TOPIC: Building My First Lightsaber, Need Help

This is my first time ever building a lightsaber, and I really don't have a clue what I'm doing. I'm trying to build a Darth Vader-looking lightsaber, so if anyone could give me a parts list or any sort of help that'd be great.

First, you need to clarify a bit what it is you want to build.

1. Do you want just light or do you want sound? Personally, I've built (and rebuilt) a few sabers, three with sound but my first was just light only to get me used to the idea of saber building and soldering again after more than 20 years.

2. Do you know how to or want to solder? If you don't want to solder, you can get the plug & play electronics. Saber Forge sells everything from Warrior tier (light only) to Hero Tier in Plug & Play, so soldering is completely unnecessary.

Once you figure that out, you need to decide what kind of hilt you want. Every hilt Saber Forge sells is available in the Initiate tier, for DIY purposes. That will get you just the hilt only. If you want something original, there's the ASP system. I have yet to experience building with a Saber Forge hilt, but I want to try both down the line. You can even use the ASP designer tool to virtually build a saber in 3D and see what parts you need to order.

After that, it's just the electronics. There are two categories for electronics, Plug & Play and DIY. Plug & Play is just what it sounds, it's prewired and you can easily install it in the saber. For that, you'll need to pick a tier, Warrior, Champion and Hero. Whichever one you pick, you'll need to add an LED module and switch. Latching for Warrior, and Momentary for Champion and Hero. Also, you'll need a battery and charger for the Warrior tier. (Champion and Hero come with both)

Also, don't forget to buy a blade.

That should be about everything you need. If you want to go DIY, be sure to say so, there's a considerably longer list of parts you'll need to get before you'll be ready to build a saber without prewired parts. I'm not suggesting you shy away from that at all, every saber I've built has been mostly wired by me. I just want to know how you want to proceed before I put together a much longer list of parts.

The custom saber shop has some great hilt kits for a Vader saber, or you can get a scratch/dent graflex kit to build off of a save some money. Saving money translates into more work for you and my experience is that unless you really want to take a swan dive down the rabbit hole of custom saber building the savings are minimal. If it were me I'd get a DV hilt form the customs saber shop and one of the plug and play kits from Saberforge, which are pretty user friendly. EBay is another good option, I see nice Vader/ MPP hilts on there for pretty fair prices.

If you are looking for a screen accurate Darth Vader hilt, your best options for a non-scratch built hilt would be either the MPP 2.0 (ANH, ESB) or the DV6 (ROTJ) from Korbanth. They are available from The Custom Saber shop, or also directly from Korbanth.

Both of those hilts are a step up in difficulty from your average SF hilt as far as the install goes. I would hesitate to recommend either of them for a first build. Both use 7/8" blades out of the box, and aren't meant for hard dueling. Wit that said, your most economical build would be using an NBv4 for the sound board, and speaker holder 10 from The Custom Saber Shop. Myself and other folks out there do custom installs and builds and could build you one on a commission. If that's something you are interested in you you'd need to contact an installer privately.

If you are dead set on building your own though, this is a great community to post to with questions and we would do our best to help you.

This is my MPP 2.0 on the bottom with a Graflex in TFA config on top. This MPP has a Spark2 Sound board in it.