After cleaning my house this weekend (and unpacking a few more boxes) I rediscovered some of the lost treasures from a past life (i.e. pre-Navy). One such item is my Luke Skywalker lightsaber. But it’s not one of them fancy expensive ones, it’s one that I built from scratch.I worked in a movie theater when I was in high school. It happened to be the same summer that the horrible Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released. My self-proclaimed job title at the time was “Theater Beautification Specialist” (that’s “usher” for the creatively disabled) and I spent most of my time tearing tickets. 

For opening night I needed a lightsaber to wear with my awesome theater-issued maroon blazer. I mean, come on. This was the first Star Wars in 20 years and I had to look cool.

I found a book called From Star Wars to Indiana Jones: The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives, which had great photos of all the lightsabers used in the original Star Wars movies. I made my own blueprints by measuring the scaled photos in the book and drawing them out on paper. Once this was done, I scanned the drawing into Photoshop so I could label the appropriate measurements to have the lightsaber machined.

The next step was to buy a piece of aluminum. I took the day off school (hey, it was my senior year anyway) and traveled downtown. Moments later I had a solid aluminum bar in my hands and I was out $20. This was the only money I really spent making the lightsaber.

My high school has a machinery class of somekind, hidden away in the very back of the building. I never took the class myself but I heard about it and asked them to machine out the lightsaber for me. I dropped off the aluminum bar and the blueprints. A few days later, I picked up the machined-out lightsaber.

The final step was painting it to match that from Return of the Jedi. I already had model paint that was the correct color so this wasn’t a hassle. After the paint job was done, I only needed to finish one more thing.

The “control box” on the lightsaber (with the arrows) has a reflective plastic piece from an old calculator on it. Obviously, the calculator is no longer made but I found a guy on the Internet who was selling “replicas” of that piece for a $1. I sent him a dollar in the mail and a week or so later he sent me the plastic calculator piece and a sheet of red and green plastic for the arrows. Lastly, the two rubber buttons came from an old television remote I had in my possession. (The TV had gone long ago out but I figured the remote would come in handy someday.)

A little cutting, painting, and supergluing and walla! A lightsaber!

About the time I finished it, the school’s art department hosted an art show. Much to the dismay of one of the art teachers, I entered the lightsaber as a “sculpture”. She wasn’t happy about it and talked to the higher-ups, citing that the lightsaber was a “weapon”. Apparently, no one had told her that the lightsabers used in the films weren’t real either.