Lightsabers & Blasters EL lightsaber

I am very interested in the tutorial posted or emailed either way. Nice work on those blades that will certainly make things cheaper.

 

I don't really use my Yahoo mail anymore, and my box is full, anyway. The best place to email me is my hotmail account in my profile.

And let me say, if I haven't before, I do not construct hilts for others. I make only EL blades and modify the inverters that power them by putting on switches and connectors to make the blades detachable.

I also do not offer any means to mount the blade or inverter into a hilt, though I can offer suggestions, based on what I've tried. Every saber people build is different. Most people already have an idea on how they want to do it, or have a saber that will already accept my blades.

 

Jedi_Loreen,

Thanks for the information. I really like the aqua blade in your pics, but I have zero talent for hilt construction. I was hoping you could design a blade to fit into a Parks hilt, but I understand your reasoning. You do excellent work, and thanks for your courteous reply.

 

You're welcome.

As I said, my blades will physically fit into a Parks saber, but they are kind of dim, comparatively. It may be due to the difference in inverters, and connections inside the hilt and on the blade itself.

 

i just thought i would drop in with my 2 cents worth. jedi-loreen has made me 4 blades which i can either use with my [hopefully rebuilt] personal lightsaber and my modified parks. Lori's blades will work in any saber, but parks blades will only work in parks sabers. lighttech blades will work in lightech and sabers built with coolneon inverters, but will not work in parks sabers. so three cheers for lori, for making blades that work in everything. i have 2 green, one with new brighter wire, 1 orange short blade and 1 purple for my wife. just for the record...she is the BEST!!! she also helped me build my first 2 sabers, although we had a lot of trouble getting all the components, 2 battery packs....sound card, inverter, 2 switches and the emmitter. thats why im having to rebuild it for the 3rd time. hint #1 dont rush to get things done. hint #2 if it doesnt fit...dont force it.
anyway jedi-loreen is the best and well deserves her title.

 

Jedi-Loreen,

I just followed your link to Saberworks in another thread. They have really nice hilts and the blades seem to be nice and bright. One final question about brightness--Since you use a "brighter" design, and your blade tips are rounded off, would your aqua blade work in a Saberworks hilt? I hope I'm not sounding like a pest, but money is tight, and if I'm going to get a nice saber, I want it to be as bright and "authentic" as possible. Again, thanks for all of your information.

 

This is my first post here.
Your information is very help full and ill be back around hoping to catch a link to a tutorial if you get a chance to make one.

A friend and I have three finished hilts, we each made one and worked together on a third. I also have the parts to my set of three i have planed for my self. We had every thing planed out but ran into two problems; putting the electronic components together. Which I
never got around to because of the second problem, where to get the polycarbonate. If you can help me on that alone it would be insanely help full.

We actually fooled around with what i think is a polyurethane blade. I know the tubing you talking about, this is sold in the same area as it at Lowes but is more ridged, a straight tube, not on the role. I believe in 6 or 7 foot piece. It can bend but it holds its own enough for what we planed for it, just for a bunch of half ass hilts to let random friends and friends of friends to use, a way to create a relatively inexpensive arsenal of sabers for a hope fully still possible future saber battle.

What made those even more simple was the fact that most would just have a light in the hilt, similar to (or possibly being) a simple flashlight. The polyurethane caries the light as well as any TPM sabers that were put out, but it tapers in brightness if the blade is long. The tapering of the light intensity reminds me of the old sabers in the paintings for the OT, like it thins or sharpens near the end. That with the fact that the blades slightly bend when swung really hard or when they make contact reminds me of the incendiary weapons Gundams use. a cheap alternative for people who don't want to spend the money, or for the extras we want to make. The tube is then sprayed with an opaque paint you can get at wall-mart and alot of arts and crafts stores in several colors.

We hope to find a way to make light up sabers cheaper than we can buy even the toy sabers so if some one breaks or takes off with them we won't care, much. Also backing us up on the building of an arsenal. Both at a cheap price and without having 15 obiwan and 20 anakin sabers.

 

Longer post than i intended, im just happy to see some homemade el blades are actualy being made.

 

Actually ive found my parks blade will work in my lighttech and vice versa...however at a greatly reduced brightness!

 

Can't wait for a tutorial!!!

 

Well I bought the supplies to build my EL blade last night. I got 1/2" and 3/4" polycarbonate tubeing from usplastics and 7 feet of orange el wire and a 9 volt inverter from elwirecheap.com. I bought male and female RCA cables for teh blade connector. I took my resin control box and bored it out to put my switch inside. So now I have a graflex style switch that will actually turn the power on and off. I put the resin clamp lever over the switch and placed a pin through it so it would stay and it looks cool.

I am planning on sanding the 1/2" polycarb tube until it is opaque to be a difuser. I'm not sure how well it will work but I'm not going for perfection. Also does anyone have any suggestions on what to use to secure the 1/2" tube inside the 3/4" tube? I have hot glue goop and epoxy would any of those work?

Thanks alot.

 

When I started figuring out how to make my blades, I was originally going to use a piece of 5/8" transluscent tubing for a diffuser. I bought several pieces of tubing made out of different materials to see which one worked best.

I found that transluscent white polyethylene tubing had the diffusion properties that I was looking for. Unforunately, I could never get the 5/8" tubing very far inside the 3/4" polycarbonate tube (though some people have had success with it). So I went to 1/2" tubing for that.

Because of my experiments with the 5/8" tubing, I ended up with several pieces of it. I came upon the idea of using a 2" long piece of it at the bottom of the blade to hold the bottom of the diffuser tubing as well as the male audio connector I use. Then I use a 1/2" long piece at the end of the blade. These "bushings" hold the 1/2" diffuser tubing centered inside the polycarbonate tube.

At the bottom of the blade, I drill and tap a 10x32 threaded hole into both outer tube and bushing. A set screw goes in until it's flush to the outside and seats into a hole that I've drilled into the male connector housing.

If you got the mini 9V inverter from elwirecheap.com, and are using orange wire, I'm afraid you're not going to have a very bright blade, as orange is one of the dimmest EL wire colors.

I tried out those inverters, and I was disappointed in them. They are pretty bright when run on 12V, but not bright enough using just 9V. (at the website, the mini 9V inverter is the exact same one as the 12V inverter, they just put on a 9V battery clip on it and charge an extra dollar for that) I work a few miles from the elwirecheap.com warehbouse and I've gone over there and tried every inverter that they have that's small enough to fit inside a lightsaber hilt. (I've brought my lightsaber and some of my first blades over there to show them and they thought they were pretty cool) They didn't have what I wanted.

I now use the Pipsqueak inverter from Coolneon.com, but I think they're discontinuing them (again), but I've found an equivalent at Coolight.com. I still haven't made up my parts and source lists for my blade tutorial, yet.

The best 9V inverters I've found so far are the ones that Lightech uses, but they are not the cheapest.

And now you have sort of a disorganized teaser of my eventual tutorial.

 

I think the main problem I am coming up with is how to get the tubing to work right and the other is what to use in my hilt to accept the blade. I used the Lightech adapter on my last hilt but there has to be something cheaper than that.

 

Loreen, that's a nice start to a tutorial *hint hint*. Thanks for the teaser!!!

What MM of wire do you use? 2.3mm, 3.2mm, or 5mm?

 

If I'm using the regular EL wire, I prefer the 3.2mm. If I'm using the High Brightness wire, it's diameter is sort of between 2.3 and 3.2mm, as it has a thicker coating of phosphorus on the core wire and is a bit stiffer.

For the blade mount in my next saber, I will be using a piece of 3/4" PVC pipe and making a slit in it to shrink the ID down a tad, then hollowing out 2 1" PVC plugs that fit nicely into a sink pipe. The PVC pipe will be tightly held inside the plugs and I'll JB Weld it all together, sand and paint it.

I'll be drilling and tapping holes into the plugs (before attaching the pipe to them) so that I can use screws to hold it in the hilt, after I JB Weld the female connector coming from the inverter into the bottom. The top screws will be decorative and stick out from the hilt, while the bottom screws will be set screws that screw into the grip, through the pipe and into the PVC plug. At least that's the plan.

I tried a scaled down version of this type of blade holder for my little "lightdagger" which I made to hold 5/8" blades and it works pretty well. This method is a lot cheaper than the $40 Lightech adapter and it should be plenty "duel worthy".

 

Hi Guys,

Would anyone be able to recommend somewhere within Australia which can supply the EL Wire (prefereably the Hight Brightness stuff)??? I've gone to some of the above mentioned sites, but the shipping seems to be dearer than the parts I'm buying.. Finding someone local would certainly help

W.

 

You might want to check with a car detailing place. Something like a place that does ground FX, specialized lighting in cars. An aftermarket shop perhaps.

 

I have found EL wire kits in computer stores, for customizing computer cases. Not very much wire, though. The inverter was designed for 12 Volts.

 

Can someone please give me the plans or schematics for converting a Graflex to an EL saber? I've been looking for ages for a site or someon to tell me how to make one. Thanks!

 

I can get my hands on some 2.3mm Red EL Wire fairly easily.. Would three strands of it be any good??

 

Woodgee, where did you find EL wire in Australia? I'm starting to build my own sabers, and I didn't know where to find EL wire so I was going to go with some high-intensity LEDs. If I could use EL wire, though, that'd work even better.

 

How much room do you need in your hilt for one of these?

 

DARK_PADAWAN No clue on the converting of a Graflex to an EL. I don't have a Graflex, or I'd play around with it for you. Jedi-Loreen seems to be an expert, at least that's what everyone around here says, on making EL Blades. Not sure what you can do to convert it. I'll look around on the net, but I haven't found anything, and I've been looking a little myself on making a Graflex.

Woodgee I'm thinking, by reading what's been posted here and a few other boards, that you'll need 3 strands, I think that's what Loreen uses, and they need to be around 4 feet each. You'll end up cutting some off of the ends, but I wouldn't want to get them too short and them not be long enough.

Doright Inside Diameter would need to be at least 3/4" for the blade tube alone. Then you have to make sure that there is room for the connectors and the power source, and have a way to lock the blade in place (so it doesn't fly or fall out). So, you need to probably have at least 6 to 8 inches inside the hilt to house the blade, the connectors and the power inverter.

These are my assumptions based upon the information detailed in this an other threads. Know that I have yet to make my own EL Blade, I'm just trying to help out.

 

oh well thanks anyway does anyone know how to build a EL driver? I'm freeking out here to be able to make a driver if any one has any ideas that would be great thanks. Oh and jedi lorleen how much do you sell(if you do) your blades for? thanksso much

 

I have noticed most people use 3.2 wire. Does anyone use 5.0? Is there a reason not to?

Someone asked about a graflex conversion. What part you need to convert? Do you just need to make it so you can pop in an EL blade? If so Lightech sells and adapter for that. Also Jedi-Loreen mentioned a few posts above how to do a conversion without one. Larbel used to make a conversion but they were shut down by Lucasfilm. Sometimes you can find a converter on ebay.