Hi guys, figure its time for an update in this thread. I'm going to re-purpose this thread to be for my general saber projects... Rather than making a new one every time I think of something. I'll try to keep keep things organized and I've updated the first post, keeping the spirit of linking reference pics/timeline/info/etc for each project I end up doing.
The machined V3 itself is at a halt at the moment, mainly because its going to be pretty expensive to machine with all of the parts involved, and I'm hesitant to spend money on something that I'm not sure will even
assemble properly due to tolerances and how I modeled it. Fortunately my brother is a mechanical engineer and he said he'd take a look at it 'sometime' lol. The good news is the model is about 99% done. Only thing I need to fix is redo the pommel attachment joint, and that should be pretty easy. This is what the breakdown of parts looks like:
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Anyhow..... I started on *another* project a few months ago and all the parts finally showed up at my doorstep so I rushed to put it together this past weekend. (quite a few things need tweaking still, but I figured its worth a share). An
A New Hope-style Barbican/Vader Stunt saber! My first physical saber build in quite some time. I really dig the look of this saber for some reason, especially the weird looking square shroud. (Guess I got a thing for weird stunts) I went for a look that it might have walked off the set of ANH – grips are all randomly angled/not exactly straight, etc. Assuming that the ANH grips got replaced for ESB of course. The tube is actually a bit too long... things to work on but I probably won't fix it anytime soon if I'm being honest.
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(wire for fun where it would come out of)
The endcap was machined by a friend, and is based on the severed hand resin cast and the few screenshots of it in ESB with what seems to be an open cap, so I'd wager the plug was added post production to match an MPP. Maybe.
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OK so the shroud wall is a little too thin and I don't know how I let that slip under the radar. I had it CNCed by one of the shops I was potentially looking at to machine the V3. The dimensions and tolerances were great, the surface finish could have been better. Then again I left it as 'as-machined finish' next time I'll be sure to specify... Now this is the fun part – as I was getting ready to paint it and it fell before my eyes and bounced on concrete

and that's where the dent came from. Coulda tried to fix it but I decided the real one is beat up enough that a few scratches are fine, so I took back some paint afterwards to match. I may try to fix it eventually and redo the paint job
Some more points of note: I bet the real one would have used a toggle switch similar to the Obi stunts as this lamp switch (which took almost 2 months to get here from the UK!) has a fairly large diameter to mount it, and the real hole for the switch is a lot smaller, but I decided to use the lamp switch anyways. Also thanks to Roy/Wannawanga for the extra bit of T-Track for the MPP release greeblie! Really ties the whole thing together, with that sort of 'this is a clearly fake MPP' look.
By actually having this in hand though, I can see why the Vader stunts were finicky. Since there weren't any screws in ANH that we can see, the shroud would be pretty loose on the body and I've managed to tighten it down with a shim, but I imagine if you're swinging this around with a blade you'd have to hold onto it the way Prowse does to keep the shroud from flying off.
Here's a bit of peak at what else I've been working on:
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If anyone wants the STLs for the Vader stuff to print for your own Barbican let me know and I'll throw it in a drive. I plan on doing the energizer saber parts next, then maybe DV6. If I can get some accurate measurements for Dooku.. Might keep doing that too and fix all the mistakes.
One final thought - anyone know what happened to the Vader severed hand and resin saber? It was in Bob Burns collection as of 2008, and in the ANH Vader Stunt thread, Mr Alinger posted a pic that can't be found anywhere else, so I'd guess the propstore has it?