Personal Obi-Wan "Tribute" Saber (Image Intensive!)

[EvilDean]

I'd love it if people would stop taking photos of their lightsaber on the bed etc xD

anyways... your lightsaber rules!
how much? ;D;D

keep on rockin' dude ^^

over and out on this thread


EDIT: That "pillow"version rulez too

[gundamaniac]

The bed is, sadly, the nicest place I have for taking pics of my sabers. I don't have cool looking workbenches or a nice open wooden floor space or one of those nifty mirrored tabletops.

Besides, this saber (the pillow version anyway) does belong on my bed! (and, when I'm sleeping, under my head!)

=D

[gundamaniac]

Recently, I decided to begin the process of stripping the paint off of Obeisance to give it a fresh new coat (the old coat of paint was not applied properly and had a couple of minor nicks). While doing so, I decided to try weathering the paint job just to see how Obeisance would look weathered. I rather like the result and am debating whether to leave it looking worn or whether to finish sanding off the paint and reapply a fresh coat.

The following pictures were taken at night, so please excuse the low lighting and grainy photos. Also, I had a chance to meet Yoda of FX-Sabers, among other sabersmiths, and I got a chance to see one of Yoda's Negotiators (Obi-TPM!!!!!!) in person. I definitely could not pass up the chance to take side-by-side shots of my personal hilt with a beautiful representation of the movie hilt of my dreams:

[strengthofrage]

Your saber was really impressive before, now with that slight bit of weathering/sanding... I would have a hard time deciding what to do myself. It looks really good like that. Spend some time with it weathered, see how you like it. It has a "real" look to it now that is hard to describe. Looks great

[MaverickJsmith]

Very nice!

The weathering is a nice touch.

Maverick

[Sairon]

I think the weathering looks great, you should keep it that way.

[Obi-Ben]

I think you should sand the rest of the paint off, but be a little sloppy about it, and have THAT as your weathering. Best recipe for good weathering is to keep it mild and subtle.

[jaiden_teed]

i think what you have done gives it a nice touch, i love this saber, and with that bit of weathering it looks even better imo.

i do like a saber with a bit of "scuff", just to give it that used look, if its all shiney and new it gives the impression that the jedi has never done anything with it where as with a bit of weathering it can give the saber a "history" if you like.

[gundamaniac]

I'm still on the fence but I'm leaning towards keeping it weathered right now. When I built the saber, I intended it to be reminiscent of Obi's TPM and ANH style hilts, so sort of a mix between the elegant PT styling and the rugged OT styling. Going by the PT, the saber should be clean and unblemished; going by the OT, the saber should show signs of wear.

Assuming I do end up keeping the hilt weathered, I want to do something with the bare aluminum; it's just too clean and shiny compared to the nicked paint job. I don't really want to use the olive oil technique because I'm not really going for a severely aged discolored rusted/burned look. I also don't want to scuff up the hilt or gouge the metal to artificially create battle scars just in case I end up changing my mind about the weathered look some time down the road and want to "restore" the hilt (in other words, i'm not partial to the idea of intentionally throwing the hilt onto concrete to create more realistic battle damage and weathering). Advice? Thoughts? I think I just want to darken the aluminum a bit (read: tarnish it a little, but not dull the finish by scratching it up) so it doesn't look so jarringly out of place compared to the worn paint job, but again, I'm new to this weathering business.

[strengthofrage]

You could try a little dry brush action on the aluminum pieces... especially since you have a lot of layers. You would need to use very little paint thinned out with water on a dry brush (don't water the brush or put too much paint on it at once). The paint would catch most on the edges of the layers and dry there. It would leave the aluminum still relatively clean with slight build up on the edges. Depending on how smooth the aluminum is, it might even stick in the metal a bit.

I used to make/repaint custom action figures, dry brushing works very well when the paint has somewhere recessed to sit.