Well you can’t make props with knackered old hand tools and elbow grease.  Well you can, that’s how I’ve done them before… but why bother in this age of electricity and power tools?

With that in mind I toddled down to Bunnings and picked up a scroll saw, and bench top belt/disk sander and a brand new rotary tool.  (My current rotary tool belonged to my Grandpa and required 4 loose adapters to plug it into the NZ mains… dodgy and annoying.)

The scroll saw is great.  Its like a jigsaw only stationary and you’re able to make tighter turns while cutting than you can with a band saw – great for detail work.  The sander is just gonna save me many hours of sanding by hand and hopefully save me from getting numb fingers from gripping sanding block.  It might also shorted my finger tips if I slip but you can’t have power tools without a little blood :)

Now I will be able to saw, sand and shape PVC and MDF in record time and with a lot less effort.

Yay for power tools!

I had some time yesterday, well no… I didn’t have time but I did it anyway – work be damned!

So anyway, I toddled off to my cave and started the second Mako Lightsaber.  All the PVC components are shaped and ready to go.  You know what this means – I can now assemble and paint one!  It’s the best part!

Once I dig out the drill press I can drill and counter sink all the screw holes for the fins and fit them.  I might try rivets first as they will look cleaner but I need to make sure they won’t crack the PVC during the process.

Here is the origanl LS design re-coloured with a combination of dark matte grey and gloss black.

The finished versions will have silver highlights where the black paint has been “scuffed” so that the bare metal.  This will add extra detailing and give it better definition.

Here is the first lot of parts for the initial 3D lightsaber design.  The largest parts are shaped from PVC pipes and connectors.  The silver grip fins are aluminium framing and the rest are misc hardware parts.  You can get an idea of how it goes together from the last picture.

Once it is assembled and painted it should look pretty spiffy.

Custom Rebel Blast-Sniper

I threw together this blast sniper rifle for a Rebel Sniper costume a couple of years go.  The idea behind it was that a conventional blaster was adapted “in the trenches” over time to fashion a more accurate long-gun for sniping.

I used a lot of parts that would give it a non-factory finish, so it would have a real hand-made look rather than be perfect.  I wanted it to look like the soldier used what ever he could get his hands on to make the upgrades so there are parts that look like packing crates and beaten steel.

This rifle will be resurrected for one of the bounty hunters.  As it was painted using the “dry-”brush” method it’s finish is quite light and may not be suitable for film  We will take some test footage of it to see how it comes out.  This will set the benchmark for the paint jobs on all the blasters.  There is a good chance that it will need a darker, glossy finish which will be quick to do.

Glen and I are making a trip to Hammy on Saturday.  While there we will be scouring Spotlight for some nice open-weave fabric suitable for a Jedi cloak.  Also on the shopping list will be vest material and anything that looks suitable for some bounty hunting scum.

Hopefully there will be some Star Wars costume patterns available too.  These have proven quite hard to come by, especially the cloak patterns.  I think we may end up winging it a little – like we usually do.  :)

Lightsaber, back view

After measuring up the various parts from Mitre 10 I decided to mock up a basic lightsaber design in Cinema 4d.  This will aid in the development of the various styles as it’s quicker to make changes in C4d than to draw them by had.  You can also see how well parts will fit and chosse the areas you want to paint.

Hopefully this will reduce the amount of wangling time at the work bench and ultimately save on materials.

Lightsaber - top view

This lightsaber ended up looking similar to Darth Vadar’s blade from Empire Strikes Back as it has the grips on the bottom half and an angled emitter shroud. It also incorporates both black and silver whereas Luke’s ANH weapon was mainly chrome coloured.

I can’t wait to start cutting stuff up now!

Well there has been one successful trip to Mitre 10 so far, with many a lightsabery part aquired.  The lightsabers are going to be made out of PVC so they will require minimal machining.

So far we hve the pipe, dowel (for the dummy blades), some spacers for emitter shrouds and a few bits for details.  Also picked up some aluminium track which looks like a 10mm 3 sided square.  This will be a hardy alternative to the windscreen wiper blade grips that were originally used by the pinewood stusio props department.

Just need to find an interesting emitter array that will also fit the dowel.