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Thread: JB's Pathfinder Scratchbuild

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    Default JB's Pathfinder Scratchbuild

    My girlfriend has been hinting that she wanted me to make her a saber for quite a while. After spending months lurking and reading, I decided to make a lightsaber my girlfriend's for a May 4 surprise (the chrome one below). I decided on something more traditional looking, to suit her tastes. That was a 2 sink tube, corrugated hose build. She loves it and I've been slowly fixing that up, and recently added a BB board to it.

    With that out of the way it was time to start drafting up my own saber. I wanted my saber to be unique, suited to my tastes, and have a look of a well used blade from a time before the technology was refined. Based on everything I read and my newly won experience I came up with a draft in illustrator. One of the very first things I had decided was that it would be leather, brass, and cloth wrapped after the fashion of exhaust wrap on classic motorbikes. The conduit on the wrapped section seemed like a very natural way to dress it up.


    I realized that craft foam would be within a reasonable margin to make a mock up of what the blade would look like before I started hacking things up. I also, fortunately enough, had just finished a roll of aluminum foil and the cardboard was the perfect size to fit over the 1.25" tailpiece. Waving this around I realized it was a big on the long side and decided to chop it down a bit, and simplify the design a bit to accommodate the changes.


    I cut the pipe, 17ga brass, and some accent grooves with a pipe cutter, and cut a bit sharper than a 45? on the emitter with a hacksaw and miter box. The leather was in a $6 scrap bag from a craft store. It was surprisingly easy to cut with a blade arm paper cutter. Stitching it on was not difficult, but time consuming work. I snapped the thread near the end, but decided to leave it until I had to take everything apart for the final construction. I moved the shroud around until it looked right and drilled new holes and marked my cut on the 1.25" tailpiece.


    And after liberating a couple inches of copper from the scrap bin at work, I had my emitter together and thought I'd let a bit of the chrome show through to give it a bit more texture. Then after I found suitable wrap material I swapped out the cardboard.



    Next up was the conduit. After a helpful board member pointed me to a couple local art supplies I had a few sizes to try. This was by far the most difficult and frustrating part of the build so far. Bending the conduit to shape was much easier than I expected. Getting it to keep shape and tuck away as I had planned took quite a while (and swearing). Once I was done with that, I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Fiddling with the shroud while working on all that I decided to show a little bit more chrome and copper and drilled and tapped new holes. The hilt I built for my girlfriend is next to it (currently held together only by the end threads on the 1.25 interior tailpiece and rubber gaskets).


    Up until this point I used nothing but basic hand tools and a cordless drill. I had been putting off the more complex middle ring because using a nibler like I did to clear the material on the 22ga sink tub wasn't going to be as easy on the 17ga, and I don't really have any other suitable tools on hand. I tried clearing the bulk using a step bit with vise and cordless drill. It quickly became obvious that wasn't give a quality result.

    After talking to my father about picking up a cheap set of taps he reminded me about 10 years ago when he picked up a drill press on clearance... obviously it was time for a bus trip to the folks' place. I used a step bit to clear the bulk, then I used tin snips to get a bit closer to my template. Finally I shaped the rest with a grinder my father also picked up on the cheap many years ago. Final refinement was made with a sanding drum on the drill press. Since I'm going for the well used look, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to clean this up too much more than it already is.


    I haven't cut the holes yet because I haven't found buttons I like yet. I've debated sanding down AV switches to get brass with purple accent rings. Ultimately, I think I will use tactile switches with custom covers cut from the brass pipe. I plan on using a hole saw that will give me a disk a little bigger than my target size then clean it up with the grinder and sanding drum. I have some ideas on how to give them accent rings using plastic tubing, but I may just skip that all together.

    At this point I adjusted my reference drawing for no real practical purpose since I've been working mostly in my head by now.


    I'm still deciding on how to handle the pommel cap. I have about 20 different options I've been cutting it down from. My favorite option will cost around $20, which seems a bit ridiculous considering that is almost the cost of the rest of the materials combined.

    When my budget allows, my plan is to outfit this with a trans purple blade and RGB LED, girlfriend will get blue/blue. I may skip sound for now or go with another Hasbro BB board since that was pretty easy to cobble together. I have about 10.5" of 1.25" pipe to accomodate pretty much whatever I want at this point.
    Last edited by jbkuma; 05-23-2016 at 11:53 AM. Reason: grammar

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