it would be interesting to see what you could do...it just seems even more impractical than having two blades of even length coming out either end of the hilt. Then again...it is different...and gives me the katana/wakizashi pair....and would be very cool. Though the handle would be quite a bit longer than in picture above.

If I do go this route, coupling together a long and short sword...the short sword would have no sound...cuz I'd want a handle as small as possible. Hm. But I also wanted sound in both my sabers. What a dilemna :?

[goldsaberwarrior]

Just wire a corbin driver to an MR sound board. You could also just gut a hasbro or an MR and use the electronics from them. The hasbro isn't as big as you would think. At least the rest of the hilt would be good stuff & hopefully from here.

[gundamaniac]

Well, I've thought about it, and I'm think I'm going to work on two projects now. The first is a possible upgrade to my current lightsaber to configure it to the long blade/short blade saber, like the model picture shown above. Basically, I'm removing my pommel from my current lightsaber and throwing on the bottom portion. My current saber's dimensions are an 11 inch hilt with a 36 inch blade. I'm planning on adding another 6 inches of hilt with a max of 12 inches for the auxilary blade. Unfortunately, the planned length of my short handle (6 inches) means I only have enough room for batteries, a switch, and the LED. no sound in there. I'm not quite sure how the design is going to go though; if I'm not satisfied with it, then I'm scrapping this idea.

The next project will be the cliche saber.

[gundamaniac]

Alrighty, after a bit of thinking about it, I have decided to go through with the a-forementioned long saber/short saber paired conversion project.

http://photos-383.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v98/128/45/1047240383/n1047240383_30144276_4083.jpg
That is my current lightsaber.

http://photos-383.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v123/128/45/1047240383/n1047240383_30219691_4011.jpg
That is a sketch of the planned mods to my current saber. For the record, each square is a quarter inch.

The rear portion, past the black "reversed-S shroud" and the covertec wheel, will screw off to form a sort of "light-knife" if you will. I will be keeping the current pommel on my lightsaber to re-screw back on when the light-knife is disconnected from the lightsaber. The planned length of the light-knife hilt, minus the threaded portion that sticks into the lightsaber hilt, is 6 inches. The planned length of the light-knife's blade is 9 inches.

So, wutcha guys think?

[chase]

so are you going to try the double blade with one short blade thing? of course its going to be detachable....but are you going to try with them attached?

[gundamaniac]

Yep. The concept sketch is of the double-bladed saber...though only the hilt is shown in my sketch. If you cross-reference it with the saber photo I posted right above it, you can see the short-bladed saber add-on in the sketch.

[chase]

awesome, so you are doing a 12' blade for the other saber? thats mighty short. i think a 24' would be more functional. not too long, not too short.

[gundamaniac]

I may do 15-18". I want something that's less than half the length of the main saber's blade. The reason I was wanting a 9-12" blade was because I didn't want the saber looking like I had accidentally screwed up making a saber staff and used a slightly shorter blade. I wanted it looking like I had intentionally coupled a sword with a knife to make a single weapon.

[Novastar]

Brian, you might put some kind of "cross-section" or a wider diameter "guard" on the shorter blade + hilt... which would help identify it closer to being a sort of "main gauche" (literally French for 'left hand'), and it would also distinguish it from the other blade end.

Doing that (or something akin to it)... would make it impossible for people to think you "jacked it up", hahahah

[gundamaniac]

Hm...that sounds rather intriguing actually. At the same time, if done correctly, it could make the emitter of the main gauche look somewhat like a pommel when attached to the main saber. Back to the drawing board!

Actually, the main reason I had kept the emitters highly similar was that I wanted it to be clear that the two hilts were part of a pair when they were separated. But I do like the idea of a guard to define it as a defensive weapon...I'll doodle tomorrow and play around with the design a bit.

[chase]

are you going to keep the longer blade at 36"? if you do, i think it would look fine with a 20-24" blade. Also, if you have something as small as 9-12", it would feel funny because it would just be swinging hilt around. The lack of blade would leave it horribly unbalanced.

[gundamaniac]

I'm actually thinking about shortening the main blade from 36" to 32-34". At 36" with a battle blade, my lightsaber, as a single saber, is terribly unbalanced.

The idea I'm going for currently is less of a katana/wakizashi pair now and more of a sword/knife pair. We'll see. I'm going to get materials for a 10" blade first. If that's not satisfactory, I have a 28" blade lying around right now that I can play around with if I still wanna revert back to the katana/wakizashi idea.

[chase]

I think shortening the main blade would be a good idea. I'm also thinking that having such a short blade for the knife would not even hold off an attack without bending your wrist back. There wouldn't be much to brace with. You would have to catch every blow perfectly.

[gundamaniac]

Alrighty...I just did a mock-up in paint. Facebook shrank the image down quite a lot though...but this should give a rough idea.

http://photos-383.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v124/128/45/1047240383/n1047240383_30219992_1811.jpg

In the image's caption, which is currently illegible due to the tiny size, I explain that, from top to bottom, the sabers are equipped with secondary blades of the lengths 24", 12" and 18" respectively.

Now that I've done mock-ups...I'm pretty sold on the 24" blade (the first one)...though I do reeeaally reeeeeally like the way the 18 incher (the third one) looks. wutcha think?

[chase]

3rd one. Sold. That one looks good. What color are you doing?

[gundamaniac]

Since the main saber already sports a 3watt green, I'm gonna go with a 3watt green on the secondary too.

[ArkaiHalon]

i'm diggin the 18inches.

[Jetsi]

Agreed, I like the third choice as well. Seems like a nice combination of blades.

Makes me think of A Christmas Story.

"You'll laze your eye out!"

Get that up and running, and post a video, I am curious to see how that could be wielded.

[gundamaniac]

Alrighty, seems like third choice it is then. And to be totally honest, I've got no idea how a sword like that would be wielded :? . I just thought the blades would look cool. I would hazard a guess that it would be wielded in a mix between single-blade and staff styles, with more emphasis on the single-blade....I really have no clue :oops:

[goldsaberwarrior]

For something like that most of the time you would wield it like a double blade. Any other time you would most likely flip it over with the short blade pointed out and use it like an inverted sword.

[gundamaniac]

So with a standard saber staff grip like Maul uses?? I think that'd be kind of weird with such a short blade on one end. This should be interesting...

[chase]

I don't think it will be as hard to use as you think. Once you get the basics down, it will be easy as pie. I just recently made a double blade and when i first picked it up, I was clueless...but now I'm pretty decent with it. Just takes practice. Also, since you are probably one of the first people to do this, you can make up your own style.

[goldsaberwarrior]

Using a double saber is very much easier than it sounds. I've never used a saber like that with a shorter blade and a long blade. Think you could tell me how it works out? One thing I would avise though. Grip with both hands on the saber, one hand on each end near the emitters. From there you can branch out into attacks. If you have any problems learning to get some of the basics down don't hesitate to drop me a PM. If you decide to take up a double and a single or dual wield doubles I can try to help you get some basics down if you would like. I haven't been able to dual wield my doubles for a couple months so I'm a little rusty. Once I get my doubles made I'll be back in action and able to teach people a few things.

[gundamaniac]

Alrighty...though it seems Tim is out of town until the 23rd, I just placed my order. I have a gender-changer, a 4 inch extension, a blade holder, and an LED kit coming my way...sometime after he gets back and fulfills the other orders queued ahead of mine. I can't wait to get started on the auxiliary saber :D

[chase]

I'm not having a problem learning how to use it, its just very different compared to using a single saber. Blocking is entirely different because you have to angle the saber differently. It just takes time to figure everything out.

[chase]

you're going to have to put up some pics and maybe a video of this saber when you get it done. I'm very curious to see how it looks and functions.

[gundamaniac]

Haha, don't expect too much. With a lousy speaker in my original hilt, and no speaker in the new aux handle, this is gonna be one quiet lightsaber.

That and it's only a Lux III. But that asiiiiiide...I got an email yesterday. My parts are being shipped and are somewhere in hyperspace, waiting to land on my front lawn.......I can't wait for them to arrive. It really shouldn't take too long to build once the parts are in my hand.

And of course, I'll post pics. Possibly a video too, if I get off my lazy butt and look into posting stuff on youtube.

Oh- and a quick question to anyone reading this thread. How far off are the power requirements for a green LuxIII and a green K2? I'm considering replacing my luxiii with a k2 but don't really know the power requirements for the led. ::edit:: I checked Tim's resistor chart. But I didn't take my physics courses yet so I'm a total noob on electrical stuffs, so bear with me. The green k2 has a slightly lower forward voltage than the luxIII, so I'm good there. But the target mA on the III is 1000mA, and on the k2, it's 1500 mA. So...am I right in assuming that mAh is not the same as mA? I have no clue how to meet the mA requirements, and I don't see mA ratings listed on my AAA nimh... :oops: . I'm gonna google this to see if I can glean any info, but I'd appreciate any feedback you'd be willing to offer here too.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

Power req'd for a green 80 lumen Lux III:
3.9Vf, 1000ma

Power req'd for a green 75 lumen Lux K2:
3.6Vf, 700ma

Power req'd for a green 130 lumen Lux K2:
3.85Vf, 1500ma

I got this info from Luxeonstar.com.

[gundamaniac]

Wow. I took so long editing my post that you already replied.

Anywhoo....so I get that mA is current...but what does that equate to in terms of AAA batts? I apologize in advance for being a total nooblet.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

From what little I understand of batteries, AAA's typically only produce about 900-1000 mah of current. Running the K2 at 1000 mah instead of the full 1500 mah, may not be worth it. And I think mA is the same as maH.

[gundamaniac]

Or it'd drain the battery faster, if the battery actually tries to keep up with the load.

So really, I'm better off just sticking to my luxIIIs huh. Too bad, i was hoping to bump up the brightness a bit.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

I'd wait to make your decision until one of the more experienced electrical experts answers you, it may still be brighter than the luxeon III at the same current. And I wouldn't feel bad about not knowing much about how these led's work, I just asked a noobish question in the led questions and answers forum.

[gundamaniac]

Hm, that's true too. There's no rush; it's just that I have two k2s lying around and i thought it'd be neat to upgrade.

Would there be any particular detriment to using a 3-AA battery pack?...I would only be supply 3.6V, but I've been doing that already for my LuxIII....But I could easily do at least 2000 mAh then....

::edit:: from allaboutcircuits.com: The amp-hour is a unit of battery energy capacity, equal to the amount of continuous current multiplied by the discharge time, that a battery can supply before exhausting its internal store of chemical energy.

So I could use my AAAs with it...but I'd get ridiculously short runtime. On my LuxIII + Anakin MR board, my 1000mAh batteries in reality don't get 1 hour. They get an average of 30 mins. Maybe 40, tops. So now I may only get around 15-20mins of run time off of my AAAs. That's pathetic in so many ways...

[chase]

What kind of sound do you have? If you have something that can take a 5w....do it. Soooooo much brighter. But then you have issues with battery packs! yay!

[gundamaniac]

So I could use my AAAs with (a green k2)...but I'd get ridiculously short runtime. On my LuxIII + Anakin MR board, my 1000mAh batteries in reality don't get 1 hour. They get an average of 30 mins. Maybe 40, tops. So now I may only get around 15-20mins of run time off of my AAAs. That's pathetic in so many ways...

:D

No way that'll do a LuxV. And if I can get a k2 set up, it's only about 30 lumens off of a V, which is a major improvement over the III. So a k2 is good enough for me.

[chase]

oh there is a big difference...

[gundamaniac]

you mean between a k2 and a Lux III right?

I'm gonna try soldering up one of my k2s to my saber tonight. I'll fix one of my camera's settings manually, take a picture of the Lux III on fresh batteries before removing it, solder on the k2, take a picture of that on the same set of batteries, then start timing its life-per-charge like I was doing earlier. Hopefully the runtimes don't get too much worse....but the runtime is most likely gonna be abysmal, thanks to the 50% increase in draw. After I get the runtimes, I'll compare the brightness and decide whether the decrease in runtime (whatever it is) is worth the extra brightness....

[chase]

do you have the right resistor? I don't know how much difference it will make but ya...

there is a big difference between the k2 and 5w.

[gundamaniac]

Chase...I'm not using a resistor. I'm directly driving the LED off of a MR Anakin RotS soundboard.

And I realize that the LuxV is 160 lumens and the K2 is only 130. However, there is a much bigger jump in brightness between the K2 and the LuxIII than there is between the K2 and a LuxV. The LuxIII only has an 80 lumen rating. So I'm going to try upgrading to the K2.

Last night I took a picture of my saber with an Ultrablade in its LuxIII setup. I tried to solder on a K2...holy @#$&^$*^ that took forever. The leads kept snapping off...then I'd resolder...and the solder wouldn't stick...then I'd get it to stick, I'd yank and pull and jerk on the connection to make sure it was good....and then while reassembling the saber the leads would just fall off :evil: . I'm using ColdHeat, not a "real" soldering iron, and didn't notice that the batteries were going low...for about two hours. Then after I switched batteries everything was fine and I got the K2 soldered on. No need to derail by telling me to get a real iron, I'm going to. ColdHeat is a bit of a pain.

So anyway...I finally got the leads on well and reassembled the saber...only to find that one of the wires leading to my battery pack had snapped. I. hate. the. thin. wires. that. come. with. battery. holders. And by then, I had to go to bed cuz of classes at 7 in the morning. So tonight I'll repairing that by replacing both of its wires with a slightly heavier guage. Cuz the guage I use hasn't broken on me yet. As a note....when the K2 and battery pack *were* working (before the battery pack's wire broke), I put it up to its lens assembly, bladeholder, and ultrablade....and it looked to be the same brightness as the LuxIII...So it seems that the setup is no good after all. I have yet to take pictures of it to compare to the III though...so we'll see. I also have yet to time the battery runtime of the setup.

To summarize...my saber is currently set up as a K2 green directly driven off of a MR Anakin RotS board with 4 AAA 1000mAh NiMH batteries with a combined voltage of 4.8v. And it looks about the same as a LuxIII...Help?

[Novastar]

Brian... the MR board will almost never drive the newer high-powered LEDs at full potential. Not without modification. When selecting an LED, you want to look at the following:

* the LED's suggested max continuous current
* the LED's forward voltage

If you can match those very closely with your battery and driving setup--that's about all that can be done. Other than that, the next step is diffusion. The MR board will not produce anything near 1500ma (the "best" for Lux K2 green, cyan, white, blue, etc.). However, it might be ok for something like the K2 "dark side" LEDs... red, red-o, amber.

Why? Because the red K2s have a max cont. current of around 700ma. Which is about what you'll normally get out of an MR board, give or take a few 100ma--when running at the 4.5v default. You may be able to squeeze a bit more out of an MR board by running 4.8v or 5v or push the limits and risk 6v... but there isn't much gain, and 6v *might* magic smoke the board.

THE LESSON:
Give the LED "what it wants" = happy LEDs = bright LEDs.

[gundamaniac]

Aw. dang. Well, I posed this question in the a K2 thread, but I thought I'd ask again- is there any way to combine the board with a buckpuck to combine the output and increase it? Without needing a DPDT switch?

[chase]

Oh ok. Well thats better than using a resistor. I want to get a sound board, but I can't run a fx board with my 5w without the whole thing blowing up. I hate the thin wires of a battery pack too...you're not the only one. Have you ever had a switch wire break off at the switch yet? THAT is a pain...

[gundamaniac]

Ok, well I've been messaging Tim (gotta loooove TCSS's "contact us"), and I was thinking about going with a Corbin set-up.

However. My saber, as you could see, has a ribbed MHS section. That leads to a MHS-sinktube adaptor, going down to a 1.25" sinktube, then comes back out into another MHS-sinktube adaptor and the screw-on pommel. The inner of my lightsaber is ridiculously small...and comparing the Corbin board to the ID of the ribbed section (where the MR board is, and where I'm hoping to place the Corbin board) shows that I'll need to sand off an insanely high amount of material to get it to fit...enough that I may be sanding off one of the traces on the board. Anyone got any advice, recommendations, etc regarding that?

If I can't get this K2 driven right, I'll probably just switch back to my LuxIII...I really don't want to, but without proper driving in my current saber, I may as well save the K2 for a different project. But I'm not giving up on driving it properly in my current saber until the night before Halloween, which is the next major outing this baby is going on.

[gundamaniac]

Alrighty, to reduce hassle, I'm going to try and cram an old buckpuck into my hilt. It's rated for 1000mA, which is what a LuxIII wants. the K2 I have wans 1500 mA. Should I keep the K2 in the hilt, or should I put the LuxIII back?