Turning a light-saber hilt into a flogger isn’t a particularly original idea, and people have been doing it for a while, though I believe mine is of particularly high quality and design. The first one I made was based on a simple toy lightsaber, which can be found at every toy store or online starting around $10 (I bought mine at Goodwill for 1 dollar). It was also using simple faux-leather from some coat I bought at the same thrift store for a few dollars. Later, when I had a bit more money available, I turned to making them out of metal and real leather, which increases the cost to about $200. Here’s how it’s done.
1st step is to buy the hilt. There are numerous
manufacturers of lightsaber hilts, and they start around $60 for a full metal
hilt, which does not include a “blade” or electronics (star wars enthusiasts
buy these with a light “bulb” that emulates the “blade”, as well as electronics
that both power the light and creates various sounds effects like the humming
of the blade. My provider of choice is Ultrasabers and others are Crimson Dawn,
Vire Sabers, Artsabers, Rebel Sabers, Kybers, LGT sabers, TXQ sabers, Saber
Trio and Pach. As you can imagine, the more elaborate the design of the hilt,
the more expensive it would be, and $60 gets you something that isn’t much more
than a simple tube. In the example used here, I chose the “Initiate V5” model
from Ultrasabers, which cost $65, on which I applied a 10% discount coupon, and
paid another $17 for shipping for a total of $75. Not bad for a hilt that’s
quite pretty and elaborate.
For the leather, I went to an actual physical store in
Seattle. While I have a strong preference for online shopping in general,
leather is a problem, because the technical characteristics of a piece of
leather (a.k.a. “hide”) can’t quite convey it’s texture, so buying online risks
ending up with a piece that’s too rigid or too soft. Also, while online saves
some money, it’s not a huge savings in the case of leather. I could have shaved
off about $20 off the cost, but not much more. At my leather store of choice,
McPherson, I found a nice piece of Elk leather. Leather usually comes as “hide”
or smaller pieces like “half hide” or even “quarter hide”, and the store is
usually willing to cut any hide into a half or quarter. The hide is sold based
on the surface area times the price per foot, so a full hide would be about 25
square feet at $7-15 per foot, depending on thickness. There are, of course, cheaper
and more expensive leather, but cheaper would be too thin for a flogger, and
thicker would be too rigid, so the $7-15 hides are the range I was looking at.
So I purchased half a hide and paid $90 for the piece, which was about 4’x3’.
4 more things I needed were a wood dowel, a metal strip, a screw-type
hose clamp, and a few screws. The dowel is what the leather attaches to, and
goes into the light saber hilt. The hilt is usually ¾” wide, so that’s the
dowel I bought. I only needed about 10”, so I cut off a piece from a longer
piece from Home Depot. The Metal strip is used to cover the bound leather from
the outside, which both strengthens the flogger, and adds to the metallic look.
Home Depot has 1’x1’ steel plates for about $6, and I cut out a strip that’s
about 3” wide using metal shears. The Screw-type hose were bought at O'Reilly
Auto Parts, which sells a pair for $3, and they can be re-used for other
projects (I got 2” wide ones). Screws…I had plenty, but I needed 2 screws that
are 1.5” long, one very large 1” screw, and one thin 1/8” screw (more details
later).
Naturally, hides are not geometrical shape, so I had to cut
off the sides to make it into a rectangle. Then, I flattened it on my cutting
board and cut it into strips, but leaving the top 3” intact (so, a comb shape).
This can be done with scissors, but I highly recommend using a very large ruler
and box cutter, which is both easier and produces neater results. I had to
replace the blade twice during this, as the leather wears it out quickly.
Next, I smeared glue on the suede side of the leather (this
is my preference, so the leather side would be the visible one) and glued it to
the dowel, holding it with a small clamp while it dries. It’s important to be
neat when doing this part, so I did it slow, gluing about 10” at a time and
letting it dry for 2 hours before gluing more. My favorite glue is the classic E6000,
but you can also use epoxy or Gorilla glue (if using Gorilla, be careful with
the quantity, as it foams and expands when it cures….which could end up being
VERY ugly). I tried to fully cover the 3” leather area with glue, but it’s not
critical as we also have the metal piece and screws to hold it in place.
Next, I took the 3” metal piece I cut off the 1’ sheet, and
rolled it. I just used my hands and a table edge to do so. With this method,
there’s no way to properly curl the lip (unless you use a bench vise), so after
curling the rest of it, I just cut off a piece, and ended up with this:
After putting this around the bound leather, I used the hose
clamp to tighten it as much as I could:
Next, I drilled through the metal and down into the middle
of the dowel, and put in 2 screws. Make sure you chose screws that aren’t too
long, so as to not risk splitting the dowel. Also, make sure you use the
appropriate size drill for the same reason. Ideally, round-head screws are best
for this, as they sit flush against the surface, but in my case, I used simple
wood screws, so I also added these specialty washers known as “Counter-sunk”
washers or “finishing” washers:
Once the screws were fully in, I unscrewed the hose clamp
and removed it.
The lightsaber hilt is quite beautiful as-is, and the next
step would be to simply insert the dower into it and fasten it in place, but I
wanted to balance the flogger, which I did by casting metal into the hilt to
make it heavier. This is purely optional, and might be above the comfort level
of many people, though it’s quite easy. I use Pewter for this, which melts with
a simple propane torch (which I keep at home for making Crème Brule and other
uses). Pewter items are plentiful at my local thrift store and a few dollars
buys you quite a bit of it. In my case, I have collected pewter for years, and
I usually melt it into a silicone ice tray to make 1.5” pieces that are easy to
manage. I place it in a metal ladle and melt it with the torch, and then simply
pour it into the hilt. In this case, I melted about 8 cubes for a total added
weight of about 14 ounces.
Finally, after the hilt cooled, I put the dowel into the
shaft all the way through, and attached it with two screws. The hilt comes with
a ½” hold, which is supposed to be for the power switch, but I drilled a ¼”
hold into the dowel and stuck a large and thick screw into it to hold the dowel
in place. I then placed a 1/8” screw into the hilt in the front (it comes with
a hole for that) and tightened it into the dowel to keep it steadier. Both of
these were machine screws, not wood screws, so that required careful drilling
into the wood, but nothing too complex.
That’s it, and the saber flogger is ready for action. How
does one use it? Simple! USE THE FORCE!!!
