First Saber Build - Or the continuous do-over

[minorhero]

Hello folks,

I started posting in the welcome to the forum thread but when I explored the forum a bit more I discovered there is a whole forum section devoted to build threads so I am re-posting here plus adding an update.

My idea for my first saber was to use a sink tube type shroud and also to use wood to add accents to the build.

I began the build by using a 1.25" sink tube as my base. I then drilled out a 7" piece of cherry wood so that I could insert my sinktube into it. Once epoxied in place I turned this down on my lathe so that the cherry-sinktube had the same outer diameter as your typical MHS part, thus allowing me to insert it into a 1.5 sinktube.

I also decided I was going to use walnut accents for the outside of the 1.5" sink tube. These went through several variations but this is what it looked like originally:

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I got from the store MHS conversions for the 1.25" sinktube and used a pommel and emitter in either end of the sinktube. I then cut the 1.5" sinktube in such a way that my cherry tube would show through the cuts. The first time I did this I made 2 different windows and both were pretty small:

vI8ELM5.jpg

I did not like the look of these at all. For one thing they were difficult to keep perfectly symentrical and the more I played with trying to get them there the less definition was maintained. For another I felt they didn't lend a the proper feel to the lightsaber. I then tried dramatically expanding the cuts and also tried using larger pieces of walnut:

fn3MsO5.jpg

This was a disaster and eventually I decided to just start over on the 1.5" sinktube.

I purchased another sinktube and cut it open. Unlike the first time, this time I limited myself to a single "window". This allowed me to not have to worry about symmetry as much. I also changed up the emitter section cut just a little bit adding a change in angle of the sinktube.

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I also cut some more walnut and turned it down dramatically thinner on my lathe.

This is the effect:

db9gNH1.jpg

Still I did not like the overall look. It was definitely better then what it was, but it wasn't .... lightsabery enough. I had been trying to preserve the handle like nature of the lightsaber as much as possible so that frankly it would be comfortable to hold. It was around this time that I finally realized that I really am going to need to add some more layers to make it look like a proper lightsaber. I took some of the cutouts from the previous tube and cleaned up the edges and laid them out on the walnut and got already a much better effect:

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This brings me up to current.

I will definitely be adding some metal ontop of my wood to give it a proper lightsaber like effect. Though I will likely use different pieces then what I have shown there. I am having a lot of fun figuring out how to make this thing happen so it will likely go through several iterations.

As far as the electronics go, I will be using a tri-rebel b/b/w led at least 1 (though maybe 2) 18650 batteries, a sound card, a recharge port, and a photon green blade. I toyed very seriously with the idea of putting in a crystal chamber (and even bought some calcite crystals) but ultimately I do not have enough room to make it happen. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts I am definitely open to them. Thanks for looking.

[NaasadTal]

Found & following!

[hapki]

I've always wanted to integrate wood into a hilt design. I hope you'll keep us posted on how it turns out.

[minorhero]

Progress! Well, of a sort. I have maintained the integrity of this thread title by once more starting over. Hopefully 3 times is the charm.

I have ditched my cherry tube and sink tube setup all together. Instead I am making use of a stainless steel 1.25" bicycle seat post tube. I had this bicycle tube laying around (along with a steering tube and gear tube) for a wooden bicycle build that never got off the ground due to logistical issues. At this point I don't see anything wrong with turning them all into lightsaber parts.

I made my initial cut on my bicycle seat post at 12.5 inches. I installed some rubber 1.25 washers and held them in place with a little super glue. Here is how that looked with the pommel currently slip fit over the end of the tube.

(note I also decided to upgrade my pictures from my cell phone to my "real" camera)

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Once the superglue setup I punched holes in leather I bought at a craft store, let it soak, and then stitched it over the handle. This took a while as 1) I have never done this or anything like it ever before, and 2) it was difficult heh. The leather I purchased was quite thick. Videos I have seen of others doing leather wraps involved much thinner leather but I wanted the effect of the thicker leather. I now know why folks use thinner. When stitching the leather does not draw together super evenly overtop of the thick rubber washers. I may end up re-doing this and using a different method.

This is what it looks like now:

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As you can see the stitched end pulled in slightly with the tightening of the artificial sinew. I am thinking of covering this up with either a wooden or metal ring. (yes wood is still going to be in the mix on this build) Here is how it looks with a scrap piece of sink tube put over the end:

epA91Cz.jpg

One thing I really wanted to do with my previous build is include a crystal chamber. I frankly did not have the room. Now with this new hilt I planned from the start to include one and I am making it happen. A few weeks ago my wife was getting rid of some old costume jewelry and I rescued this medallion off of her:

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After grinding/cutting away the outside to make it fit it looks like this:

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Here is the basic idea for my crystal chamber. The crystal is light green calcite that was chiseled to rough dimensions by me and a hammer, then ground to fit on top of that sink aerator.

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The crystal is being lit by a white floral light. Incidentally, anyone ever use floral lights as accent lights on a lightsaber?

I then drilled the aerator and the madallion to make room for some copper tubes. Here is the effect:

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I will secure all of this together once I am happy with its placement. But generally speaking this is the basic look of the chamber. The window into the chamber I am still working on. The micromesh screen from the aerator is going to be a "Grill" of sorts on the window into the crystal chamber. I plan to drill a 5/8" hole as the viewport. This will be the only view into the crystal chamber which makes it really easy to control the scenery since I do not need a "complete" crystal chamber with top and bottom that looks good. I only need the middle since that is all you will be able to see. What I want to do is come up with some way of creating a curved clear "window pane" that will be flush with the outside of the tube and also be sturdy enough for dueling. So far my only idea has been to use epoxy to create the window. The problem is that I need something to form the epoxy into the correct shape, and anything that I have that does that will also get stuck to the epoxy. So far the best I have come up with is tape. The adhesive on the tape releases when you remove it and gets stuck to the epoxy which creates a very cloudy surface. This is what that looks like on a my much abused test sink tube as lit from within by a floral light:

tgmQhb1.jpg

And that brings me up to current. I plan to use wood accents to make a button guard and also at least one ring for the leathered area and possibly 2. I will also cut apart my steering tube to get bits of metal I can adhere to the tube to provide layering. Blade holder will be the 1.18 OD holder from the store which should fit pretty perfectly into my seat tube. Last night I thought of trying silicone parchment paper as a potential form for the epoxy. If it works I will update here

[NaasadTal]

Looking good! I've actually lost track of how many times I changed my design & continue to change things on my build (I actually just repositioned my chassis again yesterday)

Really like the ingenuity behind your crystal chamber...I have seen a couple sabers that used a bit of blade material for a window, it'd be very strong & durable.

Looking forward to more progress!

[minorhero]

Some more progress, not much but a bit.

Using the same method as before I cored out some walnut and turned it down on the lathe to form end pieces for my leather section. Not sure how I feel about them right now. The front walnut end piece may end up acting as a guard for my switch as well. I worry that they increase the thickness of the saber too much.

Here is what it looks like right now:

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[Greenie]

Very cool

[hapki]

I have built around 11 sabers. I can only show four, because I keep tearing them apart, redoing them, and trying to get a more perfect final product. I also made a shock blaster but then tore it down to start over again. So, I know what you mean by the continuous do-over.

[minorhero]

And some more progress!

I spent most of yesterday and the first part of today trying to make wood rings to cap either end of the leather wrapped section. This turned out to be absurdely finicky. I do not have the appropriate sized drill bit to just bore out the size I need. Instead I am left with the following procedure. Bore out a 1-1/4 hole in a square piece of walnut. Take this to the lathe and turn it down so it is round and sand so it is smooth. Then mount this piece onto a previously made cylindrical holder. Tape in place, and then using a miter gauge cut a ring off on the bandsaw. Then take this ring and using the dremel with a sanding drum, increase the internal diameter until it perfectly fits over either the tube or the pommel (depending on which I am making) and then choosing one end of the ring and using the dremel, increase the inside diameter of a smaller section so that piece fits over the leather.

If this sounds like a lot of steps believe me it is. I ended up needing to make 3 tubes yesterday and about 6 or 7 rings before I had 2 usable pieces. And that said, the front ring is just a bit off. The front ring is one of the first I made and sloppy compared to my later work. So I will likely end up redoing that one.

But without further ado here is the effect:

Cg9vRdb.jpg

Despite likely needing to redo the front one (the one on the left) I am pretty happy with the effect these rings give off and also happy that they cover up my uneven leather ends.

With that chore out of the way or at least under control I have come up with one possible way to make my window but as with so many things I am not perfectly happy with it. My idea involves taking a clear 1-5/8 rubber/plastic tube and cutting a small piece out of it. Super gluing this piece inside of my tube over the hole I drill for the window. This gives me a hard and clear window but it also leaves a lip as deep as the tube wall is thick. So I then take a very small amount of epoxy and drip it on the outside. Then using a heatgun, very carefully spread it around so it covers only the holes up to the lip. I did this on my much abused original sink tube and it worked. The problem is two fold. The first is that the clear tubing is gosh darn THICK, probably 6 or 7 mm and that will all be space lost inside for my chasis and crystal which may be space needed. The second issue is that I really wanted to use the aerator micro mesh in the window and this method would complicate that, or make the whole thing even thicker. I will see about finding a smaller thinner walled bit of tubing.

In other news I have revisited my crystal chamber and begun making my chassis.

I decided my previous crystal chamber idea had several problems. The biggest being that I was not really happy with it and did not know how to attach it properly to my chassis and still allow wires to pass by it. I played around with a bunch of different options and then decided to try it from the reverse order. Rather then come up with a crystal chamber and then find out how to attach it to my chassis, how about I come up with the chassis and then figure out a crystal chamber. This made everything much easier.

For a while now I have known that my chassis will just be a piece of wood that everything will attach to. with that in mind I thought why not just glue a crystal to my stick of wood? And then I thought or I could use some of these bits and pieces of crystal I have and glue them all together to "make" a crystal. Then just have some random piece in the picture to make it look futuristicky. (yes that is definitely a word...)

Keep in mind my window into my crystal chamber is extremely limited. So not a lot will be visible at any point.

Here is my pile of crystal concept, not glued, just sitting there:

S7ntE49.jpg

Here is the same sitting on my chassis with a floral light trying to light this. This did not work well mostly because the floral light is a bump nothing wants to sit on gracefully. The final version wouldn't have these issues since the light would be coming from underneath and everything would be glued together.

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And here is the relatively successful window I made being held over the crystal pile. The view is all distorted because between the epoxy and the clear tubing there is a definite "fun house mirror" kind of effect going on. It means that to see very clearly you have to hold the window right up next to your eye. Outside of doing that it kind of looks like this picture. This is the reason why I am not particularly concerned about making a full blown crystal chamber.

URhGuVw.jpg

I also decided that since my chassis is now likely to be visible at least in part it couldn't just look like a stick of wood. So before I came in to post this I sprayed it with metallic gold paint. Hopefully that will give the crystal chamber something interesting in the background. Next up will be more chassis stuff plus I will need to figure out the final length of my saber. Currently the tube is 12.5" long but I suspect I will cut a bit off of that. I think I will be using 2 18650 batteries in this build since I am pretty sure I will have room for them. If I can put my sound card and the batteries on opposite sides of the chassis I am sure I can fit 2 batteries. But I am not sure if I need 2... I plan to run a rebel tri-star with the bass speaker and at least 1 additional accent led (for my crystal chamber) plus a lighted switch. How long will my saber run between recharges with just 1 battery? Will 2 batteries double the run time?