I want to thank Halliwax for letting me bounce ideas off him - something came up while I was inspecting V3 images and comparing them to casts (the thread on the wooden buck). The photos I'm using are from that g drive link shared in the "working on a V3" thread, and some other publicly available things, so let me know if I have to take them down or anything. I don't know who took them.
The only (mostly) definitive match for the V3 is here. I say V3 as the present day construction at least, and it's existence before that.
I say this because all the metal stunts were basically the same. The weird things done to each are what sets them a part. On today's V3 for example that would be a lack of nipple, two exact set screw/holes, rough surface emitter, etc. They're some of the only discerning details and they weren't even around back then. We can actually see these above. So we can date the V3's current construction to pick-ups at the end of Jedi.
After searching V3 shots for shapes that link it to the wooden buck (just for confirmation and maybe to help explain how it was made, like we've been arguing about over there) I found vertical lines in the lower black neck. Like, the wood grain lines you can see on the buck itself. Cool, so I looked closer.... and something hit me. The paint job matches, but the clean-up and finishing work does not. I know the paint may be so recent that it's the 1993 paint job, but it got me thinking about people cleaning up hilts.
Hear me out - we keep finding that the simpler answers turn out to be true, or that the answer was staring us in the face the whole time. The Barbican, even though it looked like touring sabers, was original and it even had the MPP clamp, bubbles and T track right in front of us. The ROTJ Vader saber was a basterdized Graflex stunt. The V2 was a basterdized Obi Wan stunt, not too many multiples floating around and Lucasfilm still has a lot more **** than I had realized.
The V3 is supposed to be another heavily used prop that they kept. Where are the other emitter set-screw holes if the big 5mm grub screw was added later to hold it together as a "hilt"? Or, on the contrary, where is that big 5mm grub screw in shots from the throne room and Endor.. or even practice? It's been bugging me and I know some of you as well. We've already argued about it on here. Something isn't adding up. So I looked closer at the V3, pulling back and trying to literally look at it like I'd never seen it before. Plainly, objectively observing it. The first noticeable trait is the emitter. We thought it was tape, it's metal flashing, and it's very noticeable.
What model maker would file the body and pommel smooth and leave the emitter the way it was. Especially the neck,
why finish most of it and leave something an inch away unfinished?
Also, we don't really notice this rough flashing in old shots. I know there's gaffer tape in a lot of them, but the old Alec shots don't show a mangled emitter (when this was possibly cleaned for use). So if it was rough in ANH, how about ESB? ROTJ? Would someone on SW, with the behavior that we see, specifically not clean a whole hilt? I'm not so sure. I feel like we'd see it.. especially if we can see layers of gaffer tape, costume pieces and screw holes.
The plain answer to me is that this is
not a matching set. I believe the current emitter was cut off another cast and installed on this clean one. There is cut damage on one side and not the other.
They all have seam lines, they all start out this way. I think the emitter was a quick repair job, and then the foil tape and paint were for the 1993 exhibit
I'm not sure why the original hilt would have been incomplete. Maybe this was the death saber that had a raw machined emitter on a cast metal body (the two silver colors we see), and after the fx failed, later on, they needed to complete the hilt....maybe they
broke the first emitter and had to repair it without access to a machine shop.....maybe this was a failed attempt at fx and was cobbled together when they needed a second hilt.
I'm not wholly convinced we know which exact pull is used for fighting in the throne room, and which pull is used for practice backstage. The broken emitter thing might make it the V3. The metal pulls all have different dings and proportions. This gets into territory that I have no clues for. I'd love to talk about it though!
