Point of Origin's "Ambitious" - MHS/Sinktube

[pointoforigin]

Finished my crystal chamber today. Well, the guts at least. I may go back and paint, or swap out the heat vanes in the future.

The vanes are starting to show some slight surface rust, which I'm actually liking. I may weather the whole saber in this theme. If I can work out weathering!

To finish the chamber, I had to make some crystals. I had some plastic swirly red pen blanks which did the job nicely. Whacked them on the lathe and turned them to shape. Yes I know most crystals are not round, but these ones are
I drilled holes in the back of them to mount LED's - the crystals themselves now glow internally.

I was going to thread them to screw them into my pommel inserts there, but I suck at threading, so I drilled the inserts out and fitted the crystals to the slightly bigger hole.Would you believe they're being held in place by masking tape?
I fed my wires through the holes drilled in the back of the heatsink vanes last night, and started soldering today.

See in here the brass cylinder holding the bottom of the chamber in place? The length of that shaft is all I had at the top to connect the lux and the top LED for the chamber. Cram-fu much? I know some of you have done better than that though

So as it stands, all that's needed is the hole for the anti vandal, and some more wiring, to complete the saber to a "useable" level. There's more embellishments to come though, if I get brave enough with wiring.

[pointoforigin]

Drilled my hole fo my av switch and did some wiring. It's basically done! I'm quite happy with it so far, hopefully some weathering will improve it.

My dremel decided to stop working hafway through my final cut with it - that being to cut out the part above the switch on the handle shroud, so it can still come off. I ended up finishing it with the angle grinder. It was a good thing it was a wide area!

But enough blab. Here she is, in a complete working state.


Yes I drilled through the MHS threads for the anti vandal. But I have that access point hidden behind the grip shroud, so it's not an issue.
Lit up with lights on:


And with lights off


Glow through from the LED in the handle


I really like how those crystals turned out. I think I'll do that again.


And a basic glamour shot


There's no sound, and it's all wired up with resistors only. When I become more adventurous I may delve into the realms of sound design etc. For the moment, this is awesome

Weathering to go! And then some pictures taken with a tripod to make them not so ridiculously blurry!

Thoughts so far?

[Crystal Chambers]

Not bad! I like the layering, although I think the heatsink would look better on the other side as to expose the crystals more. Also it looks like the crystals you made are round with points. I've made my own with plexi-glass on a belt sander and they looked pretty good. I sanded and filed them to have streaks and fogging to diffuse light. The crystals look a bit far from each other and you still have a hole in your pommel insert....could be useful or a nice spot to add something cool looking.

Off to a great start!