First project and post: Scratch build Luke ROTJ hero saber

JBJINFLA · Jun 29, 2016

After lurking for a while, I finally decided to register and post a thread for my first saber build. I recently bought a new to me metal lathe and of course started building a saber as my first from scratch project with it.

I started with the pommel first since it's by far the hardest part. It took three tries to get the cubes cut the way I wanted and it's still not perfect, but I'm satisfied with how it turned out.

The inside is bored to just over 1 inch to allow room for electronics eventually. Next up was the section where the control box will be mounted:

I've milled the flat for the box which I'll make later, but I still need to cut and tap some holes where it will mount. Here's the pommel and lower hilt assembled:

That's all I've completed so far. Next up will be the radiator section. I'll post more pics as things progress. Please share any thoughts or comments.

Jason

Duck9000 · Jun 30, 2016

Looking good so far. Keep us posted and thank for the pics!

MCM · Jun 30, 2016

What type of lathe are you using? It's always been one of my dreams to own a lathe and make my owns sabers. Very cool!

tomm1999 · Jun 30, 2016

I was looking at the blue prints this morning and noticed that the angles on the rings are 60 degrees, which makes sense because that's what a thread cutting bit is. Do you also own a mill? I'm guessing you had to mill the cubes. It looks great!

Sym-Cha · Jun 30, 2016

Hi JBJINFLA,

Welcome aboard ... that's an excellent start to get used to working on your lathe ... I forsee a whole lot more lightsabers spawning from it in the near future ... keep us posted will you?

Chaim

thd9791 · Jun 30, 2016

Like what the others have said, nice work! Did you tap and cut those threads yourself? very cool project man

JBJINFLA · Jun 30, 2016

MCM said:
What type of lathe are you using? It's always been one of my dreams to own a lathe and make my owns sabers. Very cool!

My lathe is an Atlas 12x36 model that was sold by Sears and rebranded as a "Craftsman Commercial Lathe" in the 1970s. In fact as near as I can tell from the serial number, the lathe was manufactured in the same year I was born. I've only had it a month or so though. Here's a pic of the machine:

JBJINFLA · Jun 30, 2016

tomm1999 said:
Do you also own a mill? I'm guessing you had to mill the cubes. It looks great!

I don't have my own mill yet, but it's definitely on my to-buy list. The cubes (and there flat where the control box will sit) were cut using a mill at my local hackerspace. Getting the cubes right was by far the trickiest part of the work. I ended up using a rotary table mounted to the mill and a lot of math. This pommel was my third attempt after I miscut the first two trying to figure out how to get the angles right. On this one I cut a couple of the cubes to deep after the end mill slipped down a bit without me noticing but I was able to clean things up enough to move on.

tomm1999 · Jun 30, 2016

Actually Sym it was your post on a other thread where I got the dimensions, so thanks for that!

Sym-Cha said:
Hi JBJINFLA,

Welcome aboard ... that's an excellent start to get used to working on your lathe ... I forsee a whole lot more lightsabers spawning from it in the near future ... keep us posted will you?

Chaim

JBJINFLA said:
My lathe is an Atlas 12x36 model that was sold by Sears and rebranded as a "Craftsman Commercial Lathe" in the 1970s. In fact as near as I can tell from the serial number, the lathe was manufactured in the same year I was born. I've only had it a month or so though. Here's a pic of the machine:
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160701/e54990b30e09e7c269809b4be443f7e8.jpg

Now that's a nice piece of machinery, I've been looking for a similar size to upgrade to, either an Atlas or SB

JBJINFLA said:
I don't have my own mill yet, but it's definitely on my to-buy list. The cubes (and there flat where the control box will sit) were cut using a mill at my local hackerspace. Getting the cubes right was by far the trickiest part of the work. I ended up using a rotary table mounted to the mill and a lot of math. This pommel was my third attempt after I miscut the first two trying to figure out how to get the angles right. On this one I cut a couple of the cubes to deep after the end mill slipped down a bit without me noticing but I was able to clean things up enough to move on.

Hackerspaces/ Makerspaces are awesome, thats where I do all my building, it was between that and buying a lathe so for now I joined the Makerspace, but the lathe needs an upgrade. Cant wait to see more progress and thanks for the advice on the cubes, Im going to get to one fo these, eventually!

JBJINFLA · Jun 30, 2016

thd9791 said:
Like what the others have said, nice work! Did you tap and cut those threads yourself? very cool project man

Yes, the threads were single-point cut on the lathe. Taps and dies bigger than 1 inch are too pricey for me. The threads on the pommel are 24 threads per inch since the part is hollow and the walls are thin where it mates with the next section. (Higher thread counts are shallower.) The upper end of the lower hilt is threaded at a more standard 12 TPI since the radiator only needs a small through hole to pass wiring some day. The other parts will have smaller diameter threads which will allow me to use taps and dies to cut to speed things up.

MCM · Jun 30, 2016

JBJINFLA said:
My lathe is an Atlas 12x36 model that was sold by Sears and rebranded as a "Craftsman Commercial Lathe" in the 1970s. In fact as near as I can tell from the serial number, the lathe was manufactured in the same year I was born. I've only had it a month or so though. Here's a pic of the machine:
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160701/e54990b30e09e7c269809b4be443f7e8.jpg

That is a gorgeous piece of machinery! I love the grey enamel paint. I bet you'll have loads of hours of fun (and probably some frustration) with this beauty.

JBJINFLA · Jul 3, 2016

I got some time over the holiday weekend to spend in the shop and finished the radiator. I took a bunch of in progress pics, so I hope no one minds a long post. To start I cut a piece of 1.5 inch round stock a little long than the finished part and faced the first end:

Next I drilled the through hole that will allow wiring to pass and cut and threaded the stud that will attach to the copper neck. I was able to use a die for this thread

Then I cut the thin neck section and the first groove on this end.

After flipping the work end-for-end and facing to length, the next op was to cut the threads that will screw into the lower hilt:

Now the fun part begins, cutting the rest of the V-grooves:

Here's the finished part after cleaning it up and how it fits with the rest so far:

JBJINFLA · Jul 3, 2016

I decided to try anodizing and dying the radiator to get the black inside the grooves instead of painting. After cleaning the part and lightly etching in a NaOH solution for five minutes, into the anodizing tank we went:

I use a surplus lab power supply for anodizing. For the radiator I did 120 minutes at 1.33 amps:

After rinsing you can see the color change:

The part was soaked in black dye at 140F for 30 minutes. Don't tell my wife I used our sous vide cooker as a water bath for the dye:

Next I swapped the dye for clean water and increased the temp to 200F for another 30 minutes to seal the anodization. Here's how things looked at this stage

Back on the lathe it was quick work with files and Emery cloth to remove the color from the outside of the grooves and polish things up:

Here's the finished radiator and how the saber looks so far:

That's enough for today. Tomorrow I hope to make the copper section. It will be my first time turning copper so we'll see how it goes.

tomm1999 · Jul 3, 2016

This is great, awesome work! So is the rings/ grooves just a 60 degree thread cutting tool? How much experience do you have using a lathe? You do great work! Not the easiest saber to make

speedtechlights · Jul 3, 2016

The saber looks great so far, keep us posted!

JBJINFLA · Jul 4, 2016

tomm1999 said:
This is great, awesome work! So is the rings/ grooves just a 60 degree thread cutting tool? How much experience do you have using a lathe? You do great work! Not the easiest saber to make

Yes, the grooves were cut with a standard 3/8,carbide insert threading tool fed in from a 30° angle on the compound slide similar to how you cut threads, but without engaging the half nut.

I'm honestly quite the novice on the lathe. I've always been a fan of "how it's made" style videos and got into following several YouTube machinists. I took a six week machining class at my local makerspace and only acquired my own lathe a month or two ago. So I've had maybe 100 hours total time on the machine. I've always been willing to jump in and screw things up, so l lack of fear helps more often than it hurts.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

majortom98 · Jul 5, 2016

Looks really great. Really like that the grooves and fins on the radiator section is uneven. I think that it gives the Luke saber a lot more character to have uneven spacing. That may be due to prop maker's sloppiness but it really can't be screen accurate without that.

Saw that you have machine drawing in some of the pictures. How did you arrive at those dimensions in your drawing? Was your drawing based on some blueprint?

Patlegrand · Jul 5, 2016

Stunning photos, great work ! Do you plan to create a chamber ? Electronics ?

First project and post: Scratch build Luke ROTJ hero saber

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