Disclaimer - I'm probably going to ramble on for a bit so please feel free to skip to the pics.
So a while back I was inspired to do a mod to my Manticore that required parts from a Renegade to complete. To be more precise an emitter, pommel and extension. As we all know Renegade parts other than the pommel (even those can only be bought when buying certain of the more basic sabers) can only be attained one way, buy a Renegade. The Renegade while really nice wasn't really on my radar since I'm not really into the cross hilt blades thing (sorry to those that are). So back in May I was all prepared to buy something else and I was like what the heck I'll get the Renegade as a single blade and remove the cross guard section (which I'm pretty sure nullifies your warranty). I ordered it in Blazing Red with Sentinel Yellow flash (which looks amazing) with an Obsidian v4 board in it.
A few days later (actually 4 days) I got my boxes from Ultrasabers. Now here's where everything went awry. I pull the Renegade out of it's box and absolutely fell in love with the hilt. I love the feel and weight of it on top of it just looking mean. I started playing around it the MHS parts and when I removed the side extensions, which aren't necessary when you don't have side LEDs I was sold on leaving the cross guard intact, just slightly slimmer than before. I really like this because it reminds me of a regular sword that way. When I carry it around I usually grip it just under the cross guard. I also really love the gredade grip section.
So now my Manticore was no closer to having the parts I needed. Then Ultrasabers had a sale that had free shipping and I went ahead and ordered an empty Renegade to get my parts. After ordering it I got to thinking about what I was going to do with the extra parts and then a stroke of genius occurred. I decided to make the already decent sized saber into a great saber, since I'd have an additional hilt main section to use. The best part is that I'd now have two of the grenade grip sections. I also decided to use one of the additional side emitters as a pommel on the new saber. One warning I do have is that while the Renegade hilt is pretty easy to take apart there's one part where the main hilt section joins the cross part that is rather difficult ot remove. So with the additional parts and a MHS gender changer I got this.
The Renegade now measures 27"/68cm in length. And because I'm going for the greatsaber look I added a 40" blade to it bringing it to a length of 65"/165cm. Here's a pic next to a door to give some reference as to the size.
I took an elevator bolt (a type of bolt with a large flat head) and gave it a curve with a a hammer on a vise to make a way of covering the ignition switch hole on the second hilt section. I painted it black. I didn't get an exact match to the black of the saber but I'm pretty happy with the results.
Inside the side emitters I built some mini blade plugs out of some hard drive parts so I wouldn't be able to look straight through the saber and to keep stuff out of the hilt. Sorry the picture is pretty blurry.
A nice thing is that it gets some backlighting from the main LED. Another nice thing about not having the side LEDs is that it allows a ton of that great Obsidian sound out through there too.
So that's about it. Just wanted to share my new love with everyone and I hope everone enjoys the post. Thanks and have a great day!