Custom toy lightsabers

Status: complete

Building a lightsaber is an attractive project to a lot of nerdy makers (is that redundant?) because of the lore (a Jedi must construct his own), because at their core, they're not too complicated (a flashlight and a tube), and because they look damn cool.  I'd read up a bit on the state of the art and was shocked at the volume of materials to make "custom" lightsabers.  Arguably, piecing together a saber from pre-made parts isn't entirely custom, any more than buying a Harley off the lot and swapping out for some non-stock chrome parts is truly "custom", but people should do what they like.

I like to make Christmas gifts, I try to make something unique for at least one person each season, and this season I thought my two nephews might like some custom sabers.

Over on the forums for the Custom Saber Shop, I found some people doing neat things with PVC pipe instead of turned metals, and that was appealing to me because I wouldn't need much in the way of tooling.  Taking inspiration from posts there, and some youtube vids, I soon had a basic saber design.

Something I tried that I saw in metal sabers but didn't see anyone else doing in PVC was to put lengthwise fluting in the grip.  This seemed do-able using a jig, a router table, a fence, and some evenly spaced reference marks on the work-piece.

These would be toys for kids, and so I wanted them to be durable, and repairable.  I made them out of thick stock and chose translucent tubing with a 1/8" sidewall for durability.  I also wanted to mount all the innards on a module that could slide out for servicing or repair.  Again, looking to the forums for inspiration, I decided on a "sled" design.

I took the guts from a $15 (on sale) toy saber that already had sound effects and motion sensing built in.  I used the sound part as-is, and use the LED output to drive a transistor that switched a much more powerful 1 watt LED.  I mounted it all up and slid it into the PVC handle.

Hammertone and other metallic paints make it look... sort of metal-ish.

I thought my sister might not like a 4 year old and an 8 year old running around with 4-foot-long light-up baseball bats in the house, so I included "safety plugs" that lit up, but didn't extend past the hilt for indoor play.

But I think they look cooler with the full blades on them.

They were very well-received.  ^^