Hello and welcome to part 5 of my Custom Lightsaber Build Log.
In this video I'm going to be modifying my Roman Props Flashgun 8 replica Graflex hilt
and seeing if my newly assembled MB-Sabers Metal Master chassis will properly fit inside of it.
If you've happened upon this video without seeing parts 1 through 4...
A card for a playlist with all my lightsaber build logs is popping up now in the corner of
your screen and I've also placed a link to it in the video description so you can check them out.
Although the Roman Props Flashgun 8 looks just like a lightsaber hilt
straight out of the Star Wars movies it comes with a replica Graflex bulb socket
in it allowing it to function as a Graflex camera flash which needs to be removed in
order to use it as an FX lightsaber. Also the grips here are riveted on, as they should be,
and the rivets protrude into the interior of the hilt a good 1/8 or an inch or more,
so they're also going to need some work before I can get my Metal Master chassis inside.
I decided to start with the rivets because I wasn't totally sure how to deal with them. I
had an idea but I wasn't sure how or if it would even work. My plan was to grind them down using my
Dremel but a Dremmel doesn't exactly fit inside a Graflex flash tube. Dremel does make an accessory
called the Flex Shaft though which I thought just might reach the rivets and allow me to
grind them down. So I made a trip to my local Home Depot, picked one up and gave it a try.
Thankfully it worked great. As I was grinding on the rivets though the pressure and vibration
of the grinding caused them to push out some; so to combat this I used
some Velcro straps I had laying around to hold the rivets in place nice and tight.
It took me about 30 minutes to grind down all the rivets after which I felt it was a good idea to
also grind down the screws that hold the d-ring to the bottom. The speaker for my lightsaber is
going to mount to the bottom of the chassis and I don't want to have any chance of damaging it so I
removed the screws one at a time and ground them down using the metal cutting wheel on my Dremel
and checked how it fit until the screw sat flush with the interior of the hilt. I then repeated
the process with the other screw making sure it too sat flush with the bottom of the hilt.
Now that the interior of my hilt was free of protrusions
I did a test fit with my chassis to make sure it fit inside and it fit in beautifully.
It was then time to move on to the easy part... removing the flash bulb socket. I started off
by unscrewing the glass eye from the body of the hilt... and then removed the little light
bulb that was inside. I then flipped the hilt around... and unscrewed the red button. Next on
the agenda was to remove the bunny ears and to do that I needed to grab a small Allen wrench.
I'm not sure what size this is exactly because my Allen wrench doesn't have any markings on
it indicating it's size. I think it may be a 1/16 inch because it is slightly larger than the 1.5mm
hex head bit in my iFixIt tool kit and the 1.5mm bit is slightly too small and the 2mm is too big.
Anyway, I unscrewed this screw and then removed the bunny ears from the rest of the hilt.
Next up was to remove these brass pins here behind the red button and on either side. You can do this
using a pair of needle nose pliers but seeing as even a replica Graflex like this one costs
over $200 I don't think anyone is going to want to take a chance at damaging it which is why I bought
this little tool on the Graflex Shop. They sell them for $20 which is pretty steep in my opinion
for a little plastic tool but like I said I didn't want to risk damaging anything so I bit the bullet
and bought one. This tool makes removing the pins super simple, you just go around and unscrew them
all. With all the pins removed I then removed this screw here... and before we can pull the
bulb socket out we need flip our Graflex around because we need to pull out this metal piece
here. I grabbed my needle nose pliers, grabbed a hold of that little piece and it came right out.
With that done, all that was left was to push the bulb socket
out of the hilt and make sure I didn't lose any of the pieces that came flying out.
I then needed to trim down this arm on the slide switch here.
I'm planning to use this as an auxiliary switch for my lightsaber so it needs to fit into the
channel here on the side of the emitter and press a button that's going to end up sitting here.
I couldn't figure out how to remove the switch as it uses a different design than any of the others
I was able to find tutorials for online so I decided to try and trim it down in place.
I first inserted my chassis to get an idea of just how much I was going to need to cut off.
I then grabbed my wire cutters, crossed my fingers and gave it a snip.
The arm was still a little longer than it needed to be so I threw a grinding
wheel on my Dremel and ground it down until my chassis fit, just clearing the slide switch arm.
It was then time to work on the blade holder. When I bought my emitter from MB-Sabers it came with
this blade holder which is designed to fit perfectly together with the emitter. I
inserted the blade holder into the top of the hilt and screwed it in place with the
screw I'd removed earlier. I then screwed in the brass pins to see how much of the threads I was
going to need to grind off because I knew they were going to be too long. I used my Dremel to
grind the threads down and then test fitted them to make sure things were looking nice and flush.
After getting all the pins ground down I removed the blade holder so I could install this
brass contact piece. MB-Sabers does include a brass piece like this with the blade holder which
you have to bend yourself and make fit, but I was able to just reuse the one from my bulb socket.
I started by sliding the blade holder in about half way... then placed the brass
contact piece into position... and then slid everything down the rest of the way making
sure the holes for the brass pins were properly aligned. I then installed the
flat head screw into it's position in the center... followed by all the brass pins.
After grinding down the threads on the pins; in order to be able to screw them in using the
little pin tool I bought I first had to drop them into place with some tweezers and then
screw them in with the tool. If I placed them in the tool and tried to screw them in the pin would
recess into the tool leaving no threads protruding to screw into the blade holder. I then inserted
the bunny ears back into their position... secured them in place with their screw...
screwed the red button back on and now it's time to see just how everything fits together.
The final piece of the puzzle is to screw the glass eye back into place.
And there she is!
I can't believe she's almost finished.
I'm so stoked now to start working on the electronics. This thing has been months in
the making, as those of you who have been following along from the beginning know,
and I think, is turning out amazing.
Once it's all lit up and making that iconic lightsaber hum we all love so much; I think
I may just die and go to nerd heaven. Seriously though this is by far the coolest project I've
ever done on this channel and I can't wait to share with all of you how it turns out.