So let's put everything together.
The beauty of Luke's lightsaber hilt in A New Hope is it's simplicity, truly an elegant weapon.
The process of adding the accessory pieces is fairly straightforward from here, but there are a couple key things to pay attention to, and some choices that have to be made, especially when it comes to the bubbles. Being the part that most immediately identifies a Graflex as being from ANH era I always start with the bubble strip. It's also not permanent which is nice. Now how exactly is the strip attached to the hilt? is it slid underneath the tabs, or pinched in-between them? Looking at the photos where it shows a side angle, and straight on in the toe pic I think it's safe to say they are slid underneath the tabs, unlike the obi which look a lot more like they're pinched in-between. To trim the strip down for install I get some heavy grit sandpaper and take down the length first, then taking down the height until it just about fits into the tabs, finishing off with some finer grit. I like to go slow here and really shoot for a tight fit. Also, when trimming the length I tend to not care so much about keeping the edges perfectly straight as the movie prop appears to be this way as well.
When it comes time to install the bubbles and tighten everything down the positioning of the clamp lever arises. In any and all reference material I've seen the lever is never fully closed. On previous builds I've always just opened the lever a bit and called it a day. Just recently though going through everything again during the process of this build I noticed in the toe pic that the tip of the lever screw can be seen protruding slightly through the sidebar, leading me to believe that it is threaded in more than would be normal on a Graflex clamp and resulting in the lever not being able to be fully closed. I first tried going one more full turn on the lever screw and that ended up being WAY too tight, so I backed everything out and gave the sidebar with the nut a 180* flip and reinstalled. This ended up leaving a tiny bit of the screw beyond the sidebar and the lever position pictured above.
I need to put a big note here before moving any further because it involves doing permanent and semi permanent additions to my 3-Cell. The bottom portion of a Graflex 3-cell, and 2-Cell, flash can be installed two different directions. Meaning that when inserted into the clamp there are symmetrical tabs in the clamp and corresponding slots in the bottom tube that allow the tube to be installed one direction, and also 180* from that position. Being that there is script printed on the bottom tube it would be wise to pay attention to what the orientation of this script is on the prop, unfortunately there is no clear shot of the ANH hilt to discern this from. Here's where my theory about the ANH hero hilt and the ESB hero hilt being one and the same comes into play. If that were true, more details to come in the ESB build, and if there exists a close up of the bottom of Luke's lightsaber hilt in ESB, I could determine which way to install the bottom of my flash. Luckily we have the great close up of the ESB Graflex in the wampa cave.
So if I'm going to pay attention to which way the script is positioned here I also have to pay attention to what the script actually says. This brings about a modifier to my original list of details to look for when purchasing a flash, and for those keeping track we can see very clearly here a thin lipped bottom tube. The words NEW YORK can be seen printed on the flash in the above picture. This is something found on the earlier models of Graflex flash, accompanied by MADE BY THE FOLMER GRAFLEX CORP, and lacking a patent number. The two 3-Cells I'm using both have the thin lip, made by folmer graflex, new york spelled out, and no patent number.
Now back to which way to orient the bottom tube.
Looking at the wampa picture above if we make the clamp 12:00 it would appear the G in GRAFLEX that runs across the center of the clamp points to about 1:30, and the NEW in new york is at about 10:30 give or take. Now all the Graflex bottom tubes I've seen are different in how the script lines up when installed so it can be tricky finding one that matches perfectly, but at least for the two I'm using for these builds they are nearly identical to one another and when installed and rotated to full lock almost exactly match the wampa screen grab.
With that out of the way I can continue with the install
Installing the grips is simple as there are many resources for templates and spacing. I don't ever use templates though. The grips on the prop weren't perfectly spaced and I try and emulate as best I can from the reference photos. Cutting to length is done custom to each saber to insure the clamp can be removed properly and the ends of the grips are pretty much flush to the end cap. Angle cut the ends, again they're all very close to each other, but not exact, to match the prop. I use little pieces of double stick tape to mock up grip positioning and then mark the end cap with sharpie, remove the grips and clean the flash with alcohol, being careful not to remove the marks on the end cap, rough up the glue channel on the grips with some sandpaper, and proceed with attaching the grips one by one with two part epoxy, I use JB Kwik, and I'll put some rubber bands around everything while the epoxy sets up.
Resulting in this
All that's left to do is the D-ring. Another unknown here. How is the clip attached to the base of the Graflex? Who knows. There isn't even a side profile shot to give any clue as to what type of fastener was used. So a little guess work. I see rivets on Luke's belt, rivets on Luke's ESB Graflex, and rivets, different style, on a Graflex camera case, I think I'll use a rivet. Conveniently one was provided with the D-ring and clip I purchased from Roy. Maybe some day we will get a new photo that makes this clear but I think it will be forever a mystery. Positioning is easy, lots of good reference info here and on other sites. Install directly across from the center of the clamp.
Final Product
The last thing to bring up here is the top tube. There are no modifications to be made but just like the bottom tube it can be installed facing two different directions. In every scene in A Ne Hope it is facing the direction seen in the first two pictures above. In every still shot I've seen, such as the toe pic, it is facing the opposite direction.
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