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Description
Made this over a few days to add to a Jedi Halloween costume, Could do with a few more greeblies to make the activation button a bit more interesting but given the limited amount of time available to make it I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I haven't decided to rock the Jedi costume or the Black Knight costume this Halloween...

Update - Materials and construction:
From the top...
Emitter shroud (grey bit) - PVC plumbing pipe

Emitter - drilled an old joystick hat switch and fed a terminal from an electronics kit through it, the metal disk underneath is from a hosed hard drive spindle. All are mounted on the cap of a 35mm film can. The can was wrapped in masking tape until the outside circumference was a snug fit with the emitter shroud.

Radiator - Alternating set of large and small washers.

Body - Sanded (1000 grit) a length of television aerial mast until I got a brushed aluminium look.

Controls - One is a metal thumbscrew from a broken mathematical compass, the other is another terminal like the one used in the emitter.

Charging port - A simple, single-pin power adaptor port, it was made of metal and blended in well with the body.

Activation switch - Stripped a push-button doorbell switch; took out the contacts and the button, sanded the base to the same profile as the body of the hilt and used two socket screws to mount it onto the sabre body. The cover of the switch was then attached. Detail was added with bits of styrene sheet (dark-grey areas) and a contact terminal from the busted HDD was epoxied to the side of the cover.

Hilt base - (Unseen in this photograph) found a chrome toilet cistern cap with exactly the correct outer diameter to fit inside the body, mounted a belt-loop on it.

Grip - Polyurethane(?) foam that I found in a craft shop in loads of different colours. I tried both white and grey but black looked best to me. I prototyped it using a paper template which, when I was happy with it, was used as a cutting guide.

The emitter section and radiator are held onto the body with a large bolt that passes from the base of the 35mm film can right through and into the body (it is about 10cm long). It is anchored inside the body; I found a piece of wooden dowel with the same diameter as the inside of the aerial mast and drilled a channel right through it. I then had to make a few channels on the outside of the dowel to accommodate the screws holding the metal details and the switch in place (trial and error). The dowel is kept in place with a short screw that is hidden under the doorbell switch.

The entire assembly is very robust and quite weighty, the weakest part is the film can which is easy to replace regardless.

Description
Made this over a few days to add to a Jedi Halloween costume, Could do with a few more greeblies to make the activation button a bit more interesting but given the limited amount of time available to make it I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I haven't decided to rock the Jedi costume or the Black Knight costume this Halloween...

Update - Materials and construction:
From the top...
Emitter shroud (grey bit) - PVC plumbing pipe

Emitter - drilled an old joystick hat switch and fed a terminal from an electronics kit through it, the metal disk underneath is from a hosed hard drive spindle. All are mounted on the cap of a 35mm film can. The can was wrapped in masking tape until the outside circumference was a snug fit with the emitter shroud.

Radiator - Alternating set of large and small washers.

Body - Sanded (1000 grit) a length of television aerial mast until I got a brushed aluminium look.

Controls - One is a metal thumbscrew from a broken mathematical compass, the other is another terminal like the one used in the emitter.

Charging port - A simple, single-pin power adaptor port, it was made of metal and blended in well with the body.

Activation switch - Stripped a push-button doorbell switch; took out the contacts and the button, sanded the base to the same profile as the body of the hilt and used two socket screws to mount it onto the sabre body. The cover of the switch was then attached. Detail was added with bits of styrene sheet (dark-grey areas) and a contact terminal from the busted HDD was epoxied to the side of the cover.

Hilt base - (Unseen in this photograph) found a chrome toilet cistern cap with exactly the correct outer diameter to fit inside the body, mounted a belt-loop on it.

Grip - Polyurethane(?) foam that I found in a craft shop in loads of different colours. I tried both white and grey but black looked best to me. I prototyped it using a paper template which, when I was happy with it, was used as a cutting guide.

The emitter section and radiator are held onto the body with a large bolt that passes from the base of the 35mm film can right through and into the body (it is about 10cm long). It is anchored inside the body; I found a piece of wooden dowel with the same diameter as the inside of the aerial mast and drilled a channel right through it. I then had to make a few channels on the outside of the dowel to accommodate the screws holding the metal details and the switch in place (trial and error). The dowel is kept in place with a short screw that is hidden under the doorbell switch.

The entire assembly is very robust and quite weighty, the weakest part is the film can which is easy to replace regardless.