I really like the use of the textured tape to accent the saber. The yellow bubble strip is definitely different, and I've always loved the Canon clamps.
Well I can't totally take credit for the idea...
And another Canonsaber is constructed. :thumbsup I like it!
Seth, you have to tell us about the extension used. :cool
I enjoying seeing the different techniques being done to make these 3 cell length.
Okay... it's a tale to be told. I do not have access to a machine shop. The other Y's I've seen on here seem to be lucky enough to be in the hands of people with shops who can engineer a lower half.
So my first idea was to bribe you, Scott!
BUT YOU KNOW HOW THAT TURNED OUT.
My second idea, I spotted these flash extensions on ebay. They were super cheap, and made for doing exactly what I needed.
I painted one with wrinkle paint and figured if I did metallic grips it would balance out. But, A-- that didn't match my story plan. And more importantly, B-- the short one was too short, and the long one was too long. Plus they were basically thin plastic tubes with tripod mounts/bolts at either end. They had zero weight to them, I could have cut the long one down, but then I'd still be stuck on figuring out how to cap it. So they did not work.
They'll come in handy at some point-- the long one plus one of those Heiland or Graflex syncro minis would make for the perfect length.
Plan three-- I snatched up this Nicca 2 cell:
I got it because it came with a Heiland minibox clamp, which I really wanted to give to my 94 special as it was there originally. The Nicca also has a very Graflex like glass eye / bulb on top that you can't see in this pic. I figured it would be a cool Greeblie to set into something.
I figured I'd strip down the rest for parts. As I was doing so, I realized two things. One-- that yellow bronze finish was actually a plastic coating that peeled off to reveal sweet untouched vintage stainless steel. Second, the top was screwed on, and that it, and the body were both female threads, and that there was a male/male piece connecting them:
You can see the Nicca has a nice capped bottom, so I thought, If I screwed this back into the top, then took off the Canon's cap, the internal clearance might just be right.
And it was-- so for a moment I rejoiced. But you can see how small that ring is. Cut it in half when you consider it's threaded into the Nicca. That gave me about 1/8th" of space inside the Canon. So I'd basically have to screw a very tiny hole through the very thick canon clamp and body and be able to reach these things. I've never tapped anything, much less something with that level of precision.
So that wasn't going to work. But I knew the Nicca was my lower half.
Plan four was to do something similar to what I ended up doing with my warhorse saber-- finding some sort of "core" I could feed into both the Nicca and Canon. They both had battery cases inside, but again-- it would require a lot of screw tapping. The workhorse was janky on purpose, so if I had to make more holes it in, cool-- but the Canon is so pretty I really didn't want to potentially ruin it.
Plan five is when it finally came together. I had the Nicca and Canon next to each other on my table. As you can see from the pic above, both of them are threaded on the bottom for a 1/4 tripod screw. I suddenly realized if I got a male to male 1/4" bolt, I could marry them end to end. The top of the Nicca would become the bottom. I'd still have to figure out an endcap solution, but I was willing to tackle that problem in trade for having a lower body.
I ordered the screw-- then realized I didn't even need one. The Nicca bottom mount was bore through the entire endcap. Anyone who has bought a flashgun of ebay has a stash of 1/4 knobs because most of the time they come with the camera bracket, which generally has a couple on it. I like to put them on endcaps for detail-- so I found a longer one, put it on the INSIDE of the Nicca endcap, threaded it in, and screwed that assembly into the bottom of the Canon.
So left to right-- you have the Canon, the Canon endcap, the Nicca endcap, then a bracket 1/4 knob screwed up into both.
Screw on the Nicca body, and I was almost there.
The final piece, an endcap. I found a second Nicca online and grabbed it. They aren't that much, so another glass eye greeblie, another Heiland shorty box clamp, and an endcap.
But then I realized... I had ended up with a second Y (and an X, but that's another story). And I knew that I could do the same trick, so I couldn't steal that endcap just yet, otherwise I'd be in this constant state of buying one for an extra endcap, then using it for a body, then needing an endcap.
So I had an option-- but I was still hoping for an alternate.
What I ended up with came out of pure chance. My kid has been watching me do this-- and loves his Minicam saber-- but he wanted to make one of his own. I love the kid-- but I'm not going to sacrifice a flashgun for a 10 year old to go hog wild on. I'd end up over-directing him, he'd get mad, it wouldn't be fun.
I had this other idea to make a saber based off a maglite, to recreate my first flashlight lightsaber as a kid with modern skills and parts. But I offered up the maglite to the kid-- and he thought it was way cooler than a flash gun, so win/win. While he was working i noticed the maglite endcap inches away from the canon. I knew the maglite was a d-cell, so it looked like the right size.
But what were the odds that a Maglite from two years ago was going to be threaded the same as some random camera flash from the 50s?
Turns out-- the odds were very good. The color was off, and the kid needed it, but the next day at the hardware story I grabbed a maglite and... voila!
A perfect fit!
And that was just the lower body! I had many adventures with the upper half too.