manooga
Well-Known Member
Some weeks ago I started looking for a good ROTJ hero saber. After an exhaustive quest, I decided to buy a Nicksdad's replica. I really liked it when I received it. It's made of aluminum, nice weight, very solid, simply good, but it required some work I never did before. With the help of some of you guys here, I could finally finish it with a satisfactory result. Here it is.
I wanted to get something as similar as possible to the original MOM prop.
This is what I got from Nicksdad.
There were some things I wanted to do. First, the pommel base was flat, so I had to dig a hole in the center of it using a swiss army knife and some screwdrivers.
Of course, I had to cover with masking tape all the parts that were not going to be painted. Oh, and the card from the control box, I just didn't like the brass color, which should be more copper-like, so I covered the black stripes with masking tape as well in order to primer and paint the brass-colored parts (in which I failed, so I had to primer and paint it complete later).
The primer stage got complicated. I originally used a Tamiya primer, but all efforts failed. I had to sand it complete and used car primer (I was going to use Zinc Chromate, but some of you told me not to use that, so I followed your advice). In the end, automotive primer worked pretty good.
I also primered the other parts, including the card for the control box (since first technique failed; I primered it all, painted it all black, and then repeated the masking tape thing with even stripes in order to paint the copper stripes).
The painting job was done, but I had to sand the rings later.
And everything was going out fine
I covered all painted parts with clear semi-gloss spray to protect paint from falling off. The work on the card did work this time.
I glued the acrylic arrows to the control box (actually this was the first thing I did). I wanted it to be like the original prop, so I didn't glued them centered as the idealized replicas, but in the right position as shown in the MOM picture.
So this time I was glad with the result of the whole control box.
I used epoxy to glue the aluminum parts, as suggested by some of you as well so thank you to all those who gave a good advice. This is the end result, of which I'm quite proud. I hope you like it!
I wanted to get something as similar as possible to the original MOM prop.
This is what I got from Nicksdad.
There were some things I wanted to do. First, the pommel base was flat, so I had to dig a hole in the center of it using a swiss army knife and some screwdrivers.
Of course, I had to cover with masking tape all the parts that were not going to be painted. Oh, and the card from the control box, I just didn't like the brass color, which should be more copper-like, so I covered the black stripes with masking tape as well in order to primer and paint the brass-colored parts (in which I failed, so I had to primer and paint it complete later).
The primer stage got complicated. I originally used a Tamiya primer, but all efforts failed. I had to sand it complete and used car primer (I was going to use Zinc Chromate, but some of you told me not to use that, so I followed your advice). In the end, automotive primer worked pretty good.
I also primered the other parts, including the card for the control box (since first technique failed; I primered it all, painted it all black, and then repeated the masking tape thing with even stripes in order to paint the copper stripes).
The painting job was done, but I had to sand the rings later.
And everything was going out fine
I covered all painted parts with clear semi-gloss spray to protect paint from falling off. The work on the card did work this time.
I glued the acrylic arrows to the control box (actually this was the first thing I did). I wanted it to be like the original prop, so I didn't glued them centered as the idealized replicas, but in the right position as shown in the MOM picture.
So this time I was glad with the result of the whole control box.
I used epoxy to glue the aluminum parts, as suggested by some of you as well
so thank you to all those who gave a good advice. This is the end result, of which I'm quite proud. I hope you like it!
