A Family Of Sabers

Hello everyone. This is my first post that wasn't asking a basic question. I've been on the forums for several months now learning after I discovered the saber building scene. I'm grateful to the works of Madcow and all the tutorials on the forums that helped make this build a reality. They take a lot of work to put together, so I can appreciate what is there.

The genesis of this project was from having to live apart from my family for several months. We made the decision to move to improve several things, but I was unable to transfer my job at the time. I also have family members that have some difficulty feeling like they belong, so I wanted to make a tangible symbol for them to show that we can all be different but still be apart of the same family. So I thought 'Why not lightsabers?!' I needed something that would be relatively quick to put together which is why TCSS was my choice. So I placed an order for enough components to build four sabers. I'm sure I made Tim and his shop rather happy that day.

When picking the design, I wanted something that would be mostly straight forward and similar across all four builds. I used the pommel, main body, chock, and blade holder construction method for each one but changing the parts up. In order to give them some distinction, I decided to make shrouds for each one. After looking at lots of examples, shrouds seemed to be the way to really set them apart. My metal working skills are not up to par to that of the shop or some of the saber smiths around here, but I gave it my best plus I was working on a timeline. Originally I was going to etch my designs into the metal, but I was unable to get the etch to behave react uniformly across the tube. Tried several methods and finally gave up. I decided to do the paint method using vinyl as a stencil. I'm a member at a makerspace which had Cricut cutters that made short work of cutting the vinyl out. With the stencil in place, I primed, painted, baked, removed the stencil, clear coated, then baked again to get a very durable finish that had some of the texture that I wanted.

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The sabers each have a name to designate their role (from left to right in the image above):
The Enforcer - for when diplomacy has failed and a call to action is needed.
The Illuminator - to light our way when we're in the dark and need to find our path again.
Creation - to bring in new ideas and life so that we may progress and grow.
Destruction - to remove the old and decaying thoughts and ways in order to avoid stifling progress.

I had to drill the holes for the buttons which I decided to place on top of the shrouds to get a little extra clearance an make my mount somewhat less complicated. I had to modify the button holders since the curvature is different and they still don't sit perfectly, but they will do for now. I elected to use the style holder 14 that has both the buttons, RICE port, and charge port in one for the two sabers that are using the Crystal Focus. While it was an absolute pain to drill, fit, and get the wires to lay in for this switch, I do like having it all there easily accessed. The other two sabers had Nano Biscotti cards and were considerably easier. I did not try to make any crystal chambers (too much to do in too little of time), so I just did a simple chassis. For the speakers, I did a mix of the bass speaker and the new saber essential. Both sound fairly similar except realizing the Saber Essential is running at a vol of 3 and the bass speaker is at 4. Both sound great.

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The blade plugs were made with extra blade tube material and some parts I 3D printed at the makerspace. Simple but worked out.

After constructing all the sabers, I made a quick box to put them in for presentation and to protect them. Using a laser cutter at the makerspace, I etched the wood to create a depression which I then filled with epoxy and glitter. I wanted to use pearl mica but couldn’t find any in short time. The inside of the box was lined with batting and crushed velvet to give it a soft surface to protect the sabers and add a bit of elegance to the presentation.

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After six months, I finally was able to move back with my family and presented each on with their sabers. They were definitely a hit. Time will tell if they have the effect on helping with the sense of belonging, but for now they at least made everyone happy.

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I do have a YouTube video that shows some of the details a bit more. Thanks!

https://youtu.be/14jcGtp8KL8