2021 Update
I originally started this thread back in 2018, its main goal was to prove that some photos which we thought at the time was the v2 was actually the v3. Years have gone by, with new discoveries being made almost every month. There is a lot of new data, discoveries and photos that have come out which has changed most of what this thread talks about in 2018/19. So i decided to update this first page with a cheat sheet so anyone viewing this for the first time isn't completely lost... because a lot changes quick and if you skip a page you can get lost easily..
This is the V2
which was used in ESB as a dueling stunt, then later the blade cut off and hung on luke belt
This is the V3
Which later gets a make over for going on tour, and today looks like the below photos
V3 in right hand, Hero in left
This is NOT the v3 but the newly discovered "ware house stunt". Before 2021 we were under the impression these were the V3, but with new videos and photos we can say this is a new stunt, which we refer to as "the warehouse stunt" as of right now
This is the Death Saber
I hope this cheat sheet helps
I originally started this thread back in 2018, its main goal was to prove that some photos which we thought at the time was the v2 was actually the v3. Years have gone by, with new discoveries being made almost every month. There is a lot of new data, discoveries and photos that have come out which has changed most of what this thread talks about in 2018/19. So i decided to update this first page with a cheat sheet so anyone viewing this for the first time isn't completely lost... because a lot changes quick and if you skip a page you can get lost easily..
This is the V2
which was used in ESB as a dueling stunt, then later the blade cut off and hung on luke belt
This is the V3
Which later gets a make over for going on tour, and today looks like the below photos
V3 in right hand, Hero in left
This is NOT the v3 but the newly discovered "ware house stunt". Before 2021 we were under the impression these were the V3, but with new videos and photos we can say this is a new stunt, which we refer to as "the warehouse stunt" as of right now
This is the Death Saber
I hope this cheat sheet helps
Ok gang, so you all know me. I'm a huge V2 nut. and even though the V3 doesnt take up the same space in my heart as the V2, i feel like the V2 is never complete with out its twin sister....
Before we start none of this i can confirm true, this is all my theory from information gathered here, so take all of it with a grain of salt. its just my personal belief
so over the years ive studied the V2 the most, and dabbled into the V3 hoping to find more answers to the V2. I've found a few things, but nothing until we got that famously HUGE high rez photo of the resin stunt R2 popper saber. which we now can positively confirm is the V3 herself!
So before we go into detail lets cover what we already know
The V2 and V3 were built as a stunt saber for Alex Guinness. They copied the design from his hero saber. Thanks to eBay, the wooden masters showed up, and gave us some more insight on the construction of this thing
wooden masters used to make molds, then the V2 and V3 were cast in aluminum, and cleaned up on the lathe to install electric motor to spin a dueling blade.
as we all know professional prop makers dont have a lot of time. they are asked a task and need it done by a dead line. this task was to create 2 spinning blade stunt lightsabers for guinness.
we can see the V2 was given much more attention when being machined. the V2 has a much smoother appearance, there are no seam lines visible (as of yet). and rings are cut much deeper, and the rings themselves are much thinner. the V2 was equipped with the motor, and actually worked.
the v3 on the other hand... no so much.. she has much fatter ring section, huge nasty seam line, the booster is wonky and way out of whack. the pommel was placed in the lathe chuck not centered and quickly lathed making the pommel recess uneven, pommel cubes are all over the place in spacing and size... she's a real mess...
for years we have referred to this photo as the V2.
but this always bothered me... it didnt have the clamp... and before we start arguing about that, we have some more photos for back up. check out the way Prowse has his hands positioned. this man is huge, with huge hands. i shook them myself, but yet even with his monster size mitts, hes got a tight grip all the way around the saber..
i have stated this in the past, about there not being a clamp on this saber trying to prove my point. but i was always told the first photo (black and white) the graflex clamp had silver tape on it, and the box was facing the other way
i still was not convinced because of the huge difference in dimension from the booster to clamp section..
now with this famous ESB behind the scenes video emerging, we have some great video of this same exact saber... and she isn't wearing her clamp...
why am I so obsessed with this clamp less V2?..... Because i believe, and have believe before this video came out, that this whole time what we are looking at is the red headed step child herself... the V3....
now if you dont believe me, dont continue reading anymore and just call me a crackpot... because this is where it really gets far fetched...
So the V2 was quickly finished, it had a blade attached, and a motor to spin it. Brandon has stated the motor was held in with set screws hidden under the clamp (clue 1: we dont see holes/screws in the black and white photo where the clamp is suppose to be..)
with other lightsaber stunts needed to be made, since they already had 1 working stunt for guinness they rushed onto the next lightsaber wether its Lukes, or Vaders. The prop department ran out of time, and the V3 was never finished, it was painted, blade attached, but never got her clamp spinning motor ect.... why no motor i say? the pommel was drilled with a hole for the wires to come out, but the booster never got a hole drilled for a switch..., the clamp area doesnt have any visible holes/screws holding the motor in place..
we know Vaders stunt was never finished either, the emitter was just a large huge square shape of metal, their main concern was getting the electric motors to turn the blades to pull off the practical effect. because at this time rotoscoping wasn't a thought and they needed these blades to spin to pull off the practical effect
So at the time of ANH i believe the V3 was not finish, and sat somewhere in a box in storage.
Once ESB turned around, they began faster and more intense fight scenes. the graflex was very uncomfortable to duel with. Hamill said this himself, so they wrapped the graflex in gaffers tape. this one can be seen on screen when fighting vader. even better shots of luke in the dark side cave on dagobah. hamill even injured his thumb pretty bad.. taking a hit from the opposing blade and getting it slammed up against the control box..
So while they were practicing with the cameras off, back stage and on set they broke out the V3 and V2 as dueling sabers. since they had a more comfortable feel.. (fun fact in the carbonite chamber watch the tip of vaders lightsaber, it bouncing back and forth between MPP and V2) and when it came time for film to roll, they grabbed the more uncomfortable.. but accurate sabers (unless you bob anderson who thinks he can use what ever he wants)
(clue 2
So lets go back and talk about the Clampless V2. i find it very hard to believe the prop department would, take the blade off, take the emitter off, remove the clamp. let them duel with it, then, put the clamp back on, lock the emitter back on, install the blade back on... why not just pick up this V2 looking saber with out a clamp and use that?(the v3)
do you own Anakin starkillers first generation of V2's? scott himself said its built exactly like the original V2 in 3 pieces.. you know what kind of PITA it is to change the clamp on it.. 3mm set screws which can get lost easy on a work bench... let alone on a giant set... i dont believe it
here is the V2 with its clamp on, in the hands of bob anderson on set..
waaaay too much of a pain in the "rear" to dissemble the saber and re assemble it...
if we go by everything else in the star wars prop world... when the prop department takes something apart, most of the time.. if not all the time it never goes back together right... or they dont even bother fixing it... blasters, sabers, R2D2's.... hell they even put chest box's upside down...
I find it very very hard to believe they would take the clamp off and back on... if they took it off it would have most likely gotten lost, and it wouldn't have showed back up here with Anderson using it..
grab a drink, im not done babbling...
Now comes time for ROTJ... the first scene we know that was filmed was the deleted sandstorm scene. they throw a Graflex on Lukes belt and thats when Hamill brings up " um George luke lost this lightsaber in the last film"
George tasked the prop department to go get a random lightsaber to use as a belt hanger that isn't a graflex. they opened up the drawer with the stunts, grabbed the v2, hacked the blade off of it, threw a circuit card in, and a cone knob.. slammed in a mystery chunk and threw it to george. DONE!
there is actually a good possibility the cone knob and mystery chunk were not even installed at this time... check out the photo below. i believe i can see the hole where the mystery chunk even goes...
cone knob and mystery chunk not yet installed?
so now that they have a belt hanger, we need a dueling saber, lucky enough there is a stunt saber that looks exactly like this new belt hanger!(the v3) we will dress it up like the belt hanger (V2) and then take some casts of it, since Luke is going to be jumping and all over place. and we need R2 to launch one to him later on...
they dressed up the V3 with a circuit card and graflex clamp scavenged from a box of graflex stunts they were never going to use again because luke lost it in the pervious film. some believe it to the off the graflex vader is using in rotj. i dont think so, but its a good possibility this clamp came off a ESB graflex stunt. it seems like they drilled holes into the flash and used decent size flat head hex screws to hold a cylinder object inside the graflex, that held the actual rod. (just like vaders DV6 saber)
the clamp was put on the V3, the blade was removed and they cast the V3 for all the stunts. maybe it is at this time the blade plug/nipple was damaged? lost? i dont know.. but it seems dueling in ROTJ the V3 does NOT have its V2 like nipple in it... it could be the light... but i dont know. sure does look like the casts have the nipple.. BUT that could also be pour spouts from the cast.. which they used to make look like the nipple was still there... we know the R2 launch saber doesnt have a nipple..
V3 cast stunt, you can clearly see the circle where the hole in the clamp is, and its nipple/pour spout
Is the nipple in the emitter still or not?
we know the next scene was one of the last filmed, so maybe this explains why the blade is missing from the V3 in the photo, since no more dueling was on the agenda maybe they took it off for easy storage? or for it to be put on display? there was some plan...
so to make a extremely long story short...
Halliwax V3 Theory:
The V3 was never really finished in ANH, it was painted to match the V2, but the machining was really rushed and over looked. it never had a electric motor installed, and was just used in the back ground as a extra stunt dueling saber, until they quickly needed a new lightsaber for luke in rotj. the V2 was randomly picked as the belt hanger, and the v3 was then dressed up to match it with clamp, circuit board and used to make casts for resin stunts, and then used as the dueling saber.
LET THE DEBATE BEGIN!!
so over the years ive studied the V2 the most, and dabbled into the V3 hoping to find more answers to the V2. I've found a few things, but nothing until we got that famously HUGE high rez photo of the resin stunt R2 popper saber. which we now can positively confirm is the V3 herself!
So before we go into detail lets cover what we already know
The V2 and V3 were built as a stunt saber for Alex Guinness. They copied the design from his hero saber. Thanks to eBay, the wooden masters showed up, and gave us some more insight on the construction of this thing
wooden masters used to make molds, then the V2 and V3 were cast in aluminum, and cleaned up on the lathe to install electric motor to spin a dueling blade.
as we all know professional prop makers dont have a lot of time. they are asked a task and need it done by a dead line. this task was to create 2 spinning blade stunt lightsabers for guinness.
we can see the V2 was given much more attention when being machined. the V2 has a much smoother appearance, there are no seam lines visible (as of yet). and rings are cut much deeper, and the rings themselves are much thinner. the V2 was equipped with the motor, and actually worked.
the v3 on the other hand... no so much.. she has much fatter ring section, huge nasty seam line, the booster is wonky and way out of whack. the pommel was placed in the lathe chuck not centered and quickly lathed making the pommel recess uneven, pommel cubes are all over the place in spacing and size... she's a real mess...
for years we have referred to this photo as the V2.
but this always bothered me... it didnt have the clamp... and before we start arguing about that, we have some more photos for back up. check out the way Prowse has his hands positioned. this man is huge, with huge hands. i shook them myself, but yet even with his monster size mitts, hes got a tight grip all the way around the saber..
i have stated this in the past, about there not being a clamp on this saber trying to prove my point. but i was always told the first photo (black and white) the graflex clamp had silver tape on it, and the box was facing the other way
i still was not convinced because of the huge difference in dimension from the booster to clamp section..
now with this famous ESB behind the scenes video emerging, we have some great video of this same exact saber... and she isn't wearing her clamp...
why am I so obsessed with this clamp less V2?..... Because i believe, and have believe before this video came out, that this whole time what we are looking at is the red headed step child herself... the V3....
now if you dont believe me, dont continue reading anymore and just call me a crackpot... because this is where it really gets far fetched...
So the V2 was quickly finished, it had a blade attached, and a motor to spin it. Brandon has stated the motor was held in with set screws hidden under the clamp (clue 1: we dont see holes/screws in the black and white photo where the clamp is suppose to be..)
with other lightsaber stunts needed to be made, since they already had 1 working stunt for guinness they rushed onto the next lightsaber wether its Lukes, or Vaders. The prop department ran out of time, and the V3 was never finished, it was painted, blade attached, but never got her clamp spinning motor ect.... why no motor i say? the pommel was drilled with a hole for the wires to come out, but the booster never got a hole drilled for a switch..., the clamp area doesnt have any visible holes/screws holding the motor in place..
we know Vaders stunt was never finished either, the emitter was just a large huge square shape of metal, their main concern was getting the electric motors to turn the blades to pull off the practical effect. because at this time rotoscoping wasn't a thought and they needed these blades to spin to pull off the practical effect
So at the time of ANH i believe the V3 was not finish, and sat somewhere in a box in storage.
Once ESB turned around, they began faster and more intense fight scenes. the graflex was very uncomfortable to duel with. Hamill said this himself, so they wrapped the graflex in gaffers tape. this one can be seen on screen when fighting vader. even better shots of luke in the dark side cave on dagobah. hamill even injured his thumb pretty bad.. taking a hit from the opposing blade and getting it slammed up against the control box..
So while they were practicing with the cameras off, back stage and on set they broke out the V3 and V2 as dueling sabers. since they had a more comfortable feel.. (fun fact in the carbonite chamber watch the tip of vaders lightsaber, it bouncing back and forth between MPP and V2) and when it came time for film to roll, they grabbed the more uncomfortable.. but accurate sabers (unless you bob anderson who thinks he can use what ever he wants)
(clue 2
So lets go back and talk about the Clampless V2. i find it very hard to believe the prop department would, take the blade off, take the emitter off, remove the clamp. let them duel with it, then, put the clamp back on, lock the emitter back on, install the blade back on... why not just pick up this V2 looking saber with out a clamp and use that?(the v3)do you own Anakin starkillers first generation of V2's? scott himself said its built exactly like the original V2 in 3 pieces.. you know what kind of PITA it is to change the clamp on it.. 3mm set screws which can get lost easy on a work bench... let alone on a giant set... i dont believe it
here is the V2 with its clamp on, in the hands of bob anderson on set..
waaaay too much of a pain in the "rear" to dissemble the saber and re assemble it...
if we go by everything else in the star wars prop world... when the prop department takes something apart, most of the time.. if not all the time it never goes back together right... or they dont even bother fixing it... blasters, sabers, R2D2's.... hell they even put chest box's upside down...
I find it very very hard to believe they would take the clamp off and back on... if they took it off it would have most likely gotten lost, and it wouldn't have showed back up here with Anderson using it..
grab a drink, im not done babbling...
Now comes time for ROTJ... the first scene we know that was filmed was the deleted sandstorm scene. they throw a Graflex on Lukes belt and thats when Hamill brings up " um George luke lost this lightsaber in the last film"
George tasked the prop department to go get a random lightsaber to use as a belt hanger that isn't a graflex. they opened up the drawer with the stunts, grabbed the v2, hacked the blade off of it, threw a circuit card in, and a cone knob.. slammed in a mystery chunk and threw it to george. DONE!
there is actually a good possibility the cone knob and mystery chunk were not even installed at this time... check out the photo below. i believe i can see the hole where the mystery chunk even goes...
cone knob and mystery chunk not yet installed?
so now that they have a belt hanger, we need a dueling saber, lucky enough there is a stunt saber that looks exactly like this new belt hanger!(the v3) we will dress it up like the belt hanger (V2) and then take some casts of it, since Luke is going to be jumping and all over place. and we need R2 to launch one to him later on...
they dressed up the V3 with a circuit card and graflex clamp scavenged from a box of graflex stunts they were never going to use again because luke lost it in the pervious film. some believe it to the off the graflex vader is using in rotj. i dont think so, but its a good possibility this clamp came off a ESB graflex stunt. it seems like they drilled holes into the flash and used decent size flat head hex screws to hold a cylinder object inside the graflex, that held the actual rod. (just like vaders DV6 saber)
the clamp was put on the V3, the blade was removed and they cast the V3 for all the stunts. maybe it is at this time the blade plug/nipple was damaged? lost? i dont know.. but it seems dueling in ROTJ the V3 does NOT have its V2 like nipple in it... it could be the light... but i dont know. sure does look like the casts have the nipple.. BUT that could also be pour spouts from the cast.. which they used to make look like the nipple was still there... we know the R2 launch saber doesnt have a nipple..
V3 cast stunt, you can clearly see the circle where the hole in the clamp is, and its nipple/pour spout
Is the nipple in the emitter still or not?
we know the next scene was one of the last filmed, so maybe this explains why the blade is missing from the V3 in the photo, since no more dueling was on the agenda maybe they took it off for easy storage? or for it to be put on display? there was some plan...
so to make a extremely long story short...
Halliwax V3 Theory:
The V3 was never really finished in ANH, it was painted to match the V2, but the machining was really rushed and over looked. it never had a electric motor installed, and was just used in the back ground as a extra stunt dueling saber, until they quickly needed a new lightsaber for luke in rotj. the V2 was randomly picked as the belt hanger, and the v3 was then dressed up to match it with clamp, circuit board and used to make casts for resin stunts, and then used as the dueling saber.
LET THE DEBATE BEGIN!!
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