Refurbished Icons Luke ANH into TFA Hilt

W

wGraves

Well-Known Member
Picked this up last month, Originally it was an Icons Luke ANH Hilt made back in 1996. I received the hilt in need of repair. The "Bulb Holder" was sprung out and needed removed and redone, It was missing pins and most of the grips. Had rust spots on the hilt body, the "Glass Eye" had been pushed down into the hilt. I received the hilt only, no display case or paperwork.

The Day I received it, I tore it down to see the damage.
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I decided that since this Lightsaber originally only had 6 grips and that the body had holes for the original grips it wasn't really possible to make it an accurate A New Hope saber. So moving forward with the restoration it would become a TFA hilt. I purchased the Kobold D ring and TFA circuit board from Roy at wannawanga.com (Excellent Parts Btw!) and New Graflex Pins from thecustomsabershop.com, along with some grips from a previous build. Here is how it came out all done and polished up...

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I Know some people may be upset that I did this with such a "Historical" piece. But everything I did is easily reversible and the fact is, I believe the saber is more accurate this way than it was back in 1996. And for the amount of money I have wrapped up into it I couldn't get a more accurate saber at this price.

Well I hope everyone enjoyed this little write up.
 
It looks fantastic. The Luke was their most accurate saber. Of course alot of discoveries have been made in the saber world since they did these, but the flash replica base of the saber was darn good IMHO. Once those shiny plastic grips are off, it becomes even more evident.
 
Really great work! Makes perfect sense for a "historical" piece to be carried forward and continue its legacy. (y)thumbsup
 
Anyone have any good display ideas for this? I don't have the original display case. Any ideas would be great!

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HI wGraves,

how did you fixed up the bulb holder? my Graflex has the same issue too, and I have been trying to come up with a way to fix it

any suggestions would be much appreciated :)
 
Since you're replicating the TFA Graflex the bottom tube stamping (or lack of) won't matter either as they covered it up for the film. A piece of aluminum/chrome tape and you should be good to go.

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kirova said:
HI wGraves,

how did you fixed up the bulb holder? my Graflex has the same issue too, and I have been trying to come up with a way to fix it

any suggestions would be much appreciated :)
Click to expand...
What I ended up doing was removing the bent piece of metal completely and easily bending it a little at a time until it was back to its proper shape. I then used some super strength clear super glue to reattach it. Once it was reattached, I put a tab of super glue in the " hinge" of the bunny ears and held it in place until it tried to prevent them from flipping around. On a real graflex it may be easier to remove the entire clamp holder assembly by taking out the rivet. But with the way above I haven't noticed any problems and it's strong as can be.

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wGraves said:
What I ended up doing was removing the bent piece of metal completely and easily bending it a little at a time until it was back to its proper shape. I then used some super strength clear super glue to reattach it. Once it was reattached, I put a tab of super glue in the " hinge" of the bunny ears and held it in place until it tried to prevent them from flipping around.
Click to expand...

thx for that, I have been considering using super/epoxy glue as well, but didn't want to proceed as just in case if it didn't work, it will be a real pain to clean up the mess :)

I won't be removing the rivet, as I am not sure if I can find a matching one to replace it, anyway, on the real Graflex, the metal rod part of the emitter is actually spring loaded and can be pushed back (not sure if Icons has that feature or not), I have found that a size C batter will fit perfectly into the ring, so I will probably glue the bunny ears and the ring together, then use a battery to hold it in place for a day or two.

thx again
 
grenater said:
Oh that's coop never heard of those! @wGraves

Icons was what started me on the whole props journey, I came across the Luke saber in a shop back in the late 90s/early 2000s and I thought "OMG I GOTTA HAVE THAT!!!!!", a closer look at the price tag shows they wanted $1000 for it! I was like "WTF.......?" so I started researching about it on the internet, since then it has forever dominated my destiny :)

so this thread definitely brought back some memories for me :)
Click to expand...
 
How accurate is it? It's so cool seeing something you've never even heard about til now! And ya I know the feeling matty matt sadly I'm still in that stage lol

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