Loquinho's Powered Hardware Saber

[Loquinho]

This is a first build for me. My introduction is over in the Welcome Forum. This saber started as a basic Lowes hardware prop build for my son to play with, but it's turning into more now, so I thought I'd start a build thread.

First came the basic construction. I started with one of these Keeney Mfg. pop up drain assemblies from Lowes:



I removed the center piece with the red arrow. It was a combination of a chrome lid with an o-ring screwed to a plastic piece. I unscrewed the chrome from the plastic, and inserted the chrome piece down in the body of the drain assembly. Then I pushed it up to the bottom of what is to become the base of the emitter, with the screw hole facing up. The o-ring seats it nicely in place. Until I get some electronics in place, this at least closes off the top of the saber body and gives it the vague appearance of something going on in there. I also fitted a sink strainer to the top chrome drain ring, just for some bling. It made it look a little to "sink-y" for my tasted, so I later removed it.

The pop-up arm attachment is the logical place to have an "activation switch", so I removed the chrome end piece from the stopper lever (purple arrow), grinded the radius down some so it would fit, and placed it behind the pop-up arm locknut, so it looks like a chrome button. On my particular assembly, this chrome button has a big "K" engraved on it, but it's subtle enough that it doesn't detract too much. (I imagined it was a mass-produced factory saber from some point in Jedi history, so it had a manufacturing mark on it, obviously)

After all that I attached a chrome slip joint coupling to the tail end to finish off the saber, also found at Lowes:



This is open on both sides, so I found a chrome cap that looks like this:



and stuffed it in the tail end. It didn't quite fit right, and doesn't fully seat. If I have time in the future I'll fix this problem. One issue I have with the slip joint is that it has some wiggle, even when tightened. It's meant to connect two different pipes, not hang off the end of one. I haven't determined how to fix this yet.

Once all that was done, it was just a matter of rearranging the rubber seals and brass locknut to finish the emitter, and wrap some electrical tape as a quick grip solution, and here's how the saber looked on the end of day one.



Then my son said he wanted it to be green, "like Luke's!"...

[Loquinho]

... so now we have the matter of making it light up... and fitting a blade...

I ordered a lot of parts from TCSS, but they haven't come in yet, because I'm having a blade made. I won't be able to work on fitting the blade until I have one to check sizes, etc, so I'm limited in what I can work on at the moment, but I did have a couple items I wanted to look at.

First was the switch. I knew I wanted a momentary switch, primarily because my son is 6, and he would probably forget and leave it on ALL THE TIME if it was a latching switch. I'm going to have it running off (4) AAA batteries, so I don't have a ton of juice to work with. Also, someday I might put a sound card in it if I go crazy, so the momentary switch will work well for that as well. I knew I wanted it to integrate somehow into the existing chrome ring that looks obviously like an activation switch, so I went shopping. At Ace Hardware I found a momentary contact test switch that looked like it might do the trick.



When I got home and looked, the opening behind the activation area into the main body of the saber wasn't a large circle cutout like I thought, it was a narrow oval. To get the switch to fit, I had to take the drain assembly and drill out some of the brass to get a big enough hole to fit the switch in. Once the hole was big enough, I had to bend the little brass connector legs to be parallel with the back of the switch since the drain body was so narrow. Once I did that, however, I couldn't believe how well this switch worked. Check it out.

It fits inside with room to spare:


The switch had a very thin locknut that pulled it tight against the saber body. It was difficult to tighten, but it worked great. I had to be careful how big I drilled the hole to fit it in - too big and the locknut wouldn't have had any surface area to grip. You'll also see in this image that I filed down the threaded female end to accept the chrome trim ring - when I initially assembled the saber, the chrome ring stuck way out, and there were a lot of threads visible under it even when I tightened it down. I ground this part down until the chrome ring fit just about flush to the bottom of the threads:


So here it is from the side:


And the big moment, here it is when I put the chrome trim ring back on:


I know, right? You couldn't ask for a better fit! To finish it off, here's what the assembly looked like once back together. I think this switch looks very classy for what it is. I'm pretty happy with it, and one more step is completed.

[Loquinho]

I also started to look at the pommel/rear grip area of the saber. The chrome looks awkward to me with the large rings on either end and the narrow middle, so I decided to add some vane grips similar to Luke's ANH saber design. I looked at purchasing the grips from TCSS and modifying them, but they were a little large for what I wanted, and if I recall they might not have been in stock as well. I read somewhere that they were made from old wiper blades, so I thought why not, let's make them out of old wiper blades. So I picked up a long wiper blade at Walmart for under $4.

I got it apart, and discovered it's made of two major parts - the armature and the wiper insert. All I need is the insert:


Looking at the insert on end, this is the profile of the rubber. Not very similar to the ANH grip profile.


AND it turns out part of THAT it aluminum as well, further complicating things:


When I got it all broken down, I realized that if I cut off the arrow-shaped rubber point that touches the windshield, I'd be left with a decent rubber profile that might hold up well, if I can get it adhered strongly enough to the hilt.


That's as far as I've gotten with this idea. I think I'm going to use 8 segments equally spaced around the rear grip. The chrome nuts there are 8 sided, so I can get the spacing right on fairly easily. I'm going to let them contour to the slight dip in the chrome, and I think it will look pretty good. Now I need to break out the xacto blades and trim some wiper blade...

[CET]

Very innovative! How heavy is it?

[Cire Yeldarb]

Wow, I love how well that switch fits!! Looks awesome!

[Quixotic Jedi]

Clever build.

[Loquinho]

Thanks guys!

Very innovative! How heavy is it?

Not too bad I guess - I've never held another saber, so I have no context. The emitter end is thick cast brass, so it has a little weight, but the body and tail end are all thin-wall chromed brass, and are very lightweight. The end result is that the saber is heavily weighted towards the blade end. If you choke up on it it's not bad, but I may need to add some weight to the back once I have a blade on it to balance it out. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[hapki]

That's very cool.

[Loquinho]

Made a little progress today. First, I found this sample of a metal ceiling tile in my office that's supposed to look like wood. Pretty sure it's steel. The bend and burned corner is from my experimentating with it before taking the photo.



If you flip it over, the back is a pretty good coppery color. I cut off a portion to infill the emitter windows. I'm hoping it will look pretty good with the blade glowing in there. When I installed it, however, the "copper" paint looked terrible next to the genuine brass. So I went back to my garage and took a wire wheel and a torch to it to see what other finish I could give it. The results looked pretty good.



So I finished a portion of it to a darkened steel and installed the screen in the emitter.

Next I found the hardware to make a couple blade retention screws from Ace Hardware. It's a couple brass 10-32 screws and a couple thumb nuts to match.



I tapped threads for the first time in my life to install the retention screws in the sides of the emitter. It went well for my first time - they're just about perpendicular. It was a bit of a challenge to tap through the emitter screen as well - the bit went through the thick brass a lot easier than the thin steel, but I got it all lined up.



Those items done, I put it all back together. I'll need to cut off the bolt heads and affix the thumb nuts permanently so it looks a little less "Lost in Space", but not too bad for a day's work. I would have tackled the rear grip as well, but I'm still researching a good adhesive to attach rubber and chrome. Just biding my time until the blade parts come in.

[Cire Yeldarb]

Really liking this saber! Coming together nicely!