The main issue with adding brass to the first box is that it its not a uniform surface. The way I created that box means that there are are definitely slopes and high spots in that box. Getting brass to actually follow the contours will be very difficult. But I don't have to glue things down to see how it will look. I will give it a shot when I am in the shop today and let you know. Thanky for the suggestion
With great success comes great interweb posts. Spiderman said that...or something like that. And it totally applies to today!
I got to spend the whole day in my shop today and made some awesome progress. But in the spirit of the 'A-Z Build' section I shall go through it one step at a time.
The word of the day was activation boxes.
After my last post I thought about the fact that I have a goodly sized piece of steel under my wood and how I was toying with putting some more metal ontop to make a kind of activation box sandwich. While thinking of this I decided to try going a different route and use my metal piece to form a kind of mini shroud.
First I needed a base piece my metal could go ontop of and cover up entirely. I started with a piece of a walnut and it looked like this:
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That looked pretty decent but I also tried using a piece of rubber/plastic tubing I cut and molded to shape. That looked like this:
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Due to difficulties with shaping the rubber tubing plus frankly no real desire to use it I eventually decided on the walnut and when my metal piece I was previously using as a base piece was placed on top it looked like this:
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I liked the look of this so much I decided that finally I had found my activation box (there was much rejoicing).
I then used epoxy to attach the walnut piece to the metal (now) shroud. This is what that looked like:
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I also toyed around with the idea of adding some wood accent to the front of the light saber. I started doing this because frankly the tip of the lightsaber looked a bit plain with just the activation box. This is what that looked like:
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After the epoxy dried I used increasingly large drill bits to drill the activation box for the button. Because I totally messed this up I ended up using a dremel to grind the opening a little bigger to get the switch in place but it ended up not being an issue. Here is what it looked like when complete:
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While this was going on I started puttering with the window into the crystal chamber. I took my only sink aerator and began trying to coat it in a thin layer of epoxy. This is what it looked like to start off next to a 12mm anti-vandal switch:
YmZfVf0.jpg
Unfortunately I totally botched the epoxy job on the aerator complete with bubbles and yellowing of the epoxy. Fortunately I found something even better! While at the hardware store today I found in that aisle with all the little bins containing all the little screws, a tub that contained garden hose screens. Boy are those things handy! -------- Apparently I have reached the limit for pictures in one post... to be continued...
Last edited by minorhero; 01-15-2017 at 06:45 PM.
...Continued
Here is what my hose screen looked like next to my botched epoxied aerator:
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My process for epoxying one of these screens involves bending it to fit the inside diameter of my tube. Then dripping some epoxy on it, then using a heat gun to heat up the epoxy. The heat gun gets rid of bubbles (if I do it right) and also makes the epoxy considerably less viscous allowing it roll around and cover the screen. Here is my hose screen sitting in a plastic/rubber tubing cradle I made for this purpose. Ignore the disgusting melted ends of the hose. This comes from using a dremel to cut the tubing (I do not recommend that method):
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While I was waiting for the epoxy to dry on my screen I looked closer at my wooden rings capping my leather. At this point in the build I felt confident that my leather was not changing so I could go ahead and permentaly affix my wooden caps. The one that was forward on the hilt was easy to deal with. I simply epoxied it in place. The one near the pommel was a different story. I needed to be able to remove the pommel so I could not simply epoxy the wooden ring in place. Instead I had long since decided I would use button head allen screws in the pommel/wooden ring. I began by drilling the wooden ring all the way through the pommel and the tube on 2 sides. Then I tapped both holes with an 8-32 tap. After that I then epoxied the wooden ring ontop the pommel making sure my tapped holes were clear of epoxy. Here is how all of that looked when re-assembled:
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By this point the epoxy had dried on my first screen and I had even had a chance to use a screen repair kit (also purchased from the hardware store today) to make another epoxied screen. Here is what the screen door repair kit screen looked like when laid over my crystal lit by some floral lights:
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And here is what the garden hose screen looked like:
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In short they both had terrible visibility. Yes you can make out a green glowing thing through the screen but thats about it. After a while I decided that my terrible crystal chamber will be so minimal that this is probably a good thing. I thought about which screen option I liked more and eventually decided to go with the hose screen option. Mostly because it doesn't look like a screen door.
And that is really about as far as I got today. Here is some pictures showing the current progress of the saber with the activiation box laid in place but not yet glued:
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And here is that walnut accent after some sanding laid in place:
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I can't help but feel the front of the saber needs..something. What it needs I am not settled on yet. It might be the walnut accent or it might be some other accent item.
Overall I am very pleased with the progress I made today. I quite like my activation box and how well my button head screws got installed. I am also planning to use button-head screws to hold the emitter in place as well. I also plan to install a covertec button and of course a blade retention thumb screw. Other then those and the formal installation of the window for the crystal chamber I have no further plans for the exterior of the saber. I had planned to weather my saber but frankly I have been so darn rough with the making of the saber that it is already "weather" which works out rather well for me. Score one for laziness!
Last edited by minorhero; 01-15-2017 at 06:51 PM.
Love the texture of the layers!
I assume you are drilling those concentric holes by hand? Its going to be tough to get this right without a drill press.
I definitely like the look you're going for. Keep at it, that's the fun anyway.
I do have a drill press actually. Your right drilling this saber by hand would be a nightmare. The steel tubing is tough and the wooden rings are delicate by comparison. The combination would not have been good if drilling those tapped holes. I did concentric holes for the on switch simply because the finished hole was so big I wanted to make sure it was going to be acurratley placed. My tests done earlier on sinktubes showed that skipped right to the biggest bit would allow the bit to skitter around on the rounded surface before biting in and thus introduce error into my drilling process sometimes up to a few mm off which looked terrible.
Some more progress! - but not too much.
I got out into the shop for a couple of hours and I got very very close to finishing the outside of the saber. One major hold-up for me though is whether or not I need an auxiliary button on this saber. I frankly was not going to bother with one but when I finally got around to reading the Crystal Focus 8 manual they indicate that as one of the needed pieces of equipment. Can I get by without one or is it required for a CF8?
If I do need an auxiliary button then I will need to drill a hole for it.... somewhere.
Moving past that issue for a moment. I drilled holes and attached the emitter to the saber. My original plan had been to simply use JB Weld to hold the emitter in place. After thinking about it though I realized that would have been a truly terrible idea. I need to get access to that part of the saber on occasion and blocking it off permanently, while not the complete end to the build, certainly would have made everything a lot more difficult. I then figured I would just use a couple of button head screws to hold it in place. When I went to implement that idea though I learned that the placement of my emitter shroud made lining up the screw holes aesthetically distasteful if only using 2 screws. So I settled for using 4 screws instead. After drilling and tapping the holes with 8-32 threads I realized the button-heads kind of stick out oddly on the rounded surface of the saber body. So I swapped them out for set screws. Here is what that looked like:
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Note there are 2 screws on the opposite side in the same position.
While I was at it I went ahead and rubbed on the first coat of oil finish for the wood parts on the saber. Applying finish to wood is usually one of the last things you do when making something out of wood and it always makes the wood look fantastic and the walnut here was no exception. Here are some shots from various angles of the saber as it is now (note the activation box is just laying there, its not glued on yet):
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I also had a chance to work on the window for the crystal chamber. I began by boring a 5/8" hole in the belly of my saber for the crystal chamber window. Despite being very careful with my measurements I managed to actually completely muck this up. For a while I wasn't sure what I was going to do since my 5/8" bore ended up being noticeably off center line with the rest of the saber button/grip etc. Then I remembered that when in doubt just make the mistake bigger! Or rather bore it out in the direction of center. So using a dremel and coarse sanding drum I bore out my hole till I had a much larger hole, but also one that is centered on the saber. This is what it looks like:
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The problem with making the window a lot bigger (and its now about 1" across at its longest point) is that I can no longer use my hose screens. They simply do not come in a large enough size. That leaves me with the aluminum screen door repair kit. This doesn't look horrible but its not what I had planned on. Also making a screen window this big is not easy. I have already gone through 4 different attempts and all of them were failures to various degrees. I even attached one of my earlier attempts to the tube and poured epoxy for the leveling pane, but the result yellowed and blistered when heat was applied and I hurriedly scraped it off before it could set. I think I have a system for success though and I am hoping attempt number 5 proves lucky.
This brings me up to current. Hopefully I can figure out soonish whether I need an aux button. If not the only thing needed to complete the outside of the saber is getting the crystal window in place. Thank you in advance for anyone who can provide information on whether I need an aux button.
Some more progress has occurred!
This time it was definitely a case of one step back two steps forward.
Apparently I need an auxiliary button... whoops.
So now I had to figure out where to put one. The chassis design I have in mind will not split the internals evenly in two. One side of the chassis (the side with the batteries) will have substantially more room then the other. This means that my auxiliary button needs to go on that side, the same side as my power button. After playing with a few different locations I settled for a position ahead of my main button but underneath the forward part of my activation box shroud. That meant I needed to cut the shroud back in order to make it work. I played with several different variations of this trying to cut the shroud in such a way as there were two forked parts going forward. I ran into problems trying to keep everything looking symetrical and frankly what I did create looked horrible. Eventually I just cut the shroud so it was relatively flat on the forward section and placed a piece of MHS aluminum sleeve material on the main tube to act as a button holder and a smaller piece on top to act as a kind of guard.
While I was cutting apart aluminum sleeve material, I cut a longer strip to act as a decoration for the front of the saber. Here is the overall effect from multiple angles: (note I have not drilled the tube yet or glued anything down)
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I am not entirely unhappy with this turn of events. It was not looked for, but I think the result will be decent. I particularly like how easy it was to come up with something for the forward section of the saber. It definitely needed a decoration of some kind and this strip of aluminum will likely be everything I need.
In other news I ordered earlier tonight a bunch of stuff from TCSS both to finish this saber (resistors) and for the parts for saber number 2. Really looking forward to getting this one done so I can move onto number 2. That one I have a design already in mind that I think will really work (unlike this saber which has been an excellent example of trial and error).
Accident or not, I LOVE the way this is turning out! Absolutely amazing work ner vod!
Much appreciated! Its been quite a journey so far. When I build furniture I usually create 3d models of my work in advance so I know what its going to look like. With this lightsaber it has definitely been much more free form and the result has been copious do-overs but I think I finally have a good understanding of both my strengths and limitations with this very different style of building.Originally Posted by NaasadTal
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