Hey guys!
I'd figure I'd drop one more thing here, since I don't really feel the need to do a whole thread about the topic. Also, since it's a custom idea that I had not seen here before, I thought it might find a good home here.
This is going to be a long read, but it's a new saber blade experiment that I tested and felt I should share here with those that build custom sabers!
So as we all know, star style LED's are the popular thing to do for sabers. To me, this just isn't bright enough, and I've also had some awful experiences with certain LED's that claim to be the brightest and what not. Not only that, but the color mixing that I needed just wasn't there, and I couldn't get it for the life of me. The idea of string blades interests me because it is way brighter and looks very nice, but colored LED's just aren't bright enough. White LED's are extremely bright, but I couldn't figure out what to use for a string blade other than the blue or green LED's that are made.
Finally, I ran into some luck when I was watching one of my friends put a film over his fog lights on his truck to change the color to more of an blue-ish tint. It hit me all of a sudden, as I realized that this film may be exactly what I need to make my string blades with the color that I wanted! I went to my computer and found a supplier on ebay that sells headlight film! I purchased plenty of super bright white LEDs and went to work!
So the film comes in 48" sheets, and I bought both green and yellow to test out. At $5 a sheet, I don't mind buying two colors! I cut small sections off so that I can roll it easily and put it inside of a TCCS trans white show blade. I have some pretty thick foam diffuser that I got from a salvaged FX saber, so it blocks a good amount of the light unfortunately, but I said screw it and used it anyways, because these suckers are bright!
Like I said, it's bright! You can't really look at them without the diffuser over them, honestly.
Here's the small sections of film that I cut. They are rolled pretty thick, so I may test out thinner ones as well!
So before I go any further, I want to show you guys what I have here with my current situation. Many of you probably don't follow my threads, but I have been progressing with a yellow saber from SWTOR. I have a star LED for it, but the color is too orange, and in real life is not all that bright.
Here it is when I was experimenting with the color mixing with amber and green:
Don't mind the lack of sheets!! It was laundry day when I took this photo back in February! Or early March, I can't remember!
It looks good on camera, but in real life is extremely disappointing. The green was ok, but the yellow/amber just wasn't what I wanted.
Now back to the present day, I threw the green film in with the diffused LEDs.
I know what you're thinking, probably something along the lines of, "But Austin, they look the same in the pictures, since photography adds the white core effect due to the light and the camera only being able to do this and that..." Yes, that's true! However, I can tell you that this saber is immensely bright on its own, and with the diffuser around the LEDs creates a similar core effect as it would in the camera. It's amazing that the film is translucent enough to give the edge of the saber that color that it needs, while the white is strong enough to boost through and still appear to have a core effect. It also lights up my whole room with just 20 of them over that spans maybe 4 inches long.
Here's the yellow film now...
This is perfect! It's exactly the right color, and is intense to look at in the dark. Even with my lights on in my room this sucker is mean looking.
So far, this has been a huge success, and I'm really happy with the results that I got. I want to get a white star LED now and give it a shot with this film, but that will come at a later time.
I hope you guys like this, and maybe it'll help someone out who's looking for answers like I was yet.
Thanks!