With the sanding drum, I can get a near-perfect radius in the corners:
I make sure to use a slow oscillating movement when doing this to spread out the wear on the sanding drum. Take your time and don't force it, or you may have the sanding drum junp out of the window and skitter across the tube...I know, I had that happen to me when I did the tube for my BS-2 saber.
When you're done, it'll look like this:
Ta-Daaa! a nice, radiused corner! I did the other three and put away the rotary tool for now. To square up the straight cuts, I prefer to use a hand file:
You'll have a bit more control over how much material you remove this way, as opposed to using the sanding drum on the rotary tool. I did all four edges:
And then smoothed them out some more by hand with some 220-grit sandpaper:
Now to test fit it and make sure it all looks good:
I looked it over, and it needed a bit more straigthening out. I did it by hand again, to be sure not to take off too much. Here's the finished window:
So, with all of that done, I need to do something with the back of the hilt....now, I had TCSS powder coat the 5" extension for a reason...I had planned to do a second window to give the saber the look of having a rear grip like this:
But now that I've thought about it, I think I have a better idea....I was thinking it might look cool with brass rings for the rear grips...something like this:
I can cut off the sleeve about 1 1/2" below the front grip window, and then cut it into 1/2" sections or maybe even 3/8" sections, and then secure them to the saber using brass socket head screws:
What say you, Khrysaor? A second grip window, or the brass rings? I might be able to also cut two 1" wide grip windows, too....the choice is yours.
There will have to be some screws somewehere on the saber in order to secure the sleeve since there is no Covertec wheel to do that with.