Kylo Ren Lightsaber: Korbanth "Crossguard" Heavily Modified to Screen Accurate

Hey Guys,

Thought it was about time to document all the work that went into making my korbanth hilt as accurate as I possibly could.

First a little history for those who don't know the original hilt:
This prop was designed based on the stunt "3d printed" likely rubber cast lightsaber prop we all saw at Celebration, it was manufactured and shipped out and in my hands before the movie was even released. Awesome to go into the movie already owning a prop from it, but as a result (and to make the hilt a reasonable price) there were several major inaccuracies when compared to the hero prop:

• The size: It's noticeably thinner.
• The 'cutout' battle damage: Completely absent, also missing the external red wire.
• The quillons (side blades): Angled strangely, not perpendicular or symmetrical.
• The pommel detail: Like the stunt prop, completely absent and lacking the holes all the way through.
• The end cap: Present but a completely different design and not red.
• Missing a few other small details.

For the purposes of electronics, the hilt was hollow all the way through with a 7/8ths diameter. Plecter Labs' Crystal Focus 8 was released allowing for delayed quillon ignition, unfortunately it would not fit within a 7/8ths diameter.

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So, I had my work cut out for me

I began by purchasing a bottle of Birchwood Casey Aluminum Black and darkened the hilt more. The finish that had already been applied had largely been polished off, which looked nice and weathered, but didn't quite fit the images I'd seen.

Then I straightened the quillons. I found a steel tube roughly the same diameter as the inside of the quillons, put the hilt in a wooden vice and slowly hammered them into place. As they weren't symmetrically crooked I had to bend one further than the other. This caused a small crack which was disappointing but not that much of a problem.



I then began painting the heat stain. This is something I ended up adding to throughout the project, ending up with a lot of layers and variation which ultimately gave a pleasingly realistic look. I polished the ends back to clean aluminium and used watered down and dry brushed layers of gold, copper, metallic purple, metallic blue etc. acrylic paints.



Next on the list was the cutaway battle damaged part where you can see some of the internal components. This is a detail I really like on the real prop so there was no way I was leaving it off mine

I set up a mini projector and projected an orthographic view of a modified (to fit the korbanth dimensions) version of guabe's incredible 3d printable design directly onto the hilt and outlined where it should be.



I then spent many hours dremeling away material and trying to create a lip to give the illusion of depth. The aluminium here is pretty thick so I ended up being able to go quite a long way in, I somehow made myself go very slowly and carefully so as not to break through or lose the correct line



It was fairly difficult to photograph how much material was gone so I inserted a dime sized 5p piece to help with perspective

I painted the pommel with Tamiya clear red but ultimately didn't use it with my 3d printed chassis.



Next up was a base for the cutaway detail:



It was made from plasticard and required a lot of trial and error to fit in the oddly shaped hole and still give the look of an octagonal shape inside.

I based my detail on guabe's model and drew myself a scaled flat layout of each of the three panels.



I build up the detail using plasticard (everything white) some scrap Games Workshop bits (silver and grey) and some thin brass rod. The 'vent' part was made from layers of overlapping plasticard and painted with a series of washes, dry brush coats, more washes etc. Like the side emitters this part was added to all the way through the project and was one of the last things finished. Here it is before I started concentrating on other areas.



Leaving the vent detail for now I learned that Khal from KR Sabers lived nearby and assisted me by boring out the filled in pommel section.



This left room for all the necessary detail.

[The saber has been finished for some time but I will be splitting this build log into a few different posts]

At this point I started my search for the right size accurate translucent red wire. It was a long, expensive and frustrating search as I had to order a few different pieces that turned out to be wildly off:



Ultimately though I found what I thought would be the perfect wire. I had to order 100 meters of it but luckily it was perfect. (I have been selling this wire to other Kylo saber builders so PM me if there's anyone that still needs some :cool)



Another thing I had to change was the belt clip. I bought some sheet brass and spent a few hours cutting it down with a dremel, power sander and drill to the same size as the silver one that came with the hilt. Having spent so long making it clean and perfect it was a shame to weather it, but I did so with various tools and Birchwood Casey Aluminum Black. The screws were, for now, the ones originally included with the hilt.



Next was one of several stages to get a more screen accurate finish with paint. For this experiment I just used a rattle can version of Tamiya "Smoke" and then polished some of it away to get a better surface and to let some of the underlying colour show through:



With the new finish, having found the right wire I needed to make the clips. After several failed experiments with 3d printing them I just took some appropriately sized aluminium tube and cut it flat on the back and angled the sides. Here is the new finish and clips temporarily held in place with Blu-Tack.



Around this time I was working on multiple parts at once so it's difficult to organise chronologically

The top section was drilled and tapped for the missing bolts:



and Khal helped by drilling some long holes from the bottom through to the quillons for the side blade LEDs.

I began to start getting the detail in the pommel together. First I tried taking the piece from the cheap Disney version to see if it would be worth cutting that saber part up and using it, but it wasn't really the appropriate size and because that section on the korbanth is longer than it should be the part was too short. I realised I'd be much better off designing somethiing from scratch and making it the whole chassis for the electronics, battery, speaker etc. Having just recently built my 3d printer I was having trouble with the consistency and reliability of printing and probably printed some form of this part more than 50 times.



I ordered some small, single Rebel LEDs for the side blades and cut them down with my dremel:



Given access to Khal's lathe I managed to turn down the included lens to the correct diameter and was able to test light the side blade.



Khal was able to bore out more of the bottom to just about an inch and we learned that the bottom section of the lightsaber was actually two sections threaded together. A spacer was made and the two halves were bonded together with epoxy and also held in place with the belt clip screws.

At some point I was finally able to print a usable finished chassis with pommel detail and begin the process of refining the design to fit. The 20mm bass speaker was soldered and held in place, pointing back up into the hilt, by the red pommel piece, also positioning the rest of the chassis correctly in the hilt. A test fit and painted version is shown here:



The recharge port is hidden in the pommel detail section, which is hollow for resonance and the sound holes hidden by the rest of the hilt.

Given access to Khal's milling machine I milled out the existing button looking things on the front of the hilt as I wanted to make them into buttons. Here are the buttons visible. I was also dry brushing some copper onto the hilt at this point to begin the accurate weathering and had printed scaled versions of guabe's unstable blades in a 'clear' filament.



I 3d printed and painted some buttons to match the originals and fit perfectly into the milled holes:



At this point I've pretty much completely lost the timeline of what was done when so I'll just throw out some detail pictures in my next post and explain them

Extremely satisfying quillon LED test:


3d printed blade plugs:


At some point the flat section on the back was milled further and a detail piece was added, conveniently covering the LED module retention screw. Here is the piece before paint etc:


Extreme close up of the rainbow heat stain on the quillons:


Last coat of Tamiya Smoke over copper dry brushed weathering. Some of this was polished back and some areas received additional weathering afterwards:


So at this point I'm going to attempt to list all of the modifications and everything I added to make this saber, partly to get it all written down for future reference

• Straightened quillons
• Painted heat stain on quillons
• Battle damaged 'cutout' detail section on the top
• Accurate translucent red wire
• Wire clips
• 3 accurate screws in main body
• 'Clover' screw added to back of main body
• Bored out bottom section for electronics and detail 'windows'
• Added detail in pommel
• Accurate red pommel
• Accurate brass belt clip
• Accurate screws in belt clip
• Blade retention screws for all 3 blades
• 3d printed translucent 'unstable' blades
• Accurate blade plugs for all 3 blades
• Complete accurate repaint and weathering
• Single Rebel LED with lens in each quillon
• Tri Cree XP E2 red/red/white for main blade
• 3d printed chassis
• Crystal Focus v8 with delayed quillon ignition
• Inverted 20mm speaker hidden in pommel
• 1.3mm recharge port hidden in pommel detail
• 18650 2600mAh li-ion battery

Wow. Simply wow. Your hard work and attention to detail really paid off. Congrats on the beautiful build.

Here is the finished saber in all it's glory



and for those interested, here's a video of it's various features in action

Your saber tops the version from Prop Shop any day.

Holy moly, dude you went ham on that thing. Looks amazing!


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Woah, that's an amazing job.

very impressive:thumbsup

*mind blown* this is easily the best korbanth cross guard install I have seen. Hands down fantastic work.

The amount of work you put into this is commendable! The results speak for themselves. Excellent work! Also, I may hit you up about some of that red wire if it's still available.