EDIT: * aren't swears but flan-ge is now considered a rude word.
ALLEY-- I think I'm leaning in the same direction as you... hadn't noticed that Ewok image before!
Dann-- it was just a theory that the sandstorm scene somehow wore off the paint, but that scene was shot on a stage. The sand would have been talc and silica. They would never blow actual coarse sand at actors or around cameras.
Honestly, paint AND tape makes sense to me. If you put tape over spraypaint on metal and then take it off, you're going to get what the boosters look like now.
halliwax Why would they put gaffer's tape on the stunt in the first place? Cause the pommel was falling off! In that pic where I think it's tape, the pommel is wonky. I think they were just quick-fixing it to stay in place.
In the Ewok village, you can still see a band of paint going around the emitter too. From Elstree to Yuma, this thing took some damage.
Booster wouldn't have had a problem falling out either, I'll elaborate further in the post but briefly, though with one grub screw, the way it was machined, it would take immense effort to pull it out once secured in place. Wonky it may be when installed, but pulled out by gravity alone with the screw in place? Wouldn't happen.
...V3 is a bit undersized, likely not fully completed. Emitter rotates, but no motor. V2 gets motor and Graflex clamp with long lever.
I think both are painted to relatively match the Obi-Wan hero. Maybe not at the same time or in the exact same way, but painted none the less. This includes black grenades and boosters.
At some point the pommel of the V2 comes loose, so the black booster gets covered with gaffer's tape to help keep the pommel in place.
...
V2 is smaller than the V3, dimensionally. Barring nipple, length would be roughly the same but the V3 is fairly more robust. The V3 is a near raw cast, straight from the sand mold, only just cleaned up on the surface. I wager it was only just sanded and the clamp area and emitter plate were the only parts to get some lathing work. I matched the photos to scale when I was working on my new buck and the difference between buck/raw cast/V3 were minimal.
Results also mimicked reality when lathing the emitters as that weird bevel around the edges illusion was replicated when I was facing the emitter plates. I can't explain why it happens but it just naturally does. There's a photo in the new "Archives" book during the speeder bike chop sequence that shows the V3 had this very detail, too (unless it was just a rigged V2).
I would think the motor sat in the booster part of the saber. The pommel/sink knob was affixed with grub screws for "easy maintenance". Perhaps it was a motor with a transmission attached to it on top, so the whole motor/transmission construct stuck in the booster and maybe in the clamp area as well.
I don't know if you went as far as hollowing out your stunt cast but while working with mine, the furthest I could machine was part way into the grenade area before the cast was bucking and kicking against the lathe tool as it tapered and moved further off center.
And considering how heavy Hamill remembers these things to be, I'm of a mind from experience and some corroboration that the upper half of the hilts were near solid. Considering how the pommels were made, (speculation on my part but evidence backs this up) but I believe they were taken from other spare casts and machined with a portion of the bottom of the booster to make the flange that would be used to secure into the booster with a grub screw. The motor essentially sits on top of the pommel's flange with enough cavity space for whatever method the production used to secure the dueling rod to the motor, in just the cavity hollowed out for the motor (Brandon also specifies that the innards of the V2 has a chamber to house the gag motor; it's not completely hollow).
Poopapapapalps Found a very good candidate for a motor, about the size of a D battery that could slide right into the clamp/booster area. No idea how that would attach to a steel rod, because I'm mechanically dumb
I am striving for period accuracy as best as I can to reproduce the results and, considering everything up until now, like everything else with these Stunts, I don't think it was a very sophisticated process. It may be as simple as a hole in the bottom of the dueling rod that slid over the axle/shaft stemming out of the top of the motor and they latched it together with another grub screw. Similarly, they could've just used some sorta custom fitting, also held together with grub screws, to attach both dueling rod and motor shaft together.