The wooden ANH Graflex

[uglyguitarguy]

After completing another custom guitar build last week, I have some free time in the shop (between making end-grain cutting boards and upgrading my shop space). I decided (after watching a YouTube video) that since I made my ANH Graflex with Goth3D guts last year, I'd make a fun, stand-alone wooden Graflex prop from scrap I have in the pile.

I started off gluing some maple and oak I had lying around. Dimensionally, I'm going for as accurate as I can make it, but I'm sure I'll have to fudge it here and there.

Strangely enough, for all of my years of woodworking, I've never wood-turned on my Shopsmith before. Seemed like a pretty low-risk project to learn on, and it went pretty well. Got it within a few hundredths of an inch of my Graflex measurements.

I drilled a hole into the emitter end of my fancy new dowel with a forstner bit, and made a template guide from my Graflx to get a reasonably accurate shape to cut out. Then cut, sanded and lined up my Graflex for comparison so far.

So far, so good! I'll post more pics as I make progress. Next up will be the clamp box...

 

[thd9791]

holy crow this is cool!

what does the tool look like that lets you drill such a big hole through the end, is it a bit stuck to one end of the lathe?

I did the same thing on the "pipe" stunt, carving that weird Graflex emitter, almost made the same cuts you did, nice work smoothing out the curves. I'm so excited to see how this progresses

 

[uglyguitarguy]

holy crow this is cool!

what does the tool look like that lets you drill such a big hole through the end, is it a bit stuck to one end of the lathe?

I did the same thing on the "pipe" stunt, carving that weird Graflex emitter, almost made the same cuts you did, nice work smoothing out the curves. I'm so excited to see how this progresses

Thanks!

It's just a 1.25" forstner bit, drilled straight down into the center of the turned rod on my drill press, leaving it with about an 1/8" ring all the way around to cut down to shape.

 

[thd9791]

Hot damn, I learned something new today. Thank you!

 

[Halliwax]

being a carpenter i have so much respect for this, cant wait to see more!

 

[Jaffa007]

Luvin this idea!
Wood is so easy to work with....mostly
Looking forward to following your progress [emoji41][emoji1417]

 

[mrwax]

Super cool! I'm excited to see how you tackle everything, so many unique problems could arise hah.

 

[JFB64]

I've been working wood for years both professionally and for fun. That looks really good. Looking forward to seeing it progress.

 

[The Ninja]

This is a very very cool concept

 

[uglyguitarguy]

I was originally going to have the bubble strip simply be some really cool quilted (bubbly) maple scrap that I have, but once I looked around my scrap I decided to go for a "real" bubble strip. Took a couple attempts but I finally decided to go with birch "bubbles" (from some hole plugs that I had in the shop). Getting tiny 5/16" domes evenly down to 1/4" was not the most fun I've had in my life, but worked out well, so I glued them into a maple block. White Oak wings to match the rest of the clamp, and we just need some clean-up sanding before getting this attached to the body.

Pretty busy schedule this week, so I'll get back to it again at the weekend!

 

[JoeG]

This is a really cool interpretation of a classic prop. Really enjoying this build. Great job!

 

[JFB64]

Neat.

 

[Halliwax]

Wow!

 

[Sabs]

Did you ever finish this project?

 

[uglyguitarguy]

Did you ever finish this project?

I fell off the RPF for a bit, so thanks for your patient on the VERY delayed response. I DID in fact finish the wooden Graflex. It ended in a bit of a rush, so it's not QUITE the quality that i'd hoped for, but it was still a super fun project and a great little addition to my humble little collection. The body is made of a mix of maple and oak, grips are made of wenge (it was super sketchy to cut those to shape on my table saw), and button is purple heart. It was all scrap wood from my shop. I even found a glow-in-the-dark paint for the "blade" dowel (which is held in by magnets). If I get the time, I might have a go at the Obi Wan V1 belt hanger some day...

I didn't take a ton of progress pics, bit here's some of the end result! Cheers,

 

[scarf man]

Neat!

 

[MasterJedi]

Wow!! This is amazing, great job!

 

[BudaFett]

That's pretty awesome!

 

[thd9791]

Beautiful work! I'm interested in your blade rig. What's inside your blade? What does your socket look like?

I tried to DIY my own lightsaber blades for a few years and quickly realized how important material down in the handle is lol

 

[GreyGuard38]

I've always wanted to see more wooden lightsabers, like Gungi (Wookie Padawan) used.