A wizard, a farmboy, a princess, and a pirate with his giant bear-dog walk into a bar . . .

i got into prop making for a couple of years beginning around 2006 after coming across several good movie prop replica sites and forums. i'd wanted a realistic looking lightsabre hilt since i was 9, and here i was - 30 years later - finding out how to make my own. i think the first site i found was big yellow box and i started making "hardware sabres". over time, i replaced hardware and scratchbuilt parts with machined ones. pictured below are the only two pieces i have left. the dl-44esque blaster pistol was built around 2007. the lightsabre was originally built somewhere around the same time but had parts of it replaced around 2018. the pictures were taken in January 2021 with my laptop webcam . . .

my luke/obiwan inspired lightsabre is built mostly with machined parts from the custom saber shop, including the d-ring and belt hook(not shown). The graflex clamp and calculator bubbles insert are either from roman's empire props or the graflex shop -- or both. the obiwan-style emitter is a part i bought from a seller on ebay back around 2007. the whole thing is held together by a 3/16" length of allthread with a fender washer and cap nut at the d-ring end and a washer and regular hex nuts at the emitter end. i also placed a large, deep weld socket inside the lightsabre body, fastened to the allthread with nuts and washers, to give the hilt a bit more weight. the emitter is painted 'black steel', the foregrip is 'flat black', and the rear grip, 'machinery gray'.

the han solo inspired blaster pistol was made from a metal denix replica of a mauser c96 machine pistol i bought online from statue toys. the flash hider was originally made from a 1 ounce jigger i found at kmart, and later, from a cut down transmission funnel and 3/4" pvc coupling. not long after, i replaced it with a machined esb flash hider from blas-tech(john's other spot on the web) - a place that, sadly, no longer exists. the scope was originally a bb gun scope on a scratchbuilt mount. it was replaced with a cut down airsoft rifle scope from dick's sporting goods and esb mounting hardware bought from blas-tech. the large greeble on the pistol magazine is something i found in a box of misc parts at some flea market type store. it seemed star wars-y to me, and looked vaguely, from what i remembered at the time, like the part used in the movies, so i put it on. i found out later that the magazine greeble in the movies was actually half of a piston from a model chevy engine, and looks quite a bit different, but i like mine better. :)

May the fourth be with you.