My first saber

[DarthButt]

Well after probably 6+ years of lurking around here and wanting to build my own saber I finally decided to do it. I just got some parts the other day for my hilt. I've got more coming. I'll be doing what I guess will be a stunt saber at first, then adding sound as soon as I can get my hands on a sound card. I'm a little nervous about soldering the little tiny circuit board but I think it'll be fine. I'll be sharing my build as I work on it and hope to get some tips along the way!

Here's what I got so far.

I'm a big guy with big hands so I got an 8" double female section as my main body, and went with pommel #8, choke #2, blade holder #4, and activation box #2 for the basic hilt. I had to drill and tap a few holes to get everything put together.

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So, since it's pretty plain looking I wanted to go with a shroud of some kind to give it a little more depth and cool factor. I was debating on doing either a cool metal shroud or a PVC one kind of sculpted to look like it was made out of krayt dragon bone maybe. I went with PVC. I may still go get some thin metal tubing that fits over the hilt and change it, I'm not too sure, but here's what I got so far. I think with some more tweaking and sculpting it can be real cool. I sketched out a little design on the PVC pipe

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I used a little electric body saw from Harbor Freight to cut the rough shape out and then a combination of power sanders, files, sandpaper and elbow grease to get it to this point. I also weathered the metal a bit.

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I didn't like how thick the PVC is so I did a little more on the belt sander and made the shroud a little thinner. Also gave it more of a rough and chunky "carved out of bone" look. I don't have any pictures of that but I will upload some soon. If anyone has any pointers on how to paint the PVC to make it look like bone that would be helpful! Since it's going to be abused a bit I'm wondering what the best paint or stain options are.

Thanks for looking! My other parts arrive later next week so I should at least have a fancy flashlight soon! haha.