We know that between Tunesia and Mechanismo/Chronicles books the OB1 lightsaber has been altered ... we also know that originally most of the military parts belonged to and were rented from Bapty. So what if after production all those parts were returned, except for the G R A F L E X Clamp, Derwent Balance Pipe, TI Exactra bubblestrip and AS Handwheel (that was also kept in loose pieces with the D-ring still attached) which were nicely archived and kept in a box marked Lucasfilm Ltd./ILM lightsaber parts, perhaps even together with Luke's many G R A F L E X flashguns and Vader's MPP's, who knows.
So when it turned out that STAR WARS became a huge success ... and Harry Harrison was making his Mechanismo SF book ©1978 ... Lucasfilm needed new shots from OB1's iconic lightsaber as well as the Stormtrooper blaster made, as to supply Harry with his request to publish them in his new book along with a cut out illustration made by Brian Lewis :
. . . so they took the lightsaber parts from the Lucasfilm Archive and went back to Bapty with the request to having put back together OB1's lightsaber for a photoshoot.
Now you have to understand that Bapty's has a huge arsenal of weapons and parts ... among them probably many different WW1 grenades ... and let's for argument's sake pretend you just stepped into Bapty's workshop with your OB1 parts in your precious box ... and then found some of the grenades presented in this next picture :
. . . yet nicely displayed on the table together with some boosters, which were taken off the ANM2 machine guns once more. Given some tools, screws, bolts and nuts . . . which grenade would you pick, without having examined and scrutinized the movie-prop as much as we have, and perhaps with just a sloppy continuity picture, or even the one with Alec Guiness in the desert celebrating his birthday, lying next to you?
Of course ... most of us would pick the dark one from the top shelf ... which is possibly what the person from Bapty or Lucasfilm did having seen above picture . . . but what if the actual grenade used for production . . . was the third from the bottom row . . . yes, that ugly beige coloured grenade with the awkward bottom, which by then had been probably restored back to it's original colour by removing the black lightsaber props paintjob, immaculately done by the guys from Bapty . . . now have a look at the top ring . . . it's slightly different and . . . the cuts on the body run further up into the first ring. It has less of a slope and a smooth windvane as opposed to the No.3MkI on the top shelf.
Here's a wonderful close-up of that same beige grenade ... now in black and white and the same position as in my comparison picture :
Did these events actually happen as described? . . . Or is my imagination getting the better of me? It's very plausible if you'd ask me :wacko
Chaim