Lightsaber Hilt

[zourtney]

Nice, finally got a chance to look at the picture. Looks good!

[Brad]

I finally finished it.  Which is good because we leave tomorrow. I can't seem to find my small camera anywhere and the big camera is packed so I'm just going to upload some crappy cell phone pictures. I'll take better ones when I'm in full costume with it later.

There was a problem with the radio-shack button I melted it when I was soldering the two leads to it... Fortunately I had the switch from the $1.50 flashlight. It's white instead of red, but hey it actually works.

[Brad]

Pictures

[Nick]

That looks really nice! How did you end up hooking up the flashlight?

[Cody]

That is really cool.  I think you should write some sort of tutorial on how to make one of those. I would certainly try it.

[Brad]

It is just wired in a simple circuit with the switch. I soldered wires to the battery holder that came woth. The flashlight. The other piece of the flashlight, the led end, just unscrewed from the flashlight. I soldered wires to the metal contacts and connected everything to the switch inside the metal tube. The pommel unscrews to allow changing the batteries.

The hardest part was getting everything secured inside the tube. Used a couple adhesives and a lot of hot glue.

The led piece is surrounded by this hard foam disk (which I stole from one of those toys that shoots foam disks). This is a very snug fit so the actual light piece is mostly held in place by friction. This makes it easy to take apart and fix problems. I have tested it by waving it around a bunch. Not sure you could smack it against stuff and still have it work though.