TOPIC: In honor of the forum being spam free...

... how about an unsolicitied saber design!

Folks, I love Saberforge, but I also love Palpatine/Darth Sidious' lightsaber. I currently have a Korbanth Sidious hilt that I'm working on getting arranged to send to Shameem for building/finishing, but I was told that the Korbanths aren't really all that good for dueling (at least not that Sidious model). So, I went ahead and roughly figured out the method by which a duelable Sidious-inspired hilt could be constructed.





As you can see (if the forum didn't shrink the image too much), this saber would consist of four basic parts: the body, emitter, body shroud, and pommel. Please pardon my crappy art skills, as I was drawing this freehand in photoshop with a mouse.

The body would be a simple tube, with a few ridges lathed near the forward end. The remaining length of the forward end would be threaded externally, whereas the tail end of the main body would be threaded internally. The blade retention screw hole could be drilled into any of the valleys between the ridges. In a "standard" finish configuration, the body would be silver/brushed aluminum.

The emitter would be a disc with a roughly triangular profile, ending in a raised lip. The inside of the hole of the emitter would be threaded, to screw down over the externally threaded end of the main body, allowing the ridged section of the body to serve as the blade holder. In a "standard" finish configuration, the emitter would also be silver/brushed aluminum (or anodized gold, if one chooses to go with the movie accurate "fancy" color scheme).

The body shroud would be a shaped sleeve which would slide over the main body, and be held in place by both the LED retention screw (located at roughly the same point as the greebly LEDs on Sidious's movie saber), and the Covertec screw (which is not pictured in the drawing, but would be located on the shroud near the pommel). In a "standard" finish configuration, the shroud would be anodized black (or gold, if one chooses to go with the movie accurate "fancy" color scheme).

The pommel is a simple threaded cap, with a domed greebly rising from the center. The sound vent holes would be drilled at equal intervals around the base of the domed greebly. In a "standard" finish configuration, the pommel would be anodized black (or gold, if one chooses to go with the movie accurate "fancy" color scheme) to match the shroud.

In weathered finish, it would of course have all pieces in the typical roughened black finish.

So, that is my idea. I haven't worked out the exact dimensions, but it seems like that would be the simplest way to build a Sidious inspired, duel worthy saber.

Now you're probably asking "Afadir, why are you boring us with all of this?" Well, I have decided to give this idea to Saberforge. I, here and now, publically and willingly grant them full permission to use this design, and any ideas relating to it, and will seek no compensation or renumeration in exchange (though it would be nice to get one if they decide to make it).

And... in honor of the recent changes Knytiri has made to the forums to (hopefully) free us from the plague of the Spamdroid army once and for all, I've even thought of the perfect name for this model...

VASHIRAKAN

(That's right... this entire post was one long, drawn out joke. ENJOY IT, SUCKERS!! )




(Seriously, though, Saberforge, if you guys could make a Sidious hilt, I would buy the crap out of that.)

slow clap And here I thought the days of seeing that name word on here were over...

Though for real, nice saber mock up.

I think that's mainly because his designs only accept 7/8" blades (that only come thin-walled) as opposed to the more commonly used 1". I have one of his Graflex 2.0 kits coming in sometime next week myself. If I remember right, I think his Sidious hilts are cast steel, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about playing around with it.

I was led to understand that the blade holder configuration in the Korbanth Sid is a bit weak. The blade holder is a pretty thin piece of aluminum, and it's only held in by a single (what I think is supposed to be the LED retention) set screw.

I've got it screwed down pretty tight, and can wiggle the emitter with my hand with very little effort. But, I bought this one to be a shelf queen anyways, so...

Would still love to have a fighting version of it, though.

(And thank you for the pity applause.)

Afadir wrote: Ahh gotcha.

If SF sees this and considers making a Sidious hilt, maybe they could do a Mace Windu one as well (wink wink nudge nudge). At the moment, the only options are the older Master Replicas with the LED string blade (which can be converted but are too fat), Korbanth's limited run (which were way too short), and the limited edition screen accurate electronic-less version Master Replicas made, but was so difficult to add electronics to that it was only successfully attempted once.

Jaden Korr wrote:
Oh, don't worry Korr, I've already begun to put together Vashikar as the unnoficial Form VIII of lightsaber combat inspired by sloshing, so you'll be seeing it plenty often soon!

But on the subject at hand, I've always loved Palpatine's saber, and I too would buy the crap out of that.

Y'know, Darth Jar Jar taught Darth Sideous to be a master of Vashikar-- *gets bludgeoned*

Mooooooonths ago there was talk of a Windu inspired getting integrated into an ASP expansion.

The thing about any screen accurate (or even roughly so) version of a Sidious saber is that the emitter was kind of a thin-neck, but with so little socket space to affix a blade that if you could do it, it would not be duel worthy. It is a cool design, but it would only work well with a real photonic blade. Ah...if only.

Note to Episode VIII and IX's concept artists and prop builders: please make sure all new lightsaber are designed in such a way that the fan designed replicas can be duel worthy. And also affordable; the crossguard is awesome but it's gonna bankrupt most of us that want one. Oh and makes sure we get some different Jedi blade colors other than blue and green.

Actually, ignore everything I just said; just keep making awesome stuff and ignore the ramblings of an unreasonable fanboy.

Except for the blade colors comment; can new saber please be yellow? And maybe a staff or a pike?[\i]

baba jj thinks this saber idea is the best love problem solution.
A Sidious hilt would be nice, though with less thin-neck for practicality. Good luck with this, for you and for us.

Nice design. It might actually work in production and dueling because it does not have that small thin neck part of the actual movie saber. Good one!