Hey everyone, when I made my How to Turn Plastic into Brushed Steel tutorial I
asked if any of you wanted to see how I made my son's Luke Skywalker lightsaber.
Well lots of you said yes, so here it is. Alright so the first thing I did is I
grabbed a golf club tube. These are tubes that golfers keep in their golf bags for
reasons I'm not entirely sure of but you can pick them up for pretty cheap. Then I
cut out a super-sweet template which will be available at the end of this
video. I wrapped it around my golf club tube, taped it in place and then traced
the top and bottom edges. I removed the template and then cut the
tube to shape with a pair of cutters and a sharp knife.
I made sure everything was trimmed perfectly to the lines. I un-tubed my
template and marked the width of piece number two on a new piece of tubing
using the end of the template to give me a straight line. I cut straight up the
tube just past the line and then cut along the line. I cut some aluminum tape
and carefully slid it into the curved front end of the lightsaber. I had to
make sure that it didn't touch the inside of the tube until it was in the
right place, otherwise I would have a crumpled tape mess. Once positioned
I could stick it down and rub it smooth with my fingernail. I used my scalpel to
trim off the extra, carefully not cutting off my fingers, and repeated the process
on the other half of the inside. A quick sand and it's time to tape up the
outside. One strip of aluminum tape, one golf club tube, some sticking and some
rubbing and some more rubbing...actually a lot of rubbing. And eventually I had that
piece down nice and smooth. I trimmed the edge, folded it over and rubbed some more.
I super carefully lined up the edge of my second piece of tape with the edge of
my first piece of tape and did the same thing all over again
for the bottom side. Apparently this was my lucky day because the spot where the
second piece ended was exactly where the first piece began. I also covered the
short little piece with the slit up the center.
I used a green scouring pad to give the aluminum a brushed metal look. I grabbed
my sweet template again which showed me the placement for piece number two and I
glued it down with some hot glue, keeping the gap facing to the right hand side. I
cut two pieces of foam board the size of piece number three, stacked them up and
glued them together. I then sanded them on the edges to make everything nice and
equal and of course covered them with aluminum tape, just like wrapping a tiny
little Christmas present with sticky metal paper. I glued my little present
right over the gap on piece number two. I then grabbed my jar of random metal
things and dumped it out. Happily there was a drywall anchor in there, one of
those with the spring-loaded metal wing things. I used some pliers to open it up,
grabbed one of the wingy things and glued it on to the side of the little
box. I cut some strips of five millimeter foam according to the dimensions in the
pattern and glued them equally spaced around the bottom of the lightsaber.
I cut 10 centimeters of half-inch PEX pipe leftover from my mechanical arm
project and three randomly sized pieces of 3/4 inch PEX. I covered all four of
these pieces with aluminum tape, made them look like brushed steel, and glued
them together to make this thing. I added a couple strips of foam around the back
two segments so that when I pushed it into the main lightsaber body it fit
snugly and stayed in place. I happened to have some copper tape laying around from
when my mom was into stained glass so I used a couple strips of that on top of
the boxy thing. I traced and cut piece number four from my pink plastic tray,
heated it very carefully over a candle, and bent it into this shape. I sanded off
any weird spots and covered it with tape. I marked its placement and glued it on. I
found a thing in my jar of metal bits and glued it on too.
I then made a foam circle to close the back end of the tube. I cut piece number
four from my pink tray, heated it up and bent it in half. I bent an old coat
hanger into a triangle shape and glued it inside the pink piece. I glued the
pink piece to the back of the lightsaber and painted it silver. Well there it is,
quick and dirty lightsaber build. Definitely not screen accurate but I was
able to make it in about four hours with stuff I had lying around the house
so that is pretty good. Also you know what I might not recommend hot glue for
everything because it isn't the best for sticking to this metal but it's quick
and I needed quick today so use at your own risk. You can grab the template from
the link here or in the description below or you can let me know what
project you'd like to see me do next in the comments. I haven't decided what I'm
gonna do after I finish my wife's winter Wonder Woman costume so now's the time
to tell me what you'd like to see. Thanks for watching. See ya