Greetings, I'm Seth. In California.
I'm a very long time lurker-- like, back to the super early days. I think it was around a decade ago that I first came around. I'm here mostly for the lightsaber action.
Quick bio-- I was always interested in props and special effects as a kid (thanks to Star Wars of course) so I always took apart my toy blasters and repainted them. Flash forward 30 years, I work in the movie industry in Hollywood (though not in a prop or FX capacity). My job is really creative and awesome, but in the last year or so I started to feel like after my creative hobby finally becoming my dream job, I needed a different outlet for just no-pressure fun.
One day I was looking at a couple of my son's Nerf guns and thought they looked like awesome scifi weapons. A bit of googling and I realized there is an entire community of Nerf modders (cosmetic and performance). A lot of inspiration there, so I started buying used ones up and repainting them as a fun mind-blanking hobby.
After seeing TFA, my son stopped running around the yard with Nerf guns, having replaced them with a Dr. Who sonic screwdriver, but with decidedly lightsaberish mouth noises. So I thrilled him by digging out a box I hadn't opened in at least five or six years. Inside-- a legit graflex lightsaber.
Flashback-- in 1994 I was a photo major in college, and also a Star Wars fan in that space of time where Star Wars was not at the forefront of pop culture. So when I went to photo swapmeets I actually knew what I was looking for when it came to Graflexes. One day I scored. At the time I thought it was a good deal. 20 years later I realize it was an absolute STEAL.
Basically, this guy had a box of a dozen or so old flash guns. One of them was a graflex in pristine shape. I wanted to buy just it-- but he was determined "to get rid of that junk" and was only selling the entire box at once. I begged and pleaded, but he was firm. So I relented and spent all the money I brought with me that day to buy a box of a dozen flashguns...
$25.
I didn't realize I had scored until about a year later when the Star Wars technical journals came out and I realized the three Heilands I had were the basis for Vader's lightsaber. (This was long before the MPP discovery). I had two of the shorter shroud models, and one of the blockier Vader-style ones. What I didn't have was the right box, or calculator bubbles or anything else.
One Heiland and the Graflex were approximated with what I could find in 1994 (I actually tried riveting windshield wipers blades and failed) and for a time they were a prized possession. At a party during grad school some jerk walked off with the Vader Heiland. Some time in the last decade during a move the graflex went in a box and didn't come back out until now.
Since I was a frequent lurker here I knew all the parts had been identified over the years and repros were available-- I just never got around to getting them. So when the graflex came out a couple weeks ago I got some t-track grips and a calculator bubble insert to finally make it mostly ANH screen accurate. (We won't talk about how I, like many other 90s era sabersmiths, have doomed ourselves with a 2 rivet picture hanger D ring on the base... I blame only having VHS stills for guidance).
At any rate, I am back into it. After looking at the custom saber thread I am realizing that my dislike of PT style sabers is not unique to me-- and there are a lot of people making cool unique sabers out of other models of flash guns. So I called up my mom, and thankfully the box full of random flash guns is her basement where I left it 15 years ago. She's mailing them to me and I am stoked to see what's in there that I can get cracking on. (I'm pretty sure there is a Canon Y in there, which would be awesome since thanks to the RPF and TFA that sucker has gone from being worth $5 to $80-100!