About two months ago I began working on building my very first custom lightsaber by purchasing all
the parts for what is known as the emitter, or the end the blade comes out of. If you'd like
to check my video about that out I've linked it in both the video description as well as in the
cards which is popping up right now. In that video I explain how I found a site called MB-Sabers that
designed a chassis that I absolutely love the look of and wanted to build one of my
very own. After making the video about my emitter I purchased some more parts and then waited for
Shapeways to print them and ship them to me. It took a couple of weeks for them to arrive
but now I'm ready to take another step toward getting this thing built.
Now to make my lightsaber as authentic looking as possible
I wanted it to be built out of metal. (singing) Yah! (heavy metal music) Metal!
But at the same time since this is my very first lightsaber build and I don't have
any prior experience working with electronics like what is required to build a lightsaber like this;
I felt it was a good idea to build the battery/sound board compartment out of
plastic this time around to hopefully keep me from frying stuff, including myself.
I of course still want it to look like it's all made of metal (singing) Metal! so that
means I had to try my hand at painting it to look like metal. (singing) Yah! (Heavy Metal Music)
The first thing I did to get started was grab some 220 grit sand paper and started sanding
all my pieces down. Sanding is the thing I've found you spend the most of your time
doing when building a lightsaber like this. I did learn this lesson while building the emitter
but starting in on these parts gave me a nice reminder. Once I thought I had them all sanded
down good I tried fitting them together only to find I needed to do some more sanding and
filing in a few areas but eventually everything fit together nicely and I was able to move on.
To connect the battery housing with the crystal chamber and all the other parts of the lightsaber
you use some threaded brass rods. The rods I'm using came included with the Metal Master Assembly
Kit from the MB-Sabers website. Since this part of the chassis is plastic I was able to just kinda
force the rods through to clear out any extra plastic left behind by the printing process.
Had I gotten the metal one I probably would have had to drill it out sooo... score one
for plastic making things a bit easier. With the threaded rods in position I put a nut
onto the end of each rod and then secured the nut in place with a dab of super glue.
The next step was to peel the plastic off this little piece of clear acrylic. This piece goes
between the battery compartment and the speaker housing and acts as a lens for an indicator LED
located here. Since I'm planning to use an 18650 battery I had to mark for and cut some
notches into this lens to allow the 1mm brass rods to pass thru which are used to hold the
battery and sound board covers in place. I was then ready to start work on the speaker housing
so I got out my sand paper again and sanded the housing down. I then cleaned the debris
out of the speaker cover piece using the tip of a metal file and then used a sanding wheel
on my Dremel to get the outside surface of the speaker cover all nicely smoothed out.
To help hold the speaker housing in the correct position you need to use some of the M1.2 threaded
rod included in the Metal Master Assembly Kit. I first marked and then tapped the holes those rods
needed to go into on the base of the battery compartment using an M1 tap. I did one of the
holes with an M1.2 tap and felt the rod threaded in a little looser than I would have liked
so I chose to use the M1 tap for the remaining holes. If I was doing this into metal I would
definitely have used the M1.2 tap for all the holes, since that's the size of the threaded rods,
but since this was into plastic the M1 worked great to get the rods started and then they
threaded in nice and snug. I then needed to figure out how long to make the rods so I put the speaker
chamber onto the bottom of the battery housing, threaded the rods in one at a time and cut
each of them to length. Again these rods really just hold the speaker compartment
in the correct place. To actually attach it to the battery housing I needed to tap
three screw holes on the inside of the speaker compartment and then thread in three M1.2 screws.
This next step is kind of an optional one but it is included in the instructions on MB-Sabers.com
and that is to cut 12 pieces of 1mm brass rod and glue them into the little notches here on
the speaker housing. In the instructions it says to cut these pieces to 8mm in length
but I just placed the end of a rod into the groove like so and then marked and cut them
with some wire cutters. I then checked to make sure the length was good by placing the
piece into the groove and once I had them all cut I dabbed some super glue in the grooves,
put the rod in place and here is how it looks once I put the speaker cover back on.
The final bit I did for now on the speaker chamber was spread some glue around the bottom edge here
to glue this metal ring into place. I then removed the speaker chamber from the battery housing
and began prepping the battery housing as well as the battery and sound board covers for painting.
I first masked off for the bits I wanted to paint on the battery housing,
grabbed some clear primer and primed everything up.
I then moved on to priming the sound board cover... followed by the battery compartment
cover... Once the primer had dried I moved on to painting and started with the rib details
here on the side of the battery compartment. I then moved on to the top portion which is also
the bottom portion of the crystal chamber. I next painted the battery cover door...
followed by the sound board cover. I put two coats of paint on all the pieces and then let them dry
overnight. The next morning I used an agate burnishing tool on all my painted parts which
smooths out the finish of the paint a bit and it also ended up rubbing a little bit
of the paint off which is a look I was actually going for on this. I want these pieces to look
a bit distressed, like they've been used a lot and have some wear to them. Just for fun here's
a shot of the sound board cover before burnishing it... and here's what it looks like afterward.
Not a huge difference but I definitely like the way it looks after burnishing.
Next on my to do list was to pull all the masking tape off the battery compartment
and then I took my small screw driver and went around to different areas scratching the paint
off in some of the grooves and other spots to give my saber the grungier look I'm wanting
for it. I then took all my painted parts outside and hit them with a couple thin
coats of clear and once everything had dried I was ready to put in this piece;
which is the sound board/battery plate. I then reassembled everything and tried sliding it into
my Graflex hilt to make sure everything fit and as of right now things are looking good.
The next thing I need to do is start working on the crystal chamber, but that's going to have to
wait for another day. Am I making a mistake not going full metal on this? Let me know what you
think in the comments. If you'd like to check out my Emitter video that's right over here... and my
review of the Roman Props Flashgun 8 Graflex Hilt is right down there. Thanks so much for watching;
please do the YouTube things before you head out. They help a lot. Thanks.