Foundry Cast Count Dooku Lightsaber: WIP Scratch-Build

[thd9791]

You're so humble about your abilities. This alone blows me out of the water. Orthographically planning this and managing to cast, machine and fit these pieces together is pretty sick my friend.

go eat something, you deserve it!

very interested to hear what you've learned about the weight of the thing, the pommel looks heavier than the front.

 

[thd9791]

also for your U shaped mold... do you pour in the lower side and it pushes up and out the higher side, or the other way around, the taller side is enough pressure to push up the lower one?

 

[Eruonen]

This is one of the crazier things I’ve seen attempted in recent memory, and I absolutely love it

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

also for your U shaped mold... do you pour in the lower side and it pushes up and out the higher side, or the other way around, the taller side is enough pressure to push up the lower one?

I believe I poured it through the shorter side, I cast the knuckle and main grip together, so that the material could pass into a small reservoir at the bottom to slosh around and then vent air and gases out on either side as it fills. The main grip keeps pressure to properly fill the knuckle piece as the material fills and balances itself out. The runners help keep enough material in to fill the casts as it cools so nothing contracts on itself too much. All the connecting angled channels help vent any gases further. It's one of the rare instance my perspicacity paid off and netted very clean casts.

You're so humble about your abilities. This alone blows me out of the water. Orthographically planning this and managing to cast, machine and fit these pieces together is pretty sick my friend.

There's a great many things about this I'd wish turned out better but it's all a learning experience, Tom. Not that I'd ever try and make this again, but I definitely will apply lessons learned here towards the the next thing.

very interested to hear what you've learned about the weight of the thing, the pommel looks heavier than the front.

It's because it is! I should get a photo of it, but it perfectly balances on my finger almost exactly at the halfway point on the main grip at the moment. With all the parts screwed together on it, it'd be very interesting to see how much it changes.

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

I must be more motivated than I realize about making progress on this thing, because I've spent the last two days just incrementally working my way through the tasks that need to be done to prep this for final assembly.

I spent 7 hours yesterday slowly milling the channel for the prong that runs the length of the hilt and into the knuckle. My mini-mill only has so much torque and I can only shave so much at a time (fractions of millimeters). It was just slow, steady, and incredibly tedious passes the whole of the hilt to get it milled out. I wish it looked a little better in some spots because there's still places where it chattered, causing the hilt to slightly veer from true during feeding. I did my best to correct and clean it up where I could, but there are still places that have odd little chunks taken out of them and areas that are off cut. It bugs me but not enough to go and bother doing it all over again.

Today, I spent most of the time in the shop cleaning up and adding further details on the hilt, adding the recess for the "hump" bit that connects across the front of the curved foregrip and into the emitter.

With the channel now cut, I went about and adjusted my template for the "prong" to fit. This will be used to cut the part from 1/4" aluminium plate.

I didn't take a photo but I have added perforated holes into the plate to cut out the piece. Again, I don't have many sophisticated tools and much of what I do is by hand, and this was the simplest way I could figure to get this done with a mill and hacksaw. There's going to much hacking and grinding in my near future, it seems.

It's times like these I really wish I had a bandsaw.

 

[thd9791]

It looks like a lot of the edge damage happened when the profile of the hilt changed, honestly the channel looks fantastic anyway. Do the ends if the channels stay rounded?

Your long patient work paid off

 

[Reel Fakes]

Outstanding!

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

It looks like a lot of the edge damage happened when the profile of the hilt changed, honestly the channel looks fantastic anyway. Do the ends if the channels stay rounded?

I think that was one of the reasons. I know for a fact one reason is because the tolerances of my saddle are little loose and the resistance from cutting pushes the table. I'm constantly having to correct the saddle and crossfeed whenever I'm cutting and it's always by eye. Cutting things length-wise is always an issue because of this. The channel for the prong was no exception unfortunately.

I square the round ends as best as I can but it's only so much I can do; they're square where I start the cut but the inside has rounded corners. The channel for the trigger will have to stay rounded sadly as I don't have any bits long enough to get that square.

In any case, incredible progress was made today as I threw caution to the wind and put my portable bandsaw in my vice and used chocks and clamps to ghetto-rig a standing bandsaw. I quickly got frustrated trying to cut the piece out with a hacksaw and jewelers saw; there just needed to be a better and faster way to do this. I had toyed with the idea of using my portable bandsaw for this before, but I didn't want to lose a finger, so I disregarded it. After dicking about for 45 minutes making little progress doing it with hand saws, I said it was worth the risk.

I set the speed to the lowest setting, fully extended the guard to use as a table, and slowly cut out the pattern from the perforated alu plate.

A little bit of time at the grinding wheel to refine the shape and I was left with this:

I still need to work on refining the shape further (I'll use the hand grinder for the extra bit of excess) but this project made some really rapid progress recently and it's only spurring me on to push to the end. Once I've finessed the shape, I think I'll start drilling and tapping the necessary holes for screws to move from dry fitting the parts to actually securing the pieces together to form the whole hilt. Then it'll be the brass bits and then final cleaning, polishing, and assembly (trigger and rubber grips will be made and added last).

It's starting to get exciting around these parts!

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

This project has made leaps and bounds towards the finish line in the interim since the last post. It took a lot less time and effort to get it done than I had anticipated, but I have made the final pieces (barring the trigger), added the screw holes to fully mount and assemble the pieces together, and have mounted and assembled the pommel and knuckle joint. I even went ahead and polished the pommel block and pommel.
With the exception of the rubber parts, the knuckle and pommel section is completed; I will not be touching these things further. I'm going for the AotC hero look rather than RotS, even though there are more and better pictures of the RotS hero.

The pommel/knuckle section comprise of six parts in total, held together by 8 grub screws (two screws per hole). I originally planned on using a nail as a pin to secure the block to the knuckle but nails aren't perfectly straight and the variance caused a gap I didn't like to form, so I replaced the pin with two (four) m3 grub screws. An m4 locks the block, and some epoxy inside the knuckle makes sure everything is snug. An M5 (two) grub screw locks the counterweight pommel to the block and the brass pin covers the hole. The two brass pins in the knuckle are just decorative and are held in place with CA glue. The groove detail on the pommel, that extends from the pin recess, was completely carved and filed by hand.

As you can see in some of the photos, this piece is extremely wonky and bears some less-than-stellar machining. Anything that wasn't going to be seen or scrutinized up close was reason enough for me to not put in the extra effort. The sculpt for the knuckle was already uneven, made worse by sand casting, and then further exacerbated by revisions on the mill to have it seat as flush and even as possible to the main grip section. I suppose it could be remedied to hide better but I just didn't bother. It's not really "Star Wars" if there isn't a bit of wonkiness, I feel. There's also the detail of the "square corners for rounded edges" discrepancy that the pommel and pommel block has. I originally planned on rounding the block's edges when the pommel was mostly finished and fitted together beforehand, but while sanding (and especially during polishing), it became really tiresome trying to get into the hard angles of the piece, so I just decided to take it apart and do the finishing work on them separately and join them together later. It's not a very clean finish but, whatever---This wasn't ever going to be 100% accurate anyway. It certainly made sanding and polishing the thing a lot faster and easier. I left minor imperfections, such as some scratches and scuff marks, on the the polished pieces. Again, it's not really "Star Wars" if it's pristine.

You'll also take note of the two emitter "humps" I made: one in bronze, the other in brass. I had initially thought about using the bronze for some color variation to the hilt but the color turned out to be too warm for my liking, so I went back to the brass, which had a much sharper contrast and was something I should've just stuck to doing in the first place.

I'm currently working on sanding and polishing the prong, but this is where the hilt stands, for the most part, at the moment. The last things that need doing are cleaning and polishing the rest of the hilt and prong, making the trigger, and cutting the grips. Then, this thing is done. I suppose the next few posts will be just that.

I'm already planning on making a stand not just for this, but for the collection of the PT baddie hilts I seem to have completed. After this, I'll be revising my Palpy Hero hilt now that there are better references for it.

 

[thd9791]

This is amazing! Little threaded rod pieces between each section?

The polishing you’ve done, like on the pommel, is fantastic.

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

This is amazing! Little threaded rod pieces between each section?

The polishing you’ve done, like on the pommel, is fantastic.

Yes! It's unfortunate that I couldn't accurately get the foregrip screwed on lower like the real prop. It's the biggest gripe I have with this out of all the quibbles I have.

I've got most of the thing polished up now and won't have to worry about it again. I think my next investment is into new PPE; I'm sure I've inhaled enough metal dust through the paper masks I have to ensure my future bouts with POD.

All's left to do now is make the trigger and add the grips and this project will be complete.

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

I just wanted to update this thread because this hilt is so close to completion! It's been that way for a time now. I've polished all the parts, assembled and locked it together, added the grips and the covertec wheel, fixed a few things; the only thing that's keeping it from crossing the finish line is the trigger. I thought about using acrylic but I just couldn't find any in 8mm thick sheets. The closest I've bought is 1/4 inch and it just looks too thin for my needs. I decided to just make one the traditional way of molding and casting. I've been working on getting good trigger made but I've been experimenting with how much colorant to use to how much hardener. I'm using new materials so it's all learning the properties of this particular material.

I was planning to use my stock of Crystal Clear 202 but I think it may have gone off, my initial tests with it turned out gummy so I think I'm gonna have to toss that out. I'm using polyester resin, bought for an upcoming attempt at Sanakara stones, and it's just been testing various mixes of color to hardener and figuring out what gives the best results. I've made 4-5 test molds to try it out before committing on one trigger to finally finish this project. The next post should be glamor shots of the thing!