TOPIC: Revan hilt (PIC UPDATE) - Fractures and gold inlay

OvrcAHst wrote:
It took about 90 minutes to get that detail added in.

Basic method:

1) engraved the scarring deeper using engraving tool till desired depth achieved
2) drilled 1/16" pilot holes for the large shine through areas - used multiple angles to shape the light towards the scars
3) used engraving tools to shape the shine through pilot holes and link multiple pilot holes together to create "crack" effect.
4) buffed the inside of the emitter to remove burs and any raised spots from the shine through areas.

The artistry lies in the randomness of placement and the general shaping of the grooves to achieve a "shattered" look. I used a couple pictures of lightning bolts as inspiration for the general "design" of the scars. I had Bob Ross in my head the whole time, "... And a happy little scar over here, and maybe this shine through lives over here... No mistakes, just happy accidents..."

Planning on Ordering the LED for this Saber today. I decided to put electronics in it. If it does get sold, I think I want to offer it as a complete saber rather than just an empty hilt.

So, I'm trying to decide on the LED configuration. First thought is just your standard R/R/W Tri-Cree - no blade effects beyond the usual FOC. My other thought would be to go for something a little more flashy along the lines of a Red/Orange shimmer effect (Ren style look). Since the idea is this saber was damaged and recovered, it would make sense to have a sort of damaged crystal kind of blade effect. I figure multiple ways to go here:

1) R/R/A Tri or R/R/A/A QC - Dim the Red LEDs and Flash the Amber LEDs on the shimmer/pulse, FOC ends up looking orange. Blade would look pretty slick, but the FOC might leave a little to be desired.

2) DR/DR/G Tri - Keep the Reds lit and flash the Green for a slide to yellow (should give a orange look to the naked eye), FOC just lights up the Green to go for a yellow. Would need to play with how much to flash the green and possibly dim the Reds on the blade shimmer, but should be able to achieve a cool orange look on the shimmer.

3) RO/RO/W Tri - Red orange blade and the White Cree flashes a bit for shimmer effects, straight up flash to White for FOC.

Any suggestions, comments, or better ideas?

Soundboard will likely end up being a Spark2, but open to changing my mind.

While Red-Orange would be the brightest setup of the bunch, Red or Deep Red would probably be easier to sell. A Red/DeepRed combo would be the easiest to photograph if you don't feel like touching up image (Reds look really orange in photos, Deep Reds look really pink, so either way you've got to tweak photos for a proper shoot).

Definitely ditch the Amber mixes as well, since Red/Green mixes can do all the same colors while opening up Green (on Spark, anyway. If, for some reason, you opt for a Nano Biscotte instead, you're pretty much stuck with Orange FoC on a RRG star).

I'm personally partial to Red/Green mixes, since Yellow's a great FoC color, and I've seen plenty of Green blaster-blocks watching Rebels. However, Red/White's the more common option and might sell more readily on eBay.

On a similar note, I'm really fond of Spark and think it'd be a great board - but Nano Biscotte's the bigger name and might net a bigger sale on eBay.

Sticking with Spark, though, you might also consider a Red/RoyalBlue combo to get the Red, Blue, and Violet blades this hilt's traditionally been seen with.

EDIT: As for choosing betwen a Tri-Cree and a 12W+, I haven't seen much difference in brightness between three LEDs and four LEDs for single-color blades, but a custom 12W+ has the advantage of offering the brightness of three LEDs while still having a fourth FoC color available.

Seems like for about $10 more you get a lot more with the Spark2 board.

I think I'm going to go with R/R/G for LED. I agree with you, yellow for FOC on a Red blade looks pretty close to accurate as far as the movies go, and in the Clone wars and Rebels shows as well. Plus I should be able to get some neat orange and yellow blade effects with it.

Where can I get the custom QC? I scoured the shopsaberparts site and couldn't see an option for a custom LED.
EDIT: I need to learn to read, apparently I just need to email them... So, any benefit from going with a QC in some sort of Dual Red, Dual green config, Vs say the Tri in a R/R/G config?

This will NOT be a dueling saber, so thin walled blade will be what I'll go with, so a Tri Cree should be plenty for brightness. Although I would consider a R/R/G/G option for a custom QC.

As for the standard colors seen with the hilt, Canon wise, this hilt started with a Blue crystal when Revan was a Jedi, and then went Red when he turned Sith. So Blue or Red would be a canon color for it. Purple would more accurately be associated with the second hilt the "Reborn" style. But I do agree that a Red, Blue, mix to Pruple would have some appeal on the open market. For this saber though I really want to capture it as the damaged Darth Revan sith saber, so it's Red all the way.

I'm with you on the first point, and personally, I'd prefer a Spark over an NB any day. I only made mention from an advertising standpoint - Plecter boards are just better known and tend to sell better - but I do indeed think Spark's the better fit for what you're aiming at.

Only benefit from an R/R/G/G would be brighter greens if you wanted to put a green main blade on one of the three fonts. I was thinking more R/R/R/G or R/R/R/W for a tri-bright main blade with a separate effect color. The jump from two-to-three LEDs isn't a *huge* difference though, and may not be worth the cut in runtime to you. I'm not really recommending one option over the other, just listing everything out.

If you do go tri-cree, LED Supply carries Photo Red XP-Es and lets you use them in custom Cree stars, so you do have the option of a Medium Red combo - PhotoRed XP-E/Red XP-E2/Green XP-E2.

Once I've got the funds to spare, I'd really like to build an Exile with Spark 2 and a pR/pR/G/G 12W+ as a gift for a buddy of mine that gave me his old MR Anakin when I first got into saber building. LED selection there though is mainly because I want both the green and red main blades (and am just partial to the Photo Red LEDs, even if they're not as bright as standard red).

I think for a more Basic setup, maybe just a simple single blade color with generic white FOC, I might opt for a NB. But the Spark2 just looks to pack a lot more in for not much more money.

I was going to do a R/pR/G Tri Cree from LED supply. Get a little mix of the two reds in there.
Do the reds need different resistors or can I run them in parallel off the same resistor?

How is their Dynamic Heatsink? I think I saw you used one in a different build, just curious how they stack up against the TCSS sinks? I can't imagine they perform much differently given the relatively low wattage, although Copper is a superior thermal capacitor VS Aluminum and the LedSupply looks to be all aluminum. I was thinking more along the lines of ease of use.

ALSO: I have all the paints, and will be picking up the gilding materials later today. Not sure I'll get the time this weekend to do the weathering and gilding, but should be close to the finished hilt in the next week or two.

Ok this is looking really really cool. Good job man!

WOW. Just.... Wow. I can't imagine how awesome it looks in person. Outstanding work Jas-Ot!!

Bust weekend so probably wont get time to work on it.

So for the time being, here's a tease...

Jas-Ot wrote:
All three flavors of red have similar voltages, so resistor sharing is indeed possible. That said, putting each diode on its own resistor is a nice precaution so that if a solder connection comes loose, you're not pumping 2A into a single LED.


Without a fan to provide constant cool air, copper won't perform much better than aluminum. The LED Supply heatsink could be advantageous in a PVC build by providing more metal to absorb heat.

I used one fullsize in my Kylo build for a 3A tri-cree red. Between the extra metal, the thick PVC walls, and only leaving the saber on for short bursts, the saber handles the heat well, but I normally wouldn't pump more than 1A into a PVC hilt's LED.

I used one with the mounting threads cut off in my Kota build just because TCSS was out of stock at the time. For an aluminum saber, the entire hilt draws heat away, so no heatsink should be more advantageous than another.

As for ease of use, LED Supply stars and sinks need some modification in this setup. The center holes are too small for six wires, so I always drill the centers out with a 3/16" bit. It's easier to use a saber-specific heatsink with six perimeter holes - though I've never tried to secure a Tri-cree in a SF heatsink. I'm not sure if the unit would tighten enough to secure the short lens - I've found the US sinks to fail in this regard without a spacer.

Ok, so got around to doing the first go round of weathering. This is about 80-90% done.

I did a metallic flake on the emitter and also inside some of the scars, along with a mixture of enamels to achieve weathering.

I'm on the fence with how this looks. I honestly think the emitter could look better. The rest of the saber I'm pretty happy with.



















I think I'm going to strip the emitter and completely redo it. I left a little enamel on it when I applied the metal flake. I thought it would give it a rough kind of damaged look, but it ended up looking like a bad spray paint job. It's not so bad in pictures but in person it looks pretty tacky. So I think I'll strip it and sand it clean so that the flake just lays flat.

This is the first time I've every tried gilding so I'm not surprised it didn't turn out great.

I did a little cleanup work on the hilt this morning, nothing major, just used some steel wool to lighten up some of the weathering spots, remove some excess enamel and buff a few spots out.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe a copper flake rather than gold would look better on the emitter?

I think though that if I just scrub the emitter area flat, the gold flake will look much better. And rather than trying to apply weathering to it, I'll see how it looks as is.

I'm thinking some dark brown grunge on the emitter might help. As it is, it's got plenty of texture but no shading, so it doesn't blend well with the rest of the hilt.

I actually tried that. And from a distance it looks pretty good.

This picture here you can kind of see it better:



The problem I ran into was that up close, you can VERY much tell it's paint on top of the metal. I tried thinning it out, but that just ended up blemishing some of the metallic flake underneath and resulted in that "bad spray paint job" look. A different combination or application method might make that work. I decided on gold because I thought I weather/tarnish it to look more beat up and darker if I needed to, and that with a red LED shinning through, it would really pop.

I cleaned up the bottom part of the hilt and lightened up the weathering and that actually helps. I didn't have time to snap a pic though.

What I think I will do is start over on the emitter and go for a flat gilding, as little texture as possible, and see if that hits the sweet spot. And instead of going for gold in the scars, use copper for contrast.
If that still doesn't do the trick, then I think I'll flip the colors and do the emitter in copper and run gold through the scars.

So, I did a little more toning down of the initial weathering and I think that has made an improvement. The hilt is definitely Con worthy, and honestly most people would probably say "WOW" if they saw it in person. I'm just a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these sorts of things and I want the emitter to look "better".

I think the problem is that I tried for too much texture on the gold inlay, and too heavy of a weathering on it. I think what I will do is strip the area around the emitter clean, buff it out with a couple grades of steel wool and then redo the Gold Leaf so it's much more flat.

I added some new pics to the first post of the thread, but also putting some here:

Nice shot of it on the display stand with my Bastion on top for a bit of reference. Graflex is sneaking in to the pic too.

Was fiddling with the Spark config editor - specifically with the accent LED section.

Suddenly wondering how this thing would look with holes worn through the cracks in the body of the hilt, with little accent LEDs lighting up inside. Either with the default pre-set effects, or wired into the LED channels to mirror the blade...

Kouri wrote:
I was having the same ideas. There are two or three spots on the body that I thought would look good to "crack open" for some shine through with accent LEDs. I'm going to wait to get the thing fully built with electronics and then decide whether to do that or not. It would probably only be an extra 2-3 hours of work to do it.

My thought was to have a Red accent LED up near the switch section, just below the emitter for a "crystal" shine through effect. Then maybe an Amber/Golden or even white LED down in the body of the hilt for a "power cell" shine through look.

UPDATE:

LED (R/Pr/G/G) , Heat sink, Lens, 18650 battery and holder, kill switch all ordered.

Waiting for Naigon to add stock for a Spark2 for sound board purchase.

Can't seem to find any thin wall blade stock anywhere right now though.

UPDATE PART2:

Ordered the resistors, JST connectors, and blade stock (frosted thin wall with film).

I also redid the emitter. Will get some pics up, looks much better.

Beautiful sabers! It seems I missed this thread until now. Love that Fallen!