Sometimes you build a lightsaber...

So, as I had mentioned I have been pretty obsessed with lightsabers lately. Shortly after my last post about having bought 2 used lightsabers off craigslist(one completely broken, another with no sound), I finally decided on parts and ordered some from The Custom Saber Shop(speakers, battery holders, switch, and vented pommels) and from Custom DarkWolf Sabers(LEDs, circuit boards). Then I had to find the time to put it all together. Been super busy, so that took almost a month haha

First thing, was that I needed to replace the pommels on the sabers I got. They are solid pommels, for sabers with no sound. So I went with the most affordable pommels from The Custom Saber Shop.

New pommel on the saber, old solid pommel on the right. 

I had initially thought I might be able to drill enough holes through the original pommels, but in practice it would have been a bunch of skinny long holes, which is not really good for transmitting sound.

Before I even got my parts, I knew I wanted my saber to be green. My hilt is black, so I decided to sand it down to give it a two tone, weathered look.

Tools and parts

The single color sound board, for my saber. 

The RGBW sound board, which will go into Sophie's saber. 

All wired up! Hadn't soldered in over a decade!

I struggled a bit with the soldering. They kept getting disconnected once I would put everything in the saber. And it took me a while to figure out how the switch was to be wired (old switch only had 2 terminals and it was going straight to the battery, this one had 4 since it's an illuminated switch and going to the board instead. First time I got it wired up, it wouldn't even power on. And I didn't have time to troubleshoot further. So it sat there for like 2 weeks waiting for me to have time to work on it again. Took it all apart, rebuilt it, and same thing. Wouldn't even power on. Again. Not gonna lie. I was regretting a lot of things at that point. Much to learn, I still had. I started troubleshooting, and noticed right away that I couldn't measure any voltage even coming into the motherboard. Tested from the battery pack and nothing even coming out of there. Took out battery, and it tested fine. Inspected closely, and the battery holder is not the right size or something, because there's a gap between the negative terminal and the battery. Doh!

Notice the gap at the top! 

So I just did this:

And then bam! The electrons are flowing finally!

During the surgery

It was a bit of struggle to get everything in the saber, but nothing some persistence couldn't fix. At last, my saber was ready!

The final product! 

And here's how it was before:

It feels good to build your own saber. I am glad I went that route, instead of just buying it all done. Here's a super short, crappy video of it. Better videos to come haha

I am pretty excited with it. I want to do some light painting with it, take some pics with it, maybe a video or something. It will be fun! And here are some more pics, just because: