Only took me a year or two... or five

**TuxedoCartman** · 01-27-2017, 01:33 PM

Been a while!

Back in 2011 I drew up plans for my first elaborate saber build, something with accent LED's and overlays and all the goodies. International relocating put the project on hold, but that worked out because I managed to score a Crystal Focus v.6 in 2012 (back in ye olden days where they weren't simply "in stock" ready to buy whenever one wanted). Finally got all my sleeve-work done, got it all wired up and soldered down and buffed and polished, and fired it up, and it was BEAUTIFUL!!! ...for about 15 seconds. Then it just shut down. Grr....

So I checked all my connections. Resoldered some joints, double checked my battery, looked for anything that may have shorted... nothing. Got frustrated, and put the project away before I got angry and threw it through a window. Every so often I'd come back to it, try and figure out what went wrong, and still come up bumpkis. To make matters worse, health problems were eating away at my fine motor skills, making soundboard soldering torture.

That went on for four years, before I finally decided that if I was going to have something more than expensive shoebox clutter, I needed to get some help. After reaching out to a few sabersmiths, Lord Dottore Matto (may his name be forever toasted by a thousand angels in a thousand holy bars) agreed to look at it for me. Turns out, yeah, I'd shorted out the SD card reader on the CF; but he had it fixed, rewired my whole rat's nest properly, reinstalled, and working like it was supposed to. Not a lot of sabersmiths out there willing to work on something that wasn't their own work originally, it seems, so I can never say thanks enough to him for that!

Anyway, pics...

One of the design ideas I had when I first came up with this saber, was that I wanted a cutaway section showing a... core?... that was overheating. Something the Jedi who owned this saber had to cut a hole in the side of it for cooling. Experimented with EL wire, but could figure out how to get it to work with all my other electronics, so settled for hiding a small red LED in the polished interior, that ramps up/down and flickers with the blade.

Core off...

Core ignited...

Vader's Vault blade...

Vader's Vault Photon Blade...

Thanks for looking!

**TuxedoCartman** · 01-27-2017, 01:36 PM

Oh, one more pic...

I was living in a small Tokyo apartment when I started this, and couldn't make a lot of noise. So all of the cutting I had to do on the aluminum sleeve... the keyhole shapes for the buttons, the core window, the curve at the emitter... had to be done by drilling a hole to start, then it was all hand-files after that! What would have taken me a good two hours with a Dremel in the States literally took me MONTHS to do over there, LOL. Here's a shot of the work in progress...

**TheSilverDark** · 01-27-2017, 01:41 PM

Duuude that looks amazing!

**Quixotic Jedi** · 01-27-2017, 01:50 PM

Better late to the party than never showing up. You built a fine looking saber, you should be proud.

**TuxedoCartman** · 01-27-2017, 01:56 PM

Thanks guys!

**jbkuma** · 01-27-2017, 02:13 PM

This is a truly elegant piece of work. Worthy of any and all praise.

I'm an apartment dweller myself, in NYC. I do break out the Dremmel on occassion, but mostly I use drills, a wide variety of saws, and a nibbler.
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You'll still have to use some files to finish it up, and it's not exactly fun to use on thicker or rounded materials, but it beats the hell out of the alternative.