Perseverance Mark II

[Kant Lavar]

"Perseverance" Mk. II

This saber, and it's predecessor, have been something of a trial for me, hence the name. Broken solder joints, bad kill plugs causing battery packs to nearly explode (!), crossed wires, you name it, I've probably had to deal with it. Perseverance started life running a blue P4 LED with a Mace Windu card and two 14500 packs. Don't ask me how it worked without frying the board, but it did. When Ultrasound 2 came out, I upgraded it to that and a green Luxeon 5, and with some minor changes to the body (new pommel insert and D-ring replaced by a Covertec knob) it became my "standard" lightsaber for the Rebel Legion. (Needless to say, I quickly learned the value of carrying a spare saber with me, just in case.)

Ultrasound 2 gave way to Ultrasound 2.5, but the aforementioned bad kill plug (the wiring was right, but somehow the little tab inside that goes to the negative battery lead got bent to connect to the positive lead) caused the 14850 pack I was attempting to use to close circuit on itself and the batteries overheated, swelled, and leaked just enough onto the first board to necessitate its replacement.

Then, just before an event with the Rebel Legion - and literally seconds before I was going to show my baby off to our own Jay-Gon Jinn, ironically - the LED leads on the Ultrasound got frayed, crossed each other, and released the magic blue smoke from the card.

Finally, for my birthday my brother's present was a Petit Crouton from the store here. I did some calculations, studied up, and discovered that my old hit was just a couple of inches too short to fit everything. So, half a new hilt, a shiny new PC-L board, a new trans-white blade, and everything came to my very eager hands last Friday. Since I had a meeting Friday evening, I didn't do anything until Saturday, when I spent about four hours hunched over a soldering iron... and again, the Demon Murphy (as in Murphy's Law) struck. Nothing horribly catastrophic - about the worst thing was a broken clash sensor that I had replacements for - and finally today, I managed to get everything wired, working, and to my satisfaction. And so, I give you the Mark II version of Perseverance.

Hilt parts:

• Pommel 10, insert 1
• 6" DF with internal rubber grips
• Green momentary AV switch
• Kill plug
• Switch box 2
• Gear section with depressions in Sun Gold
• Choke 2 in Copper Metallic with clear coat
• Blade holder 14 in Copper Metallic with clear coat
• Trans-white blade, double Corbin wrap

Electronics:

• Petit Crouton (Locked) with Light Meat font
• Single 14500 cell, PCB protected and hard-wired
• Green Luxeon Rebel LED

[jedimastergarcia87]

Very nice. Can't wait to see the Petit Crouton Light Meat sound in action. Try to get all the sounds in if possible. I'm getting a Petit Crouton Dark Meat font for my re-do MHS saber. Gonna save the US2.5 board for another project.

[Skottsaber]

Awesome! I love to see old sabers redone and made awesome again.
Just a question, was there a reason you used a 14500 instead of a single 18650 for more runtime?

[Kant Lavar]

Short answer: Because I didn't have an 18650 to hand.

Long answer: What happened was I had initially planned on using a 14500 cell in a two cell holder, and using a AA dummy cell in the second spot. That way I would have had the flexibility of throwing a second 14500 in if my voltage requirements changed (such as throwing a LEDEngin 5W on there), and being able to simply swap out batteries instead of relying on plugging it into a wall charger. I was going to sandwich the PC-L on, much the same as had been done with the old Ultrasound boards, and all problems would have been solved.

The trick, it turned out, was that the internal grips lowered the ID of the hilt by a millimeter or so - just enough that I couldn't get the battery/PC-L assembly in. None of the other arrangements of parts I came up with worked - my cram-fu is pretty weak, I admit - until I hit on the idea of simply soldering a battery in. At the time, I'd forgotten I had a pair of 14650s (3.7v, 1600 mAh, same diameter as 14500s but as long as 18650s) in the bottom of my parts bin. It's entirely possible that at some point I'll open things back up and see about replacing the 14500 with the 14650. It'll be a bit iffy, but possible. An 18650 is even more iffy, but I have a pack of them I can investigate with. I don't have any single-cells lying about, unfortunately. Another possibility, and one I'd really rather do, to be honest, is to get my hands on a single AA holder and see if that will fit in there. Thus the ability to simply carry loose, charge 14500s in my pocket at cons.

Right now, though, I'm just happy to have the gorram thing working, to be honest, and I have very little real wish to go in and muck about with things at this particular juncture. I'll just have to see how long the charge on the 14500 in there holds before I make any major decisions.

[Kant Lavar]

At the risk of incurring wrath for double-posting... hey look! A video has appeared in the first post!

[Lord Dottore Matto]

Very nice Job on the rebuild Kant! That saber is great (er) now!

[Caine Drathul]

She looks comfy to saberplay with. Nice way to rebuild your baby...and after all that you have been through, she is just that I am sure. Nice job!

[Rei]

Love the video, great work!

[Crystal Chambers]

very nice...even thought the copper paint doesn't look copper at all it looks great. Nice design choices. I hope you had a cutting board on that counter..lol

[dgdve]

I'm a HUGE fan of the rebuild/rebirth and love how you've encountered every problem under the sun (and some from the dark side).. yet still.. "Perservere"