Luke ROTJ "Yuma Metal Stunt Edition" by Caine

[Caine Drathul]

Luke ROTJ “Yuma Stunt”

Upon more research of my absolute favorite saber, I have found that there are more variations other than our beloved Hero, V2 and V3. Several months back, Red Five posted in this thread:

http://www.fx-sabers.com/forum/index.php?topic=28833.15

So, we have a “Barge climbing saber”, a “R2 Fired Resin Stunt” and a the "Yuma Metal Stunt”

The Yuma stunt was the one that peaked my interest. Up until that time, I didn’t know of any other stunt sabers used other than the V2 and V3. I had always though the V3 was used on the Sail Barge scenes because of this famous pic:


But this pic of the actual “Yuma stunt” changed all that.


Of course, it’s very similar to the V3, but the control box appears to be totally different. It’s clearly not a Graflex clamp (ruling out the V3 theory) and it’s clearly not a Hero either. There is no circuit card of any sort…it just looks like, well a plain box with two countersunk screws. The neck also doesn’t appear a copper color, but a gold one. The triangular D-ring remained the same.

I did some more digging over at the RPF and found there was indeed some Yuma stunts done. But there weren’t any pics to be found of them on the site! (quite surprising considering those RPF dudes post EVERYTHING). I contacted the person who made them, and they promised me pics, but ended up not returning my future PM’s. However, I was able to secure a leftover control box from the run that was done on the RPF from the original machinest. I also noticed that the emitter seemed a little “bell” shaped in the pic, and with eastern57’s advice, had Tim at TCSS modify BH5 to match the pic as much as possible, shaving the neck down to 1 1/8” and trimming the sides of the emitter (thank you both).


UPDATE 11-24 - 99% Complete redo

Unhappy overall with this build after using the saber a bit, on both the original soundboard and the lack of weathering on the lower half, I completely redid the saber and am now very happy with it. I weathered the 4" MHS extension so it looked more like the picture, and instead of having sound, made this a stunt -like I need more Luke sabers with sound, right? ;D I was finally able to use the real Armitage Shanks hand wheel that I had acquired forever ago, and also used TCSS's new AV short latching switch.

3.7V 18650 Li-Ion (recharge port is inside hilt)
Green Lux Endor Star Rebel (VERY bright) with 8.7 degree optics
Custom Yuma Stunt box (from the machinist who helped on the RPF Yuma Stunt run)
Armitage Shanks Hand Wheel
TCSS Latching Short AV switch




I made sure the saber was banged up a bit on the control box and emitter. Based on pics of all the props from the OT, they seemed to be just "tossed in a bag or box" and transported from location to location, unlike the shiny hilts of the PT which were kept in nice cases . After dropping a cinder block on the control box a few times and playing basketball with the blade holder, it came out perfect.

[Mandalorian]

Very cool, and thanks for the additional info on those saber variants. Very interesting to know. This saber also looks very cool and a great adaptation from that one lone picture. Thanks for the video as well.

[Caine Drathul]

First post updated.