Building my first Graflex...now what?

[erlomd]

Hi guys, this is my first post here...so let me get right to it...

after selling my MR Anakin AOTC fx saber, Im having somewhat of a sellers remorse...asking myself questions like: "why did I have to sell it?" and "I could have just made it better with an upgrade kit of some sort". But after much thought, I really would just rather have the ol' Graflex saber that no matter what saber I come across, It just will never posses that certain finesse and classic lines that Anakin built a long long time ago...but I digress...

I recently saw that Park Sabers and The Custom Shop are selling empty Graflex replicas to do with as thy bidding will (and at ~$200, its a steal compared to what the going rate for a real Graflex is going for on the ol' eBay).

I decided (after much youtubing around) that I want to build my own Graflex to my specifications. Im very very new to the world of LED's and Lithium ion batteries, sound cards and so forth. But, I'm pretty handy soldering and wiring so putting it together shouldn't be a problem.

with a little searching around the custom shop here and various other websites, I have a pretty good idea of what I want within the saber which will include a Cree-Tri-XP-E2 LED (all 3 in royal blue or whatever is brightest) a sound card and a 2W 28mm Bass speaker hoping to put a Vaders Vault Photon blade or whatever will fit in the blade housing that will emit a rich bright blue hue (I know that the graflex has limitations to the diameter of the blade which it will accept).

The rest is a guessing game really...so I wanted some insight as to what will make this saber come to life with the above mentioned parts...what LED housing to use? wiring setup for a ultra bright dayblade (i think its called a sun crusher)? what battery to use? chasis? resistors, converters, radiators, fans, flux capacitors...etc.

I would like it to have the regular on/off, motion & clash sounds as well as the clash light in a different color (white?)...if the blade pulsates a little, that would be a nice touch as well...the top button will be the on/off switch and maybe a long press to de-activate the sound if at all possible.

any help here would be most helpful! I really don't want to just buy the saber then send it off to someone else to finish it...although as nice as that is, I just would like to build it myself.

getting these things to come together and work as planned is somewhat of an art and I know that. That's why I came here!