PVC Prop Sabers

[Darth Midian]

Hello everyone, it's been a long time. How have all of you been? I believe the last saber was my darth Nihl and I finished that last year. I started studying motion graphics this month. So I've been really paying attention to fan films and been researching how prop sabers are made. I don't have the money for carbon fiber blades but I think I came up wit ha good solution.

First my hilts are 1" PVC with a 1" thin walled blade inside. I used Liquid Nail construction adhesive to hold the the blade stock inside the hilts, also I'm using 4 threaded inserts on the double and two on the Jedi so those also help secure the blade stock. The hilt is 25" long and the Jedi hilt is 12" I kept the designs real simple. The activation box on the Jedi hilt is a trimmed down Jenga block. A perfect activation box.





Next are my blades, I watched videos on the different types of blades people use for their fan films and PVC breaks, wood breaks and carbon fiber is perfect, it's just expensive. I know PEX pipe is sturdy enough for dueling since I used it for my kids sabers so PEX is kid tested. I'm using 3/4" PEX pipe and 5/8" poplar wood for the core inside the PEX. I used Liquid nail to secure the poplar dowel inside the PEX tubing. I covered the blades with florescent orange duct tape. So I can build three prop blades for $15.00. The blades are a total of 40" long, 10" inside the hilt and 30" exposed. The 3/4" PEX pipe fits very tight inside the 1"thin wall blade stock and I have each blade secured with 2 set screws, opposite one another.



Here's my Sithling:



And My Little Youngling. They both had fun modeling my prop sabers.

[jedimastergarcia87]

Eh. They are okay. Do they have 1 inch pex pipe?? They seem to be good for prop blades.

[Ingchao]

Nice idea with the colored duct tape, DM! I was thinking about doing that for my kids' saber class when we do daytime demos.

I've been using 3/4" pex in the sabers I build for the kids' saber class and because it's softer, I feel it's a bit safer in case the kids "accidently" hit each other. And it's also a bit gentler on the heavy bags, not to mention more durable. My older son-he's 10- destroyed a thin walled blade on one of the heavy bags just this week- I might retrofit his saber with pex, too!

[Darth Midian]

Jedi Garcia, they're 3/4" pex with a wood dowel core. I didn't put any real effort into these because I plan on abusing them when I figure out how to rotoscope in motion graphics. Ingchao, pex blades are pretty durable. Thanks guys.