Saber Smithing - A Month On (Guide included)

I know I said I was going to blog my efforts more frequently on this build - but as it turned out I ended up spending so much time on it I just didn't get a chance. My schedule the last month has been wake up, go to work, get home, work on saber, go to bed... rinse repeat. Most nights I wasn't sleeping until gone midnight either. It's not exactly a walk in the park this smithing lark and considering this is my first time doing any of these tasks, there was a lot of frustration involved, but time spent and stress involved will definitely be reduced on the next one, as I hope yours will be with this guide!

My previous post referenced the disappointment I was having regarding transferring an etch design to a piece of metal. Frankly, I nearly gave up on the whole endeavour twice, I grew up under a military father with insanely high standards, failing at something is not easy for me and I take it harder than most would unfortunately. That said - this process from start to finish was a learning curve, the only thing I managed to get right on the first try was wiring the pads correctly, that's it, and that's still not to say that the soldering is top rate because it isn't. You will f**k up, you will get frustrated and you will feel like it's not good enough - the only thing you can do is learn from it. Thankfully, unless the acid etch itself fails for some reason, everything you do is reversible with enough effort.

So with that foreword in mind - let's move on to the guide. I've been asked by several people to produce a step by step if possible, from the viewpoint of someone who has never done this before, and I agree that it will probably help some poor unfortunate like myself who decides to take up the solder and acid.

Let's start at the beginning then. Before I'd even received the parts or hilt, I was working on the designs for the etch. If you're using a Flagship V2, Khal has helpfully added a link to download the shroud templates to exact measurements on the product page. You'll need a program to open it, I used Inkscape, it's freeware, but it does the job. To design the etch itself I used CorelDraw, which has a bitmap tracing tool (vector trace essentially) - this allows it to remove the pixelation from an image and smooth the lines so they won't show up on the etch (it's precise enough to eat the pixels!). If you don't have a program that can do this you'll need to find one, however in some cases pixelated etches can look pretty cool so it's a design choice too (circuitry or geometric for example). Below is an example of what I was working with;

If you're going to etch other parts of the hilt, you'll need to measure its circumference, this can be achieved by measuring the outer diameter of the area to be etched and multiply it by Pi. Once you've achieved this you can change the measurements of your page in the program you're using to mm/cm and accurately create design areas that will fit the part perfectly. This also means you don't waste any of your precious transfer paper. The transfer paper I used was Press n Peel Blue - particularly expensive at £2.50 a sheet but Khal uses it for his and if it's good enough for one of the most venerated smiths in the business it's good enough for me too. Try to utilise as much as you can of the sheet - they're letter sized as opposed to A4 so don't forget to set the printer you're using to letter to account for that (I found they get funny with them if A4 is selected as default - had a paper jam or 2!).

Something else to bear in mind - and this was something I found out at great cost and stress to myself; the type of toner you use makes a huge difference. I spent the first few sheets using a Samsung printer with a 3rd party toner, and the results were absolutely awful - here's an example or 2;

The right photo above was perhaps the best result I got with it, and even then it was nowhere near good enough to go near acid. The left hand photo is even worse, the toner had melted into horrid smudges. At this stage, after watching tutorial videos etc, I was unaware that toner was different depending on brand - it took a few jewelry making forums for me to discover that toner is in fact different qualities. I wish I had known this before burning through sheets of expensive transfer paper attempting to get a solid result. As it turns out, due to the higher iron content of toners from Lexmark or HP - these are absolutely the best for transfers. Once you've tension wrapped in place (I used thermal tape but you can use packing tape if you're pressed) and placed in an oven at 140 degrees centigrade for 20 minutes, this is what I got;

As you can see - perfect transfers bar some tiny holes, easily filled with an etch pen (although a permanent marker will do just as well in this case). You must remember to prepare the metal properly before applying the transfer paper, clean metal makes the transfer easier. I polished mine with Autosol, then washed it with warm soapy water, polished it again and used a green scotchbrite and soap just to finish off (this also allows tiny scratches in the metal that the toner can stick to), finally a good rub with isopropyl alcohol and a microfibre cloth to remove any lingering oils and particulates. Now that I'd finally gotten a workable resist on the metal it was time to etch. Now at first I was using Copper Sulphate + Sodium Chloride solution, though I quickly noticed that it was taking a long time to eat it away, after checking why, brass is harder than aluminium and to etch this it would've taken many hours. I also used the same thermal tape I used to tension wrap the toner paper on as a large surface resist (back of the shrouds, threads of the hilt), to keep the metal polished and the threads working, just make sure it's a nice clean stick with no air bubbles.  

I switched to Ferric Chloride instead - nasty brown stuff that you want to avoid touching and don't get it on your clothes! Ruined a lovely pair of white joggers this way. However, 45 minutes later the etch was basically done. I did however make the mistake of taking the items out of the solution and washing them off just to release the surface of clinging material - this also washed off some of the toner resist and therefore I couldn't place it back in, I had to settle for the depth I'd already gotten. My advice would be - leave it in there, let it do it's job, I learnt from this and on the pommel etch got a much deeper result. However, be aware that the marker used to fill gaps has a much shorter life than the toner resist in Ferric, it gets eaten away faster so be careful and keep checking the etch as best you can to make sure it doesn't start eating your design - though this could be part of the weathering if desired. Do make sure to wear gloves for these stages as the solutions involved are not friendly to skin, you won't dissolve your fingers off or anything, but prolonged exposure can cause irritation, and obviously don't swallow it or get it in your eyes. Plus gloves means you don't leave your finger oil all over the metals and cause an uneven etch. 

The result was wonderful though. Finally, after weeks of testing most of the etching was completed. You'll spend a good few hours polishing after this if you want to get the metal back to mirror finish (before I decided to weather my saber I was going for pristine - in hindsight, what a waste of time!). 

And thus ended my etching adventures for now - I was keen to get the hilt installed at this stage and I knew I could come back to the pommel at a later date as it was nowhere near the electronics and detachable anyway. 

When/if you take on a hobby like this - try and find a dedicated workspace. It is not the most organised endeavour in the world as you'll see below, unfortunately I lack a garage or a shed to use so my poor kitchen bore the brunt of my smithing!

As you can see, it's a mess, so be warned. My plan is to convert a bay window in my living room into a dedicated area with large desk for this in future. 

Anyway I moved on to the electronics - having never soldered before in any meaningful capacity (15 years old in shop class soldering blobs on metal does not count in my opinion), I was concerned about this stage, and in retrospect there was absolutely no need to be really, if you manage to mess up a solder it is incredibly easy to correct. That said, wire joins are the bane of my life and working to make them strong using 24AWG wire is incredibly frustrating due to the size. Tweezers and helping hands are your friends here. 

I kinda learnt as I went along here - the odd silly mistake cropping up, like soldering the switch to the board, through the hilt and chassis as common sense dictates, but realising that the chassis is made to fit the hilts inner diameter meaning I couldn't slide the damn thing back in without severing the wires! Unsolder - resolder. The best advice I can give you for this stage is make sure you use different colour wires for the LED so you know which colour is which when it comes to the board soldering, make sure you keep the LED and switch wires separated but grouped, as inevitably some will be the same colour and you'll have to partially disassemble again to find out which is which (yeah this happened to me) - it's also wise if you're using an AV momentary with an LED, since it has 4 wires not 2, to use different colours again, the amount of time I spent checking which positive I was wiring because I used the same colour was silly.

I do however highly recommend a fitted chassis if it's possible to get for your hilt - it keeps everything secure and compact and it's far easier than the rod and disc method I've seen around.

Above you'll see my LED wiring twisted together to the far left and my switch wiring beside it, using 2 colours on 4 wires, wherein lay the constantly checking it was the right wire issue - don't be me, label them or use different colours. Anyway I finally got it assembled and working, the LED's lit up at the brightness expected (meaning my resistor calculations were obviously correct), the sound worked, this was the culmination of 10 hours spent soldering and wiring on a Saturday. Saturday just gone in fact. I have seen smiths install 3 sabers in 4 hours, but they build a hundred a year or more. For a first attempt I was pleased to have done it in a day. 

Regarding the resistors - you need to calculate these to suit whatever Cree you ended up going for. If you've gone for G,G,W for example you don't need any resistors as greens forward voltage is 3.7v and you've probably gone for a 3.7v battery like I did. However I wanted the option to change, so I went with an R,G,rB instead. You can go without resistors on the blue as well, though I erred on the safe side and used a 0.33ohm resistor, the red needed a 1.1ohm as it runs 2.65v. 

The easiest way to work out the resistor needed for Cree LED's, is assume they're all running at 1A, which most Cree's do, and minus the forward voltage of the LED from the battery voltage. So if red is 2.65, you take 2.65 from 3.7, and you're left with 1.05. You get the closest resistor you can to this (Watts just tells you how much heat it can take, no harm in higher watts), so in my case 1.1 for red, and 0.33 for blue as it runs on 3.4v. You can cheat by the way - if you need a resistor you don't have, instead of waiting for an order you can add 2 resistors in parallel and halve the ohms - so 2 x 1ohm resistors wired together would be 0.5ohm instead. This was very handy when it came to the momentary switch LED which required a 15ohm resistor, the closest I had above it was 33! 2 wired together produced 16.5 instead, it was only running about 90% of the desired current, but it was bright enough so I was happy. 

Be sure to heat shrink your resistors and their joins too, to avoid any shorts.

At this stage I was giddy, I was nearing completion, I had a working saber, the time and patience that went into getting to this stage was rewarded with an ignition noise, bright blue blade and the sound of smoothswing hums. There's no real way to describe it, I'll likely never feel it quite the same again, but your very first is a defining achievement I think.

Next I looked to the hilt again - I'd already wrapped it in white leather, but in the usual overlapping strip pattern we see so often. I wasn't a fan, the leather wasn't the thinnest anyway, and any strips of white leather thin enough to do it at the length required cost a fortune. I removed it and went back to the drawing board. I came across a site that did real leather grips for motorcycles, and they cross stitched them into place, and I thought it looked fantastic. So that's what I did. I cut my leather to exact dimensions, purchased proper leather sewing needles and waxed thread and went about old mother hubbarding.

Having never cross stitched before in my life, or for that matter worked with leather on any level, this took me 2 attempts, as I didn't reinforce the holes first time around and one of them ripped open. Not to mention the fact that the stitches were too far away and didn't tighten the leather without gaps. But I tried again the next evening and was rewarded with a far better quality grip, and now I know how to do it in future too. I can't stress this enough, everything I did, everything I decided to try was a learning experience. If you don't try you won't learn - if you want to build a custom saber, do it, no money spent on a learning experience is ever a waste, even if you magically melt the hilt into slag or something it's not wasted, and my god electronics/soldering/stitching can come in handy in so many walks of life. Before I stitched the final hilt wrap though, it was time to work on the pommel etch.

It followed much the same process as outlined above, only this time it was slightly more fiddly as the pommel outer faces were tiny, and I had to line each tiny toner cut out exactly. However, first time and it was an absolutely perfect transfer, and the etch came out fantastic. 

Now at this point in time, everything polished up to a mirror sheen, I looked at it long and hard and realised that the etching could use some contrast, a way to make it pop out at you. When everything is the same glorious reflecting gold it tends to blend in and it was a shame as it's such a good looking etch. This was the point where I decided I wasn't going with pristine anymore, that it needed some character, and weathering was the way to go. 

I'd seen people using black spray paint and thinners in quick succession to weather sabers, and frankly I thought that was way too imprecise and no guarantee of getting the right amount of weathering. Thankfully from my sword collecting days, I knew solutions existed both to clean and polish metal, and to rapidly deteriorate them for an "antique" look. So that's what I did, I got some antiquing solution - specifically the black patina version though there is a brown as well and proceeded to weather the hilt (these work on aluminium too). The first part is dead easy, mix a 1:10 solution in water and dunk the metal in, the second isn't complicated but needs very light hands! 

I also realised that in order to weather it properly, I had to deinstall the hilt again as I needed to submerge parts that contained electronics. Another lesson learnt. 

Once it was empty again I proceeded to antique, unfortunately I have no images of the solution or the effect it had on the metal but sufficed to say a few minutes submerged resulted in nearly black metal, you couldn't even see the etching, only feel it. Once you've washed it off in soapy water (you're going to have brown hands by this point), you get a piece of 2000 grit wet n dry paper, and using the water you very, very lightly brush the paper over the etching or any edges/raised areas. Remember we don't want to remove all the weathering from between the raised parts so be delicate with it, keep washing it off as you go so you can get an idea of how much you've removed and where to stop. 

Once you've hit the desired ratio of polished to weathered metal you need to do the next part very carefully, you need to polish the metal but avoid removing the weathering in the places it belongs, same process as the wet n dry, very light hands with a light cloth and a small amount of metal polish. If you press too hard you'll remove more than you meant too, the tarnishing isn't permanent it's just corroded metal that can be buffed out easily, however it lends a relic effect in my opinion, it looks natural as opposed to spray paint. You can however lightly polish some of the weathering to remove only some of it, this allows some gradation and makes the weathering look far more natural. 

Once you're done with this stage you want to seal the metal, so the patina doesn't rub off with use for example. I used Renaissance Wax, another holdover from my sword collecting days, it's used by the British museum for the protection and restoration of antiques, but once buffed it leaves a thin coat as a layer on the metal. 

When you're done you'll have something like this hopefully

The hilt was then finally wrapped and stitched using the same cross stitch method - although I just think it looks best on leather, you may decide a different stitch would suit, or you may go for the wrap look like a lot of people do, up to you, as someone who tried both - the wrap is far easier!

And with the addition of the hilt grip the saber was completed. It stood up to nearly 2 hours of dueling last night as well so at this stage it was finished. I may return to it at some point and upgrade to neopixel blade, once I have more experience and understanding, but as a first ever attempt this was absolutely the best thing I have ever created with my own two hands. The absolute motto here for me was "it doesn't matter if you've never done any of it, if you don't try you'll never get something quite the way you wanted it" - custom sabers are all well and good, but giving instructions to somebody who can't see what you can in your mind is always going to vary. Do it yourself, it's worth the risk.