I'm compiling a lot of off-topic stuff from other threads here. I despise how lightsabers and their construction are presented as working. It's largely West End Games' fault, and their lack of reading comprehension. At the time, there was a policy in the new material coming out in what we now call the Star Wars Renaissance that new additions couldn't contradict existing works. So all of WEG's errors got propegated for years. The two biggest are the Five Mile Fallacy (a horrible misinterpretation of the size of a Super Star Destroyer) and the Jewel Fallacy (that lightsabers are optical phenomena focused through a jewel -- later a crystal -- in its guts).
More and more garbage has gotten piled on top of that, from red lightsabers being due to corrupting the crystals to them being able to be used to fly. But it all started with them misunderstanding Alan Dean Foster's description of the early lightsabers before the flash handles got brought in. The "jewel-like controls" were on the outside of the saber, on the dull reverse of a polished disc the blade sprang from. They somehow read it as the jewels being on the inside of the 'saber. And no new works could conflict with that.
I have no problem with a kyber crystal being necessary to amplify the power coming from the power cell, but the blade is not light, and it is not focused through the crystal. The rest of that scene in I, Jedi where Corran makes his inadvertently with a fake gem in the focusing array (*shudder*) has the lightsaber failing when the blade slags the fake gem. That's what would happen to any crystal the blade was actually in contact with. It doesn't work.
I'm okay with some of the rituals, that Jedi can wield a lightsaber better if they're attuned to it, that they can submerge themselves in the Force to achieve machine-like precision in aligning components... But not that it's essential for a Jedi to be able to use one at all. A custom, individual, master-crafted 'saber makes a lot of sense, but there are machine-made ones out there, too -- maybe not mass-produced, but enough to supply all the Younglings and have spares on hand for Jedi who lose them (lightsabers, not hands).
More later. In other news, Coca-Cola is canon.
