How To Build A Star Wars Movie
Prop Lightsaber
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wanted one too. The question is how do you go about building a real lightsaber. The design and production team for Star Wars built their props as they were required. The interesting part is that the Star Wars weapons were built from fairly common items yet looked so exotic and advanced.
Believe it or not the original lightsaber was made from something called a 3-cell Graflex. A Graflex was a flash unit for an old camera. It just happened to fit the shape and size requirements the special effects team placed on the lightsaber design.
The grip for the lightsaber was made from windshield wipers. Images of the Graflex flashgun below illustrate this point more clearly:
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The original Star Wars prop lightsaber used the following components:
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Graflex flashgun
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A section of a British rifle grenade
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Texas Instruments red diodes from surplus electronics equipment
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Armitage Shanks water faucet knob
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Windshield wipers
As you can see the origins of the Episode IV lightsaber were far from glamorous but all the above parts combined made a very effective looking lightsaber.
The most difficult to source compontent for your own replica lightsaber is the Graflex flashgun which are in short supply but eBay may be able to help out.
In the absence of a Graflex flashgun you can also use standard plumbing tubing to great effect as is illustrated in this lightsaber construction guide.
The project of building a lightsaber from scratch goes beyond the scope of this website so below are links to two additional websites that detail the process from A - Z. Neither of these websites rely on the graflex flash unit for lightsaber construction: