My first saber

Well after probably 6+ years of lurking around here and wanting to build my own saber I finally decided to do it. I just got some parts the other day for my hilt. I've got more coming. I'll be doing what I guess will be a stunt saber at first, then adding sound as soon as I can get my hands on a sound card. I'm a little nervous about soldering the little tiny circuit board but I think it'll be fine. I'll be sharing my build as I work on it and hope to get some tips along the way!

Here's what I got so far.

I'm a big guy with big hands so I got an 8" double female section as my main body, and went with pommel #8, choke #2, blade holder #4, and activation box #2 for the basic hilt. I had to drill and tap a few holes to get everything put together.

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So, since it's pretty plain looking I wanted to go with a shroud of some kind to give it a little more depth and cool factor. I was debating on doing either a cool metal shroud or a PVC one kind of sculpted to look like it was made out of krayt dragon bone maybe. I went with PVC. I may still go get some thin metal tubing that fits over the hilt and change it, I'm not too sure, but here's what I got so far. I think with some more tweaking and sculpting it can be real cool. I sketched out a little design on the PVC pipe

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I used a little electric body saw from Harbor Freight to cut the rough shape out and then a combination of power sanders, files, sandpaper and elbow grease to get it to this point. I also weathered the metal a bit.

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I didn't like how thick the PVC is so I did a little more on the belt sander and made the shroud a little thinner. Also gave it more of a rough and chunky "carved out of bone" look. I don't have any pictures of that but I will upload some soon. If anyone has any pointers on how to paint the PVC to make it look like bone that would be helpful! Since it's going to be abused a bit I'm wondering what the best paint or stain options are.

Thanks for looking! My other parts arrive later next week so I should at least have a fancy flashlight soon! haha.

Hello there. Welcome to the forums, looking good so far
I'm curious why it took 6 years

haha well a combination of money, time, and just putting other projects first. I got a pretty bad old car habit.

hehe welcome to the family for sure man! :D it's home.

I REALLY dig your PVC shroud. It does look abit like bone after the sanding... Will be a wonderful saber once it's finished! :D

Thanks Malik! I've been having a lot of fun so far just designing the hilt!

I got a little farther on it. I decided that it needed some black so I masked off a big chunk of the hilt and sprayed it with truck bed liner, which looks cool and gave it a really awesome textured grip. I also used a knife to score some lines in the PVC and then dug into them with a tiny flathead screwdriver to create a cracked bone effect. Since I've been working in a greasy environment, the dirt from my hands got on the PVC and discolored it enough to make it look more bone-like. So, I sanded a few spots here and there and sprayed a clear coat over it and I think it came out pretty cool. Still needs a little fine tuning to fit better around the blade holder, and I actually like how the saber feels in my hands better without the shroud but I can't decide.

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I also got my blade and all my electronics today and I need a little help. I used a 4 AAA battery holder, short momentary switch, the 4.5-20V momentary to latching converter, the MWS rebel LED, and a 2.7ohm 10w resistor on the positive lead from the battery pack. When I had everything hooked up, I hit the switch and it would turn on, but when i hit the switch again it would not turn off. If I disconnect the blade LED, I can hit the switch and the switch LED will turn on and off as it should, but once I connect the blade LED it won't turn off unless I pull a battery out. I took the resistor out of the system completely and it did the same thing so I'm thinking maybe I need a different resistor? I'm a little lost.

Thanks everyone!