Manually Machined Obi-Wan Kenobi ANH Lightsaber

[Archive&Future]

Hey everyone,

I've been inactive on here for a long time!
I'd like to share this Obi-Wan saber I've been working on recently. It's all manually machined from aluminium and brass, the Graflex clamp is from The Saber Armory.

The drawings are taken from my 3D print model which I modelled up last year based on a lot of research and measurements from real parts. Although I would love the real patina and feel of steel components, I was put off by the weight and my machines are better suited to machining aluminium; so I'm going to get the emitter, grenade and booster segments black anodised via my day job.

The emitter/balance pipe posed a challenge with that deep trepanned groove. Originally I tried to trepan it but broke tool after tool, so I built it as two press-fit pieces.

The grenade was more straightforward than I anticipated, I made moderately rigid setup, marked and measured everything 'close enough' and cut the grooves with a 45° dovetail cutter.
The first pass I took too deep and chipped two teeth from the cheapo dovetail cutter, but thankfully it lasted for the other passes.

Today I'm going to start cutting slots in the wind vane neck, which will take 16x wind vanes cut from 1mm brass stock.

Thanks for looking, I'll post again later this week!

 

[eethan]

Very nice work!
thanks for sharing

 

[JoeG]

Very cool! The Obi saber in all its iterations is one of my favorites! Love seeing this! Just fyi there is a dedicated section of the board for Star Wars props. I've asked the mods to move your thread there. It'll be much more visible to the appropriate audience that way.

 

[JFB64]

Beautiful work.

 

[dcarty]

Absolutely gorgeous! I love to see some machined metal

 

[CreechMagoo]

Beautiful, hand machined stuff just has so much more to it! Makes it really your own.

 

[el toro]

Hey everyone,

I've been inactive on here for a long time!
I'd like to share this Obi-Wan saber I've been working on recently. It's all manually machined from aluminium and brass, the Graflex clamp is from The Saber Armory.

The drawings are taken from my 3D print model which I modelled up last year based on a lot of research and measurements from real parts. Although I would love the real patina and feel of steel components, I was put off by the weight and my machines are better suited to machining aluminium; so I'm going to get the emitter, grenade and booster segments black anodised via my day job.

The emitter/balance pipe posed a challenge with that deep trepanned groove. Originally I tried to trepan it but broke tool after tool, so I built it as two press-fit pieces.

The grenade was more straightforward than I anticipated, I made moderately rigid setup, marked and measured everything 'close enough' and cut the grooves with a 45° dovetail cutter.
The first pass I took too deep and chipped two teeth from the cheapo dovetail cutter, but thankfully it lasted for the other passes.

Today I'm going to start cutting slots in the wind vane neck, which will take 16x wind vanes cut from 1mm brass stock.

Thanks for looking, I'll post again later this week!

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Honestly, that’s really nice work.

 

[Fabian 71]

Hey everyone,

I've been inactive on here for a long time!
I'd like to share this Obi-Wan saber I've been working on recently. It's all manually machined from aluminium and brass, the Graflex clamp is from The Saber Armory.

The drawings are taken from my 3D print model which I modelled up last year based on a lot of research and measurements from real parts. Although I would love the real patina and feel of steel components, I was put off by the weight and my machines are better suited to machining aluminium; so I'm going to get the emitter, grenade and booster segments black anodised via my day job.

The emitter/balance pipe posed a challenge with that deep trepanned groove. Originally I tried to trepan it but broke tool after tool, so I built it as two press-fit pieces.

The grenade was more straightforward than I anticipated, I made moderately rigid setup, marked and measured everything 'close enough' and cut the grooves with a 45° dovetail cutter.
The first pass I took too deep and chipped two teeth from the cheapo dovetail cutter, but thankfully it lasted for the other passes.

Today I'm going to start cutting slots in the wind vane neck, which will take 16x wind vanes cut from 1mm brass stock.

Thanks for looking, I'll post again later this week!

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Really well done, I wonder if you think to make those drawings available, if that`s the case, I`m totally in.

 

[Archive&Future]

Really well done, I wonder if you think to make those drawings available, if that`s the case, I`m totally in.

Thank you! Actually a lot of people have asked me for the drawings, so I'm going to rework them and release them on my Facebook page soon

 

[Twisty]

Hey everyone,

I've been inactive on here for a long time!
I'd like to share this Obi-Wan saber I've been working on recently. It's all manually machined from aluminium and brass, the Graflex clamp is from The Saber Armory.

The drawings are taken from my 3D print model which I modelled up last year based on a lot of research and measurements from real parts. Although I would love the real patina and feel of steel components, I was put off by the weight and my machines are better suited to machining aluminium; so I'm going to get the emitter, grenade and booster segments black anodised via my day job.

The emitter/balance pipe posed a challenge with that deep trepanned groove. Originally I tried to trepan it but broke tool after tool, so I built it as two press-fit pieces.

The grenade was more straightforward than I anticipated, I made moderately rigid setup, marked and measured everything 'close enough' and cut the grooves with a 45° dovetail cutter.
The first pass I took too deep and chipped two teeth from the cheapo dovetail cutter, but thankfully it lasted for the other passes.

Today I'm going to start cutting slots in the wind vane neck, which will take 16x wind vanes cut from 1mm brass stock.

Thanks for looking, I'll post again later this week!

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Great work, this is awesome! I’m looking forward to following your progress

 

[Archive&Future]

I've been slowly chipping away at this project, as it's started to present some interesting and difficult machining operations.

Back in April, shortly after my last update, I machined the Armitage Shanks sink knob.
I took each cut slowly and carefully, but on the last cut the end mill grabbed the part and took a bite out of a critical section.
A couple of weeks later, my friend Mike was able to TIG weld over the mistake and I re-machined that portion.

I don't have any photos of the process but I made a handful of specific sanding tools to hand-polish the surfaces.
Even after hours of work, I still haven't quite achieved the chrome plastic shine of the original.
There are also a couple of dings which are not really characterful and are just displeasing, so I'll need to go back on those areas.

This weekend I made a start on the Browning machine gun booster section.

I've been thinking about how to approach this part for a good month now, I had thought about buying a horizontal milling cutter, or even getting some involute gear cutters.
In the end, I decided to tackle it with the tools I already own.

My blueprints give an included angle of ~55º for the cuts, but I decided my 60º dovetail cutter was close enough for me to live with.

I essentially eyeballed the 16 divisions and cutter position. Actually I tried to tilt my mill's head and feed the part in by moving the x-axis but unfortunately I couldn't mount the workpiece securely so I guesstimated where the root of the dovetail would sit kind of radial to the part.

The divisions were uneven and chunky, but that was by intention as I transferred the part to the lathe where I have been carefully planing the grooves to the correct thinness.
The included angle is still a little off, but once all 16 have been finished I think it will be unnoticeable.

Anyway all that gibberish is easily explained by the pictures,
thanks as always for reading.

 

[lesternessman]

Nice recovery on the pommel. Love to see the progress you're making. Thanks for sharing these!

 

[thd9791]

wow! great work... the recovery and just planning how to mill all the weird cuts. You polished the pommel really well, its a signature of this saber you nailed!

 

[TatooineMachine]

Wow, that’s awesome work!

 

[alexbailey]

Great work, can't wait for future updates.

 

[Halliwax]

Wicked impressive!!

 

[Archive&Future]

I was able to get the grenade and emitter portions anodised (very kindly) through my work, and the quality is gorgeous!

I'm sad at the prospect of weathering through it, although I did go at a test piece and the finish is very very tough.

Sanding it back leaves a blue halo around the exposed aluminium, so my plan has always been to use the anodised surface as a hard-wearing base to be painted over.

I also wish that I had beaten up the grenade before it was anodised, because now the weathering will just look like exactly what it is...damaged anodising...Ah well, I'll make it work!

Since we have another batch of parts heading out on Monday to be tumbled and anodised, I wanted to get the heat sink booster finished up.

I finally cut all those grooves, and I will never ever again do them with this method of milling then planing- I'll just buy a proper horizontal milling cutter.

Thanks for reading!

 

[SPY007]

Great work

 

[Sabs]

this looks great! not jealous of that manual scraping of the booster though.

 

[Archive&Future]

It's been a while since I was able to put some time into this project.

A couple of months ago I received the booster section back from the anodisers, who did a great job as always. Since then I've occasionally added some scuffs and scratches, experimenting with trying to get the black anodising to look like blued steel.

I still haven't figured out a process that gives the result I'm looking for, but I'll find a way.

Originally I had planned to machine the wind vane, but I wasn't happy with any of the test pieces so I chose to 3D print the vanes and press-fit them between the real brass ring and neck. I was so excited by how well it went together that I didn't put enough effort into sanding out the layer lines- but I plan to weather it all to hell anyway and that part isn't very visible.
The vanes were printed in matte black PETG and finished with gold Rub 'n Buff.

I've ordered a bubble strip from The Saber Armoury; then next month I'll machine the transistors, add the screws and cotter pins and REALLY start on the weathering.

As always, thanks for looking!