My first saber customization

[bleedscarlet]

Hey guys, I posted this in the discussion forum, but it's definitely better suited for this subforum:

Thank you all for your help, lurking on this forum for the last several weeks helped me customize and complete the best secret santa gift for my friend ever!!

I thought I'd share my lessons, progress, and final shots with you all:

here's the full build log of what I did: http://avinasharora.com/lightsaber/


and here's the final shot:




So again, I wanted to thank the community for kicking butt and getting me into this!! He loves his saber :-D

All in all my key lessons learned are if you want a really good, polished, refined look, suck it up and have a professional powder coat it :p

Also the aluminum blackener stuff is definitely not an ideal surface coating for a frequently touched area without at least clear coating the outside.

And lastly, polishing the aluminum can give a really nice nearly-chrome effect, however it IS still aluminum, and as such is a significant amount softer than actual stainless steel with a real chrome finish so the perfectly flawless finish is somewhat temporary, although even with some minor scuffs and scratches from regular enjoyment it stays nice and shiny, and is not too difficult to repolish every so often.

[RevanReborn]

Holy cow, that's a crazy secret Santa gift!!  Wish someone had thought of something so cool in my friends' secret santa's lol . 

Yeah u def wanna clear coat the blackened aluminum (when it comes to aluminum cylinder like these sabers you should probably clear coat anything applied to surface for that matter) but once it's clear'd well it's an amazingly durable finish.  Like I don't think people realize how tough those finishes are- I've been beating the HECK out of my liberator for months, which has a lot of coverage on some very extreme contours- like the flange, and the blemishes are still too minor to even warrant touching up yet.  And I can't overstate the abuse it's been through lol ie.  Halloween- bunch of drunks- things breaking- people getting hurt lol- literally lol- I mean, you just look at the hilt and it's riddled with chips and gouges and scratches etc., yet the black is still holding on like a champ, it's pretty crazy.

It takes quite an effort/ process, and certainly a lot of time to apply though, but for dueling sabers IMO it's worth it for the extra time it lasts before getting eaten up by blade strikes and drops etc.

Now, most importantly lol, which side of the force do you feel calling/ flowing through you more ATM (light side or dark side points)?  I'll make it a light side for now, but can fix that if dsrkside's yiur thing .  MTFBWY

[bleedscarlet]

I'll take whatever points you wanna give :-D

Interesting about the clear coat. Maybe we'll give it a nice good repolishing and cleaning and then clear coat the whole thing. Now that I've officially gifted it to him, I showed him the ultrasaber website and forum and said "any further customization you wanna do, you have to pay for but I'll help you do whatever you want!"

He's already added a bunch of stuff to his cart, I think he wants to add sound, possibly a claw, and maybe an extension :p

He was beyond ecstatic with the gift. I call it a major success.

[RevanReborn]

Yeah I'd say so lol, best secret Santa ever!!!  That'll be pretty hard to top lol. 

That stand/ plaque that the saber mounted on is SO cool btw, it looks amazing on there . 

[Bulvoy]

Very nice, and  we've all been there with any type of project saber or not, the idea, then the trial and error, then the OCD kicks in trying to make it the Holy Grail. then finally a win, so lemme telle you major props to you from idea to final stage. love the apperence, and the plaque, thats a a +1 just for the thought.

[MavRick]

That looks sweet!! 

[bleedscarlet]

Thanks for all the kind words folks :-D