Jay Gon's RLSA EL saber conversion (CF V4)

**Jay-gon Jinn** · 06-21-2007, 11:47 AM

I posted it on F/X-Sabers' forums, and thought I'd share this with you guys, too!
Since I finished converting my son's RLSA to an F/X type saber, I had some time to start on another project I've been wanting to do; converting my blue bladed EL RLSA saber to a Luxeon with F/X!

This saber started out as a simple EL saber with no sound:

It wasn't very bright, so I decided to convert it to a Luxeon saber with F/X sound! I took it apart and got started:
Here's the blade holder. This was the first thing I had to modify:

I started out by putting it in the drill press and drilling a 7/8" hole for the optics to sit in. I then realized that there wouldn't be enough clearance for the screws on the TCSS heatsink I used to mount the led, so I went up to a 1" drill bit:

I also drilled and tapped the emitter for #4-40 threads for the mounting screws that will hold the led mount:

**Jay-gon Jinn** · 06-21-2007, 11:49 AM

The led mount/heatsink was a bit too big for the inside diameter of this hilt, so I took it to the bench grinder and ground it down till it fit nice and snug, and assembled it with the led:

I also drilled and tapped it to match the holes in the emitter and put it together:

I had to snip off the edges of the screws with my diagonal cutting pliers to make it fit into the hilt, but it works.

**Jay-gon Jinn** · 06-21-2007, 11:51 AM

My next step was converting to solid pommel over to a speaker pommel. I started with this:

I laid out the hole pattern on the pommel face and marked the center of each hole with a punch:

I put it in the drill press and started drilling! I first did a 3/16th hole in the center of the pommel to help align the larger drill bits.

I flipped it over, then moved up to a 1/2", a 7/8" and finally, the 1" bit:

**Jay-gon Jinn** · 06-21-2007, 11:53 AM

After drilling it out, I flipped back over, and finished the hole pattern:

I also did the pommel for my son's training saber at the same time, while everything was set-up. His turned out better than mine because I did it second and learned from some mistakes. I'm not sure what happened to my hole pattern, but it works, even though it looks kinda funny.....

**Jay-gon Jinn** · 06-21-2007, 11:54 AM

The next step was to change the switch. Not only was it goofy looking, but it wasn't in the best position on the saber:

I considered where it was to be the "bottom" of the hilt, so I drilled the hole more forward and moved it to the "top." I put the saber body in the drill press and drilled out a 3/8 inch hole so that I could use the stock switches found at the TCSS store. Everything was just about ready, so I decided to look for a sound board. I intend to eventually install Ultrasound, but an MR would do in the meantime. I picked up an Anakin F/X board from Vortextwist . (thanks again!)

The soundboard arrived, so it was time to get started wiring it up:

I hot-glued the clash sensor to the board after shortening the wires a bit. I also hot-glued the switch, battery, and speaker wire to the board to prevent them pulling off during installation.
I was out of 4- AAA battery holders and so was my local Radio Shack, so I wired together two 2-AAA battery holders instead:

I soldered everything up and tested it out:

**Jay-gon Jinn** · 06-21-2007, 11:55 AM

It came out pretty nice!
I got everything installed and took a few pictures:

You can see the new location for the switch in those above pics. It's in the perfect position between my hands on the hilt now:

This is a better pic of where the old switch was and the new location:

Here's the speaker pommel and the goofy looking hole pattern:

**Jay-gon Jinn** · 06-21-2007, 11:58 AM

And now the "money" shots!

The blade is, of course, a 3/4" thin-walled polyC tube with Corbin's blade diffuser and led is a Luxeon III blue.

Here's a short video demo of how this sounds: