Aphelion
05-08-2008, 03:05 AM
Howdy all. Let me start my introduction by giving you a brief history of my lightsabers... :D
I'm 24 now, but when I was a teenager, I owned a few of the original Hasbro plastic sabers. These motivated me to lathe some copies of a ROTJ Luke saber in woods class. I was never satisfied with these sabers, but they do look interesting and have turned into nice stunt sabers after I put fiberglass driveway markers into them. Still in high school, we put on a choreographed lightsaber fight/musical for our talent show where we won first place.
In 2001, my freshman year of college, my friends and I purchased four EL sabers from Jeff Parks after trolling the Dewback Wing ASAP forums for almost a year. I got a Qui Gon and my friends got an Obi-Wan and two prototype Maelstrom 1's which he linked together. We loved them to death, each of us going through a blade due to EL "twisting" eventually ripping the wires off the substrate. In fact, out of our 8 blades total, I believe only 2 are still working. We never experienced sound or "Deuce" technology.
MR FX sabers came along, but how could we buy them when we had invested so much into our Parksabers? Just by feeling them, we knew they wouldn't withstand the intense duels we would subject them to so we passed on the FXs.
Now, it's 2008 and I'm supposed to get married in Feb 2009 to a hot redhead that almost hates Star Wars. In order to kick off our marriage right, I've been considering getting my groomsmen lightsabers instead of the usual pocketknives/leathermans. I check out YouTube and the first video I find is Edwin's (Eandori's) video of the differences between Lux III, K2 & V. Then I see Erv's Crystal Focus video and now I am completely floored. Finally, everything I've ever wanted is now available in a saber!
I think I'm going to start small though. I'll make a nice sink tube saber, then see if I can't upgrade my Parks Qui Gon to a green Luxeon V. If I'm still bored, I'll try to make that custom saber I've always had in mind but never the drive enough to create.
If all that goes well (and the fiancee doesn't get too mad!) I may try to price out 5 cheap sabers for my groomsmen. I know that Do-clo sells a really cool looking stunt saber for $80, but it looks like I can beat that price if I do it all myself and just go with sink tubes, resistors & Lux III's.
I'm really pumped about all the tech and all the new lightsaber manufacturer's out there. When Episode I came out, I only knew of Parkssabers and Lighttech that actually sold finished products. It's really awesome to see so many manufacturers with so many options now, especially the parts/tutorials for an industrious soul like myself. :razz:
Any and all advice is welcome, about my future plans for lightsabers as well as marriage advice! :rolleyes:
I'm 24 now, but when I was a teenager, I owned a few of the original Hasbro plastic sabers. These motivated me to lathe some copies of a ROTJ Luke saber in woods class. I was never satisfied with these sabers, but they do look interesting and have turned into nice stunt sabers after I put fiberglass driveway markers into them. Still in high school, we put on a choreographed lightsaber fight/musical for our talent show where we won first place.
In 2001, my freshman year of college, my friends and I purchased four EL sabers from Jeff Parks after trolling the Dewback Wing ASAP forums for almost a year. I got a Qui Gon and my friends got an Obi-Wan and two prototype Maelstrom 1's which he linked together. We loved them to death, each of us going through a blade due to EL "twisting" eventually ripping the wires off the substrate. In fact, out of our 8 blades total, I believe only 2 are still working. We never experienced sound or "Deuce" technology.
MR FX sabers came along, but how could we buy them when we had invested so much into our Parksabers? Just by feeling them, we knew they wouldn't withstand the intense duels we would subject them to so we passed on the FXs.
Now, it's 2008 and I'm supposed to get married in Feb 2009 to a hot redhead that almost hates Star Wars. In order to kick off our marriage right, I've been considering getting my groomsmen lightsabers instead of the usual pocketknives/leathermans. I check out YouTube and the first video I find is Edwin's (Eandori's) video of the differences between Lux III, K2 & V. Then I see Erv's Crystal Focus video and now I am completely floored. Finally, everything I've ever wanted is now available in a saber!
I think I'm going to start small though. I'll make a nice sink tube saber, then see if I can't upgrade my Parks Qui Gon to a green Luxeon V. If I'm still bored, I'll try to make that custom saber I've always had in mind but never the drive enough to create.
If all that goes well (and the fiancee doesn't get too mad!) I may try to price out 5 cheap sabers for my groomsmen. I know that Do-clo sells a really cool looking stunt saber for $80, but it looks like I can beat that price if I do it all myself and just go with sink tubes, resistors & Lux III's.
I'm really pumped about all the tech and all the new lightsaber manufacturer's out there. When Episode I came out, I only knew of Parkssabers and Lighttech that actually sold finished products. It's really awesome to see so many manufacturers with so many options now, especially the parts/tutorials for an industrious soul like myself. :razz:
Any and all advice is welcome, about my future plans for lightsabers as well as marriage advice! :rolleyes: