slothfurnace's TOR Consular saber

[jin starkiller]

looks really good ....can't wait to see it finished

[Rhyen Skytracker]

Awesome job so far. Do you have the render of the etchings so you can see if a CNC could make them? I can't wait to see this saber done, it has been a favorite of mine ever since i saw it in the trailer. Keep up the great work.

[cannibal869]

I'm gonna go make some popcorn and sit in the corner and watch / scribble down notes...

Good lord Sloth, it's like a love / hate relationship with you - love the stuff you make, hate that I don't have the same mad skillz or tools that you have!

Can't wait to see how this one gets done!
-C

[Rafalema]

Looks awesome so far..

Any ETA when you'll be able to ship it to me?

[Skottsaber]

Sorry Raf, I called dibs before you. And then there is the hundred or so people at bioware who have dibs before us...

Sloth, how long is that hilt in double form? Looks a bit longer than I'd like, and my double saber is 24" connected.
Great work though!

[pointoforigin]

I saw the jagged lines on the original emitter piece and was like, "Slothfurnace? Do something less than perfect? That's unpossible!" And then I read on and my world righted itself lol.

By the looks of things, those turned main hilt sections are solid aluminum. How are you planning to hollow them out? From experience I know that that kind of length doesn't sit well with drilling on a lathe...

Also, out of interest, do you happen to know the animator who gave that design life in the trailer, being that you worked on some of TOR yourself?

[Darth Midian]

That is going to be a masterpiece when you're finished.

[ARKM]

This saber is shaping up quite nicely.

[slothfurnace]

I saw the jagged lines on the original emitter piece and was like, "Slothfurnace? Do something less than perfect? That's unpossible!" And then I read on and my world righted itself lol.

By the looks of things, those turned main hilt sections are solid aluminum. How are you planning to hollow them out? From experience I know that that kind of length doesn't sit well with drilling on a lathe...

Also, out of interest, do you happen to know the animator who gave that design life in the trailer, being that you worked on some of TOR yourself?

Oh, no, they are hollow. one inch inside diameter. Same stock I will use for my blade holder, and 4 AAA rechargeable batteries fit just right in there next to a yoda MR board. Actually, I could fit eight AAA batteries per saber end...

[lectricpharaoh]

Not too shabby. I am still evaluating a few parts, might replace one of the necks, and I need to figure out how they attach together, but I got a LOT done today.

Though I haven't built my first yet, I've been thinking of different ways to join two hilts.

The most obvious way is with some kind of threaded coupler, but this isn't exactly quick-release. Plus, each hilt will look different once they are separated, with one having ugly male threads exposed.

The second idea is to have several layers of thin tubing that fit snugly inside one another. Imagine having these concentric tubes, cutting them along a line, then offsetting them so that one hilt exposed the outside tube, third from the outside, and so on, while the other hilt exposed the second from the outside, fourth from the outside, and so on. With enough layers, it could be pretty strong. You could make it very secure by having an L-shaped notch in the tubing on one hilt (running through multiple layers) coupled with a pin or set screw (again, through multiple layers) on the other. Then you'd slide the pommels together, and give them a partial twist to lock them in place.

A third way I was thinking of is with two matching 'crown' sections. It would be like two toothed parts meshing together. You'd probably also need a bit of tubing either inside or outside the teeth to help keep it from flexing. In fact, this is the method I'll probably end up using on my first PVC sabre: 1.25" OD for the main hilt, then some thick 1.25" ID tubing cut into strips and screwed on to the ends. I got this epiphany while looking at the third sabre shot (the shroud, in particular) in Crystal Chambers' Mantis thread.

The fourth idea, if the tube wall thickness supports it, is to take several metal pins. Drill holes in the tube parallel to the tube walls, and thread every second hole. Cut the pins so half will rest in each hole, and have half of each pin threaded. Obviously, you'll need to drill the threaded holes a little smaller than the other ones.

For the third and fourth approaches, there is nothing besides friction holding the hilts together. Ditto the second approach without a pin-notch arrangement. My solution here is to get some disc-shaped rare-earth magnets that can be mounted in each pommel. When the hilts are attached, they will be close enough to exert a fairly strong force to hold the pommels together.

Another way would be to modify the pin-notch setup, but instead have one or more pins on each hilt, coupled with a matching ring on the other hilt. This ring would have the L-notch on the inside, so you could slide the hilts together and turn the locking ring on each to ensure a nice tight fit. Machining the ring from a single piece would likely be quite difficult, but if the ring was constructed from two pieces (one nested inside the other), then the inner ring could have the notch, while the outer ring concealed it. The pins could appear as decorative elements (thumbscrews, buttons, etc); the only concern would be that they were strong enough (easy enough to do by running it entirely through the hilt, and having it protrude on either side as though it were two pins).

Anyways, I'm not sure if I explained my ideas very well. I'd try to draw pictures to illustrate the idea, but I'm a horrible artist. I've got all these ideas in my head that I'll probably never be able to make a reality, so why not share some of them?