Subscribe to this blog's feed
Check out the finkbuilt blog for a "how-to" on making your own authentic lightsaber, featuring an LED blade, a Pentium heat-sink and gold connectors.
When dealing with the all-important blades, he writes:
There are two popular ways to light up a saber. The first is EL, or electro-luminescent wire. This is a glowing wire that you power up with a high-voltage transformer. This technology provides a nice, bright even glow, and is probably the preferred method. The second common way is to use a single, 3-5 watt Luxeon high-output LED located in the hilt to light up the blade.
There's a link to an online calculator for finding the correct resistors to match your LEDs, and he also provides a bit of background history on the old original film props:
After researching lightsabers, I learned that the original lightsaber props were made from 1950's vintage Graflex camera flash guns like might have been used on old press cameras. In fact, the Luke Skywalker saber was pretty much an unmodified flash handle. If you want a true replica of the Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader sabers, you can always get a Graflex flash on ebay but they do carry a stiff premium because every Star Wars geek has the same idea.
Recent Comments