Dewy and Anakin Starkiller's Accurate Qui-Gon Jinn Lightsaber Design

[Dewy]

Any input is helpful!

Even if you ignore the saber not being even with the left edge of the ruler in the photo below (though I think it does extend past it), this resin saber is at least ~290mm by my eye:

This one is also ~290mm


This one is ~280mm:

This one is somewhere in the 280-290mm range:


My guess is they were using different types of resins that shrank different amounts. It’s also possible the shorter sabers are 2nd+ generation casts, though I think that’s less likely.

 

[Gregatron]

Someone just ask Neeson to put some calipers to the one he has at home !

 

[Saberz]

Pretty sure he also has a cast.

 

[Saberz]

That first one looks very clean, but closer to ~287mm as I see it. Second one is perhaps closer to ~285mm once you slide it right next to the ruler? I tend to think getting all the way to 300mm is out of the realm of plausibility.

 

[AnubisGuard]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but we know how big the blanking cap and Covertech knobs are, right? Is there any reason it's not possible to do a perspective match, line up the buttons, and see how big the saber ends up being? Or did they use real caps and knobs on the resin casts, creating variable results?

 

[Saberz]

Both Dewy and I used Covertec and Blanking Cap measurements as reference, yes. But we’re talking about a couple percentage points here and there, so things can tend to go one way or another.

For what it’s worth, here’s. Saberz O1 next to our screen used reference. To my eyes it matches well, so I tend to like where we landed. But again it’s a very delicate thing.

 

[DRambo87]

Someone just ask Neeson to put some calipers to the one he has at home !

Literally thought of that

 

[Gregatron]

Pretty sure he also has a cast.

Probably, but more data is never a bad thing!

 

[Dewy]

To clarify, my latest model is 298mm overall length. That gives me as close to perfect of an overlay as I can get to the reference images. If I tweak the position of the emitter flange or pommel I can still get a nearly perfect overlay with the saber in the 294-300mm range. Based on my extremely limited experience with resin a 2-3% shrinkage is common (that’s not to say greater than 3% shrinkage isn’t also common).

If we take my nominal of 298mm and apply a 3% shrinkage factor:

298mm * (1 - 0.03) = 289mm

If we do the same with my lower end:

296mm * (1 - 0.03) = 287mm

I think that’s putting us in the right ballpark of the resin stunts. Not to mention the sheer variation seen in the various resin stunts (forgetting whatever their actual dimensions are) suggests this was a quick and dirty production line, not a high precision operation.

I will of course continue to refine my model, nothing is set in stone, and I welcome everyone’s input!

 

[thd9791]

I’m curious, Saberz on the Q hilts, is it true the threaded rod only went down to behind the red button? It wasn’t until their model that I was caught up that the grip grooves are pretty deep

I’m also curious about the original hero. Of course they sculpted a master of the black resin parts, but they would have had to match the aluminum sleeve to the cast to make a perfect hero. Stunts were casts of the full thing and I can see shrinkage coming into play, with the Rotj hero the small details stayed the same and the large parts shrunk more.

 

[Saberz]

I’m curious, Saberz on the Q hilts, is it true the threaded rod only went down to behind the red button? It wasn’t until their model that I was caught up that the grip grooves are pretty deep

I’m also curious about the original hero. Of course they sculpted a master of the black resin parts, but they would have had to match the aluminum sleeve to the cast to make a perfect hero. Stunts were casts of the full thing and I can see shrinkage coming into play, with the Rotj hero the small details stayed the same and the large parts shrunk more.

On the stunt Qui-Gon hilts, you're correct that the threaded rod didn't protrude into the grip section, so must have stopped further up. I never X-rayed one to see exactly where it stops, but somewhere around the red button seems reasonable.

I don't understand what you mean by "they would have had to match the aluminum sleeve to the cast to make a perfect hero." As far as I know, the Qui-Gon hero did not contain any cast parts.

 

[Eruonen]

On the stunt Qui-Gon hilts, you're correct that the threaded rod didn't protrude into the grip section, so must have stopped further up. I never X-rayed one to see exactly where it stops, but somewhere around the red button seems reasonable.

I don't understand what you mean by "they would have had to match the aluminum sleeve to the cast to make a perfect hero." As far as I know, the Qui-Gon hero did not contain any cast parts.

So are you thinking that that black grip was metal or something else? I always thought it was painted resin

 

[Saberz]

Most likely some or all of the black sections of the Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan hero hilts were machined from Delrin, an industrial plastic made by DuPont.

If not Delrin, it was some other black plastic (black Nylon, for example). We know this because in areas where there are scratches, dents, etc, you can see black material beneath; so nothing is painted or coated, it's black all the way through. That rules out any metal.

 

[thd9791]

Most likely some or all of the black sections of the Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan hero hilts were machined from Delrin, an industrial plastic made by DuPont.

If not Delrin, it was some other black plastic (black Nylon, for example). We know this because in areas where there are scratches, dents, etc, you can see black material beneath; so nothing is painted or coated, it's black all the way through. That rules out any metal.

This is very interesting. I’m going to go dig them up, but people have posted metal belt hangers from ep1 (Q I remember specifically) with black paint chipping around the hooked area and it was white underneath, let me see

 

[thd9791]

Ah, there are some here. (Not the resin stunts) one on a mannequin belt and one on display on its own. I actually see a lighter color underneath then brown Qui-Gon saber reference

 

[Saberz]

Here, I'll save you the trouble:

I still think it's Delrin. The white-ish spots could be something on top, or could be that they hit it with primer and then black on top (see the deep dent on the pommel, which appears to go through a light color and THEN back to a dark one).

 

[thd9791]

Thank you!!! Yikes that’s seen some action

 

[Dewy]

Guys, I have been scaling images alllllll morning. I'm using ImageJ software which was designed for optical computations. I cannot for the life of me get a measurement less than 288.8mm from the high resolution images of the hero.

Now going back to the picture of the resin stun next to the ruler. I've been playing around with shrinking and growing my model to do some perspective analyses, but for the purposes of this post that isn't important. Just know that the model I used in this analysis was 299mm.

First I dropped a model of a ruler into the model of the saber. Remember this is parametric CAD software so there is no scaling, something modeled as 1mm is always 1mm.

Notice the blue lines extending from the end surfaces of the hilt down through the ruler. Model clearly measures 299mm.

Another view showing that the saber and ruler are sitting on the same "floor":

My attempt at recreating the perspective of the photo:

Notice where those blue lines on each end of the saber fall. I have not moved them between any of these pictures.

Now my attempt to draw similar lines on the picture of the resin stunt:

So to me that looks like 285mm. If we assume 2-3% shrinkage for a resin casting that would put the hero in the 290.7-293.6mm range.

A couple additional thoughts:

• When I use ImageJ to scale off the ruler and measure the red button in the picture of the resin stunt I get 14.0mm.
• When I scale the covertech knob in the high resolution photos of the hero to 18.75mm (which is what my vintage knobs measure at (the kind with the embedded metal washer)), I measure the red button at 14.3mm.

 

[Dewy]

To chime in on the material discussion, I don't think the underlying parts were machined delrin on the hero props. There are areas on both sabers where you can see bubbles/imperfections (particularly the Obi pommel and QGJ grip grooves section) that are typical of casting. Some of these imperfections are in hard to clean up areas and made their way onto the resin stunts. Plus, don't we know that the other Episode 1 council sabers were resin bodies with metal details or am I remembering that wrong?

Either way, love the discussion. I need to go touch grass.

 

[Eruonen]

I guess I’m just confused if they made the hero out of a black machinable material why they would feel the need to repaint it black again.