Despite my Lightsaber collection being in storage for over 8 years and not on display, I’ve pulled a few out a few times to show my youngest son and he started bugging me to make him a ‘real’ lightsaber.
I gathered a bunch of parts and we worked out a design but the pandemic hit and I stalled out on the build.
Then I remembered many years ago I had been gifted a few old style (early/mid 2000s) Obi ANH parts: a pommel, a gear, and an emitter. I had a spare clamp spacer and an old Parks replica clamp, so all I needed was the grenade and I could build him a ‘real’ saber pretty quickly from parts that didn’t need as much custom fabrication.
Since my spare parts were all the older, inaccurate style I put out a WTB for an older/inaccurate aluminum grenade replica and luckily an RPF’er had an old Parks grenade that I purchased for a fair price. Unfortunately the grenade is a little undersized of a real grenade and the upper windvane neck was part of the included emitter (the emitter/upper neck screwed into the grenade body) so I had to fabricate a new upper neck from a bronze bushing to be able to use my emitter. I also had to drill out the new grenade to allow the threaded rod to go through.
I knew these parts were not going to make an Obi saber anywhere near accurate to ANH but my son is 14 and I knew he would just be happy with a metal saber that wasn’t a plastic toy.
To my surprise when I started assembling the parts it was around the time the Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi show started and I got my first looks at his new saber in the show. EP3 saber body with an EP4 emitter and heavy weathering. I realized the saber I was making looked like a ‘bridge’ saber, with 1 foot in EP3 and 1 foot in EP4.
I stripped and painted the gear and grenade with 2 coats of Tamiya flat black, weathered some of the edges to silver, and sprayed 2 coats of Tamiya clear flat, then added topical weathering. The emitter and clamp were cleaned and re-weathered with PermaBlue and AluminumBlack and given 2 coats of Tamiya clear flat. With everything ready to go I assembled all the parts with roll pins to stop rotation and added an EP3 clamp card and used threadlocker to keep it all nice and tight.
A few before/after pics:
I gathered a bunch of parts and we worked out a design but the pandemic hit and I stalled out on the build.
Then I remembered many years ago I had been gifted a few old style (early/mid 2000s) Obi ANH parts: a pommel, a gear, and an emitter. I had a spare clamp spacer and an old Parks replica clamp, so all I needed was the grenade and I could build him a ‘real’ saber pretty quickly from parts that didn’t need as much custom fabrication.
Since my spare parts were all the older, inaccurate style I put out a WTB for an older/inaccurate aluminum grenade replica and luckily an RPF’er had an old Parks grenade that I purchased for a fair price. Unfortunately the grenade is a little undersized of a real grenade and the upper windvane neck was part of the included emitter (the emitter/upper neck screwed into the grenade body) so I had to fabricate a new upper neck from a bronze bushing to be able to use my emitter. I also had to drill out the new grenade to allow the threaded rod to go through.
I knew these parts were not going to make an Obi saber anywhere near accurate to ANH but my son is 14 and I knew he would just be happy with a metal saber that wasn’t a plastic toy.
To my surprise when I started assembling the parts it was around the time the Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi show started and I got my first looks at his new saber in the show. EP3 saber body with an EP4 emitter and heavy weathering. I realized the saber I was making looked like a ‘bridge’ saber, with 1 foot in EP3 and 1 foot in EP4.
I stripped and painted the gear and grenade with 2 coats of Tamiya flat black, weathered some of the edges to silver, and sprayed 2 coats of Tamiya clear flat, then added topical weathering. The emitter and clamp were cleaned and re-weathered with PermaBlue and AluminumBlack and given 2 coats of Tamiya clear flat. With everything ready to go I assembled all the parts with roll pins to stop rotation and added an EP3 clamp card and used threadlocker to keep it all nice and tight.
A few before/after pics:
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