Show your custom Lightsabers!
- Thread starter GreenCircleCube
- Start date
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- custom highrepublic lightsaber
Since I can never leave well enough alone, I'm constantly updating my props.
Here is the current state of my custom sabers:
Here is the current state of my custom sabers:
A few more pics:
Found parts, spare parts, and scratch-built parts. These have been evolving for years. 
BipeFlyer
Well-Known Member
Very nice weathering job!
AnubisGuard
Master Member
Oh, that looks nice. Parts list? I recognize the Heiland clamp, but that's about it.
There’s part of a Heiland clamp, a WannaWanga Kobold clip, and some old school rubber grips. The textured section is patterned ABS sheet. The main body is part of a small lamp which provides the threaded tube which runs through the entire saber. The bottom is a bearing of some sort from a surplus store, the top section is a piece of machined aluminum from the same store. Everything else is stuff I had in my parts box. Most everything I used was at least slightly modified.
So last year I was FINALLY able to acquire both a Canon Model Y and a Model X. And now just recently I've finally had an opportunity to work on them.
I started with the Model Y first - there was more pulling apart/cutting and tinkering to be done with that one, so I thought I'd get the busy work out of the way before the easy conversion of the Model X.
Of course the first problem to sort was a bottom tube. I picked up a Canon Model B-II flash thinking (hoping) that it would be the same diameter. It was The finish of the B was different than the Y, but I wasn't too worried about that, since most of the tube would be covered in T-tracks anyway - I had envisioned using 7 grips, or maybe even 8, depending upon how they spaced out (I ended up using 8 grips).
The next task was to cut the tube to length. I used a pipe cutter to score a straight line and then followed that score line around and around and around the diameter of the tube with a jeweler's saw. It took a while, since the walls of the tube were surprisingly thick.
I had originally intended to cut out the same kind of slots that the bottom tube of the Model X has, but after discovering how thick the walls of the B tube were I quickly abandoned that idea. Instead, I ground down the square studs on the inside of the clamp so that I could simply slide the bottom tube straight in - no muss, no fuss. There is no reason why I would ever have to take the thing back apart, so I decided that I would secure the bottom tube inside the clamp with a bit of JB Kwik epoxy.
I removed the bulb housing/reflector mount to see what sort of internal "guts" I would have to deal with at the emitter end. I wanted to leave the micro-sync dial on the back of the flash and its internal mounting frame intact, so that didn't leave me any room for an emitter socket. I decided that a shallow emitter face would be my best bet, much like what I ended up with on my DeMornay-Budd saber. I wanted to keep the rim of the bulb housing so I sawed that off with the jeweler's saw and then sanded down the face. Due to an oddity in its design, the hole was slightly off-center - I corrected that by enlarging the hole a tiny bit and it ended up being exactly 1 inch in diameter.
Digging around in my saber parts box I found a model kit wheel that I had intended to use at some point in the past, since it was already painted and ready to go - it measured exactly 1 inch in diameter. What are the odds of THAT?! It was obviously meant to be. However, with the wheel in place, the black plastic rim really looked like a tire.
Clearly the rim needed to be painted...
Much better!
I also picked up a couple Heiland stubby shrouds to use. They were both well-used and pretty beat - after sandblasting the wrinkle paint off, some serious casting flaws were revealed.
That was a bit of a bummer, as I had hoped to leave them with a bare metal sandblasted finish. Instead, I filled the flaws with Bondo and primed & painted them both.
Next I taped off the Canon logo on the clamp with a strip of aluminum tape. I've had a roll of silver mylar tape for years, but it wasn't quite wide enough to cover all of the various text on the clamp. I trimmed down an old slothfurnace card from the parts box and slid that into the slot.
The grips were 5-inch lengths from wannawanga that I trimmed down a bit - turns out Canons are a tad longer than a Graflex. The last step was installing a D-ring from the parts box with a button head socket screw.
And done!
Next up, the Model X...
I started with the Model Y first - there was more pulling apart/cutting and tinkering to be done with that one, so I thought I'd get the busy work out of the way before the easy conversion of the Model X.
Of course the first problem to sort was a bottom tube. I picked up a Canon Model B-II flash thinking (hoping) that it would be the same diameter. It was
The finish of the B was different than the Y, but I wasn't too worried about that, since most of the tube would be covered in T-tracks anyway - I had envisioned using 7 grips, or maybe even 8, depending upon how they spaced out (I ended up using 8 grips).The next task was to cut the tube to length. I used a pipe cutter to score a straight line and then followed that score line around and around and around the diameter of the tube with a jeweler's saw. It took a while, since the walls of the tube were surprisingly thick.
I had originally intended to cut out the same kind of slots that the bottom tube of the Model X has, but after discovering how thick the walls of the B tube were I quickly abandoned that idea. Instead, I ground down the square studs on the inside of the clamp so that I could simply slide the bottom tube straight in - no muss, no fuss. There is no reason why I would ever have to take the thing back apart, so I decided that I would secure the bottom tube inside the clamp with a bit of JB Kwik epoxy.
I removed the bulb housing/reflector mount to see what sort of internal "guts" I would have to deal with at the emitter end. I wanted to leave the micro-sync dial on the back of the flash and its internal mounting frame intact, so that didn't leave me any room for an emitter socket. I decided that a shallow emitter face would be my best bet, much like what I ended up with on my DeMornay-Budd saber. I wanted to keep the rim of the bulb housing so I sawed that off with the jeweler's saw and then sanded down the face. Due to an oddity in its design, the hole was slightly off-center - I corrected that by enlarging the hole a tiny bit and it ended up being exactly 1 inch in diameter.
Digging around in my saber parts box I found a model kit wheel that I had intended to use at some point in the past, since it was already painted and ready to go - it measured exactly 1 inch in diameter. What are the odds of THAT?! It was obviously meant to be. However, with the wheel in place, the black plastic rim really looked like a tire.
Clearly the rim needed to be painted...
Much better!
I also picked up a couple Heiland stubby shrouds to use. They were both well-used and pretty beat - after sandblasting the wrinkle paint off, some serious casting flaws were revealed.
That was a bit of a bummer, as I had hoped to leave them with a bare metal sandblasted finish. Instead, I filled the flaws with Bondo and primed & painted them both.
Next I taped off the Canon logo on the clamp with a strip of aluminum tape. I've had a roll of silver mylar tape for years, but it wasn't quite wide enough to cover all of the various text on the clamp. I trimmed down an old slothfurnace card from the parts box and slid that into the slot.
The grips were 5-inch lengths from wannawanga that I trimmed down a bit - turns out Canons are a tad longer than a Graflex. The last step was installing a D-ring from the parts box with a button head socket screw.
And done!
Next up, the Model X...
I had that conversation with one of the guys at work - "It isn't canon to Star Wars, but it *is* a Canon!"Ridire Firean
Sr Member
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