Scott D
Sr Member
Yep, I agree. It should have been just one.
The only scratch built part is the Graflex style hood over the emitter. Everything else came out of my greeblie stash.
Yep, I made that part. Pics below.
I'm betting you're asking about the shroud part. It's the remains of a Graflite reflector mount. Pics of it before & after below.
You have a good eye. This saber is longer than usual. (12 inches) I totally understand what you mean when you say "visually balanced." There's more to this than just building.
Straight out of the box from Ebay. *Yawn*
I wanted to do away with the "2 step" part of endcap, so it got sawed off at the transistion. The piece still in the vice is the scrap part. The end cap got sanded down and I then had to come up with something to fill the hole. A pic of that solution is in one of the last pictures below.
After disassembly, it got wet-sanded with 320 grit, followed by 400 grit. The original plan was to have an even black finish when I hit it with the AB. I knocked the shine down with a scotchbrite pad after this picture was made.
The Graflite reflector mount. This was something already in my greeblie stash.
I took a Dremel tool to it and did a lot of hand filing to smooth out the new edges. The plan was to make something that looked kinda like Vader's ROTJ shroud.
I resisted the usual "Bad Guy Lightsaber With Sharp Points" look and made an emitter hood that looked like Luke's ANH/ESB/TFA saber. I don't think it's ever been done before with a Graflite custom. (Has it?)
Chop, chop, chop. Then a dremel tool with a sanding drum. (Not pictured)
The grips are my usual stainless steel ones and I made these while I was making some for Seth. I don't like drilling all of the holes because it takes 3 passes with three different bit sizes, while keeping them oiled to keep the bits cool. I bought some more expensive bits this time around and I gotta say, the task went smoother this time.
There's two "alternate" emitters in this picture that were not used.
A jumble of parts and all of the holes in the flash tube drilled.
I did the AB work outside. This stuff puts off a bad smell.
I heated up the grips, clamp and emitter with a torch and dunked them in used engine oil.
By the way, I have no idea what the emitter originally was. It's made out of steel and it's been in my stash for years. I wish I had a dozen more. It has a 1/2 coarse thread stud on the backside, so I bored out a washer to fit over the stud, add a nut/lockwasher and bada-bing, instant emitter. I liked how the color of it matched the clamp and grips. A nice balance of colors throughout the saber.
(Almost) Everything before final assembly. The hole in the endcap is filled in with a vintage knurled camera knob, the square-ended stud that came with it and a bezel left over from my recent CanonSaber project It centered the endcap perfectly when tightened. Always save those leftover parts, you never know when they might be used.
The Vader ROTJ style bolts are run through pieces of black rubber with holes punched through them, backed up with 1/4" thread bolts. After trying a couple different methods, this was my best idea and it helped to center the tapered bolt heads, too.
After looking at it assembled, I was annoyed with the amount of button head allen head screws. I know it was "stylistically designed to be that way and I couldn't undo that, but I could diminish the effects of it."
(GL said that, too)
I had these little plastic...well, I don't know what they are. I decided to make "transistors" out of them. I made some 8/32 threads with the die and hooray, two less allen screws on the saber. I had to paint them black and that was a bummer because I haven't used any paint in the whole project so far.
The plastic parts were all bead blasted all got a "wash" with a drop of Testors "rust" paint mixed in with some Testors brush cleaner.
The circuit board was a last minute addition. I had a freebie Parks/Korbanth circuit board on it's way to me (from a fellow FXSabers . com forum member) while this project was underway and by the time it got here, the whole design had changed, so I cooked a Magnavox Odyssey2 video game cartridge circuit board with my torch, cut it to size and popped it in there. Now I have to explain why I'm not using the one he gave me to use on this saber. :$
I hope this helps answer everyone's questions. Actual build time for this one was from January 27th to February 18th. It was a lot of work.
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