Luke Skywalker Empire Strikes Back Light Saber

This is a replica of the Lightsaber used by Luke in Empire

I spent roughly half an hour converting this into the final product.

The base of this saber is a Graflex REPLICA, made by Larbel (our man in Hong Kong).

The conversion kit was purchased from YodasHouse.

The beauty of Larbels graflex is that he ships it with all of the holes pre-drilled. This is where I made some mistakes in my New Hope version. Larry drills the holes for the grips, and for the d-ring in the back. All I had to do was tap them, then screw in the hex nuts. It was a real no brainer.

The slice of circuit board in the activator box is in the correct position, with the thin parts pointing towards the body.

One of the acknowledged problems with Larbels Graflex replica (and there are only a couple!!) is the color of the plastic used for the button part of the red button.

I went down to my local auto parts store with an actual red button that I got off of the real graflex I have and searched for a closely matching paint.

Well, I found one!
Plasti-Kote 9078 is REALLY, REALLY close to the actual color of a real red button.

here's what I did:

I took a square toothpic and cut it in half lenghtwise. I dropped a dab of super glue gel into the square hole on the underside of the larbel red button, and glued in the toothpic. Now I had a red button lollipop looking thing. I put two coats of the 9078 on it, and stuck the toothpick in the edge of some corrugated cardboard to dry.

When the paint had dried, I weasled out the toothpic (it took all of the glue with it!!!). Then , I propped up the metal part of the button on a couple of toothpics, dropped the freshly painted red button inot it, and then filled the button with a big gob of 5 minute epoxy to hold it in place. You have to prop up the metal part because if you lay it face down, the red button protrudes out if it farther than the edges of the metal part.

Other than that, not a whole lot of work went into it.