In early September, Falcon approached us about converting his Park's Obi-Wan hilt.
Specifications were:
leave blade as a 3/4"
add a US2.5,
no visible sound holes,
recharge port where the old button was
We talked about a LUX V for a while, but with all the HFX conversions we were doing, I started noticing how much of a nicer blue the P4's were. Also given the confines of space inside the hilt, the battery set-up would have been a lot easier.
Falcon agreed and off to work we went.
We started by boring out the original 3/4" blade holder to accommodate the P4, lens, lens-holder and heat-sink. This worked well and gave us the extra 1" or so of space to use in the hilt while still keeping the 3/4" blade holder a depth of 2".
Next was drilling holes in the grips to allow sound to vent from in between the black and chrome of the grips, ....I personally had nightmares of screwing this part up, ...so many, ...many, MANY measurements were taken before the first holes were drilled.
After that it was a pretty simple install, the next hurdle came with the tactile switch. Since it would need to be removed for it battery replacement, (hopefully in 4 or more years), I didn't just want to putty it permanently in place. So using a piece of plastic, (the same material we use to isolate the soundboard from the hilt, we made a placard for the tactile to be glued to, then trimmed it to fit in between the recharge port and speaker and added a few dabs of hot glue to ensure the whole piece stays put, but can still be removed if needed. Works really well, ...hasn't budged one bit and I been spinning this and playing with like a wookie would!
The battery setup is a single trustfire 3.7v and seems to be working pretty well with the soundboard, (Thanks for the tip FenderBender, most appreciated).
Run times are pretty good, best guess is that I have had it on for about 45 minutes, (intermittently) and still have not had to recharge it.
The setting on the board for the LED is the basic Luxeon III LED, ...I tried the LUX III Overdrive, but really didn't notice much difference, ...and besides, ...I like to "play it safe" with P4s, not really a need to overdrive them anyways.
The blue blade on this hilt is stunning. The slim feel of it, the weight, the look, Parks knew what he was doing when he made this hilt!
Falcon, thanks for your patience with this, this was a most enjoyable conversion! We hope you like it.
Topic: Gemini Concepts Presents: Falcon's Converted Parks’ Obi-Wan TPM Hilt (US2.5) (Read 5899 times)